Major Nelson

Today we want to share some details about the incredible voice chat improvements made to Xbox One and how these changes will enhance your communication with the Xbox One Chat Headset on the console.

Thanks to integration with Skype’s audio codec, which has a proven track record of high-quality voice through billions of hours of use within Skype, as well as dedicated audio processing (for Xbox One conversations via Skype and multiplayer party chats), Xbox One offers higher quality voice chat with the Xbox One Chat Headset compared to Xbox 360—whether you’re chatting in-game or through party chat with Skype on Xbox One.

But the improvements don’t stop there. The Xbox One Wireless Controller’s new expansion port dramatically expands the data transfer rate between the controller and console. Combined with Skype’s audio codec, this enables crystal-clear digital audio with the Xbox One Chat Headset, both capturing and rendering speech at 24 KHz PCM, which is triple the rendering sample rate and a 50 percent capture rate improvement over Xbox 360 headsets. And, as we shared before, the Xbox One Chat Headset comes with every Xbox One console.

But don’t just take our word for it. Listen to this short sample for yourself: https://soundcloud.com/xbox/xbox360-current-headsetoutput/s-ksYyn

We think gamers will immediately notice the improvement here—whether it’s through crystal clear in-game chats over the Xbox One Chat Headset, through the sound of crisper conversations taking place over Skype or with your multiplayer party chat.

We can’t wait for you to hear the improvements first-hand in a couple months.

http://majornelson.com/2013/08/29/xbox-one-delivers-premium-voice-quality-via-hardware-improvements-and-skypes-audio-codec/#disqus_thread

Is it true that you can't chat with someone that's on an Xbox 360 from an Xbox One?

You don't hear it in the high-end so much, but you do hear it in the low-end.

When you look at the audio signature though, huge difference.

No, you can't.  The Xbox One has 24MHz PCM audio, the Xbox 360 only has I think 16MHz.  Not to mention, the codecs are different.

If they were to allow cross-platform chat it would require making the audio quality on the Xbox One worse.

A very noticable difference. That is really nice and clear.

That sucks. You would think with all of MSes software knowledge, they would be able to make codecs work on both.

Sony found a way to get PS4 and Vita to talk.

probably due to there not being a diff in the audio stuff

The Xbone dedicated audio chip seems really powerful.

The change in codec and the change in wireless spec means that Microsoft would have had to reduce the audio quality of the Xbox One.  Microsoft wouldn't be able to make the Xbox One's wireless spec compatible with the Xbox 360, so the only option would be to switch to a codec that provides inferior audio quality.  No one wants that.

It might, technically still be possible through Skype, if and when Skype comes to Xbox 360, but it would mean gamers on an Xbox 360 couldn't play a game while conversing with those on the Xbox One. 

This has more to do with the increase in bandwidth afforded by the new wireless spec. and likely less compression to the audio stream in the codec.