VoIP IAX client for OS X
So, you’re on a Mac and want a nice looking IAX softphone VoIP client for your Asterisk account? Romania may have a solution for you: LoudHush.
LoudHush is IAX softphone client for VoIP use with your Asterisk on Mac OS X. What’s Asterisk? Basically, it’s a software PBX and the allows you to have your own VoIP network at home or office where you make calls to regular fixed land phones around the world for free (and in some cases cellular mobile phones for free, too). Free as in beer.
There are other applications as well. For example, if you’re out on the town or driving to a business meeting, LoudHush can be set up to literally call your mobile phone and read your email to you as it arrives. That’s pretty snazzy for homebrew!
Typical of most all OS X software, installing LoudHush was a breeze. Download the latest version directly from the homepage, mount the disk image, and drag to your applications folder. Gata.
Here you can see the basic interface of the software is fairly intuitive and conforms to the OS X style.
The first thing you’ll be prompted to do is set up your IAX account information for any Asterisk server you have access to. Host. Username and password. Fairly simple.
If you have difficulty connecting to your VoIP server, then it may possibly be a matter of changing your preferred codec. To do that, go into the Preferences and choose the right default.
As you’re using the system to make calls, you’ll be able to keep track of the IAX client’s bandwidth usage for VoIP by checking the network statistics window for LoudHush.
What else could you want? Hmm.. how about a call history log? Sounds like a good idea to include one of those.
LoudHush comes full-featured during the trial period, so you can examine just how well it works for you. The software will run for 5 minutes at a time before automatically quitting, essentially making it shareware or annoyware. You can start it back up again and make another 5 minute call.
The software author is an Asterisk consultant in Bucureşti and appears to be pretty familiar with the entire VoIP framework. Especially on Mac OS X. He actively encourages you to thoroughly test the software before thinking about registration.
If you decide you love it and want to be able to make calls longer than 5 minutes, you’ll need to shake a few coins out of your piggybank in order register for a license. It’s less than $20, so the price is reasonable.
I’d recommend Apple owners, using Mac OS X and looking for a VoIP softphone IAX client, take 2 minutes to download and install LoudHush. It’s pretty easy to configure… and may be just the solution you’re looking for.
