Purposeful receive-path audio degradation for providing feedback about transmit-path signal quality

A technique applicable to a telecommunications system is disclosed that provides quality-related information in a receive path, in which the information serves as feedback about the call quality that is present in the corresponding transmit path. It is recognized that when a first party on a call hears degradation, he tends to change the way that he speaks or reacts to a second party. Based upon this recognition, the present invention addresses the problem of one-way degradation by providing a feedback signal to the first party, in the form of intentional degradation of the voice signals that he is receiving from the second party. The degradation that is introduced by the disclosed data-processing system is based on the current quality of the voice path from the first party to the second party (i.e., the transmit path), instead of the other way around (i.e., the receive path).