Target depth from jitter percentile

Sample inter-arrival time over a sliding window. Set target buffer depth = p95 of recent jitter, with floor (10ms) and ceiling (200ms for conversational, 500ms for one-way). Update every 100-500ms.

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Adjusting without artifacts

Sudden depth changes cause clicks. Stretch/compress audio gracefully — time-scale modification (WSOLA, PSOLA) preserves pitch while changing duration. Most stacks fade in/out chunks during depth adjustments.

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When to drop instead of buffer

Catastrophic delay (>500ms behind): drop the backlog and resync. Better one audible discontinuity than 5 seconds of perpetual lag. Most VoIP stacks trigger this around 800ms-1s behind.