What is Auto Gain Control (AGC)?
Why do people complain that I am overmodulated?
Why can't I adjust my Microphone gain?
Why do people complain that I am breaking up?
Will the Advanced Voice Client work with ASRC?
Why do we have to authenticate to use the AVC?

What is Auto Gain Control (AGC)?
The auto gain control or AGC is in short a feature which ensures that you'll never have to raise your volume for the quiet controller only to be blasted by a loud pilot the very next minute. During the Beta stage, AGC serves two purposes. It constantly adjusts your output level so that you are as loud as possible without distortion. With this part of AGC running, anyone using the Advanced Voice Client will always have the proper volume level. There still remains the problem of RW users who are responsible for their own mic adjustments. To compensate for them sending Advanced voice too quiet, the AGC checks first if they are a RW or VC client. If they are VC it ignores them (they already have the proper level) however if they are on RW, it adjusts their output either up or down to set their level for optimal volume. In short this means that everyone regardless of what they set their mic level to in the windows mixer will sound the same volume all of the time.

Why can't I adjust my Microphone gain?
Advanced Voice Client features AGC. This feature automatically adjusts your mic volume so that you are as loud as you possibly can be without distorting or over modulating. Therefore, all transmission will sound at the perfect volume to other Advanced Voice Client users despite your windows sound panel setting for volume levels.

Why do people complain that I am overmodulated?
Advanced Voice Client has AGC. The feature works exactly how it should however people still using roger wilco pose a potential problem. If their sound settings are not configured for optimal quality then when they receive your voice, roger wilco will make it even louder. You'll remember from above that the Advanced Voice Client has already set your voice as loud as possible without distortion, therefore it will be distorted once roger wilco touches it. The solution to this is to tell Roger Wilco users to lower their volume because their system is not configured for the best sound quality.

Why do people complain that I am breaking up?
Many studies and tests have been performed to make the Advanced Voice Client's networking performance top notch however it is still limited by several factors. The most noticable of which is Roger Wilco's handling of incoming packets. If a packet is late, RW continues processing sound and inserts silence where there was no data received. Because of this, it remains behind in the processing for quite some time. You have heard the results of this as the "stuttering" or "skipping" that causes a sentance to be complete but with constant repetitive bits of silence between each syllable. The Advanced Voice Client has implemented a solution to this so you should never hear it again however that's only on your end of the line. If the user is still on Roger Wilco then they are still vulnerable to this problem. I would like to pointout however that Advanced Voice Client's sending patterns are timed and very consistent with the hopes of reducing the possibility for a lost packet. This brings us to the second major problem causing poor voice quality and that is internet quality. With many different users on many different speed internet connections, it's very difficult to guarantee a constant and uniterrupted stream. Servers got bogged down and firewalls can cause havoc on a voice room. With that said, great improvements have been made. Many tests have resulted in uninterrupted conversations as long as 5 full minutes on a dialup connection.

Will the Advanced Voice Client work with ASRC 1.0?
The short answer is no. ASRC 1.0 was designed around Roger Wilco and while Advanced Voice Client implements all of the features of Roger Wilco and more, it does them in a more efficient way. Because of this ASRC will not communicate with the Advanced Voice Client for transmissions. This only applies however to the "enhanced voice" features of ASRC. It will work perfectly normal as a standalone client the way RW was used with PC in the past. ASRC 1.1 however will include an integrated voice library with the same benefits and features as the AVC.

Why do we have to authenticate to use the AVC?
In the future, VATSIM client software will have integrated voice systems and the software will authenticate itself. Because the AVC can run independant of things such as Squawkbox, there was no way for the AVC to tell if the user was a VATSIM member or not. The AVC authentication system is used to be sure that the user is in fact a VATSIM member and is connected to a VATSIM server. This will prevent non-VATSIM members from using the software in the voice rooms to disrupt aviation operations.