L5 call audio quality

Hardware Librem 5
62

L5-right is clearly better than the virtual mic. and it is not far from iPhone. Please fix this issue officially. Maybe completely disable the left mic so the modem can only see the right one.

63

I can not fix this, Iā€™m just a normal L5 user.

64

The ā€œPlease fix this issueā€ goes to Purism not to you @guru Thanks for your efforts.

65

From these samples it does appear that using the right mic channel only provides clearer audio in comparison to the virtual mic. However, I suspect there may have been an issue with the virtual mic config as there should be no significant difference between these two sources.

This is a community forum, although representatives of Purism development do frequent the forum and read many posts, I do not believe forum posts would be the right way to engage with them. Having said that, I am not entirely sure what would be the correct, if any, approach to try to influence priorities on outstanding issues.

66

I could remove my current ~/.config/pulse; reboot and configure again the virtual mic config, reboot and do the test call again. Or I could give you the phone number of my voice mail system (+49 89 ā€¦) and forward after your calls the recorded *.wav file to you.

67

FWIW, personally Iā€™m currently waiting for Broadmobi to answer some questions we had relating to modem audio configuration, as that will put us into position to decide on which hacks and workarounds are actually worth deploying. I donā€™t intent to put more work into call audio until we receive answers (or we decide that itā€™s unlikely that weā€™ll receive them in timely manner, or ever).

I really want to avoid doing things like setting up virtual sources and doing remapping in software in order to plaster over routing issues. If thereā€™s no other way, then so be it, but Iā€™d rather exhaust other options first.

4 Likes
68

I have added three new recordings:

http://www.unixarea.de/L5-right-120.wav      # with Left 0% / Right 120%
http://www.unixarea.de/L5-right-100.wav      # with Left 0% / Right 100%
http://www.unixarea.de/L5-right-80.wav       # with Left 0% / Right 80%

IMHO, the one with 80% right micro sounds best.

69

If you want to drop the number to me via a direct message, Iā€™ll leave a couple of messages in different configurations.

For me, the only difference between using the right channel only vs a virtual mic is that the virtual mic has a slightly lower volume. For real world usage, my virtual mic volume is set a couple of percentage points higher than the right channel of the internal mic, but in terms of audio quality or clarity there is no discernible difference (to my ears at least).

I have tried to stay away from getting to analytical on this but during evaluation of this and also using headsets including ad-hoc Bluetooth headsets for calls I did take some captures which I have linked to below to provide an additional reference.

My audio capture gear is pretty speccy but not really designed for this sort of thing, I suspect that my audio captures are being coloured to some degree by the capture gear itself.

This first set is captured from a mobile message serviceā€¦

One thing to note is that most message services capture audio at quite low bit rates so what you hear from your message service is likely to be of lesser quality and clarity than the audio received at the remote end of an actual call.

This second set repeats the calls but captures the audio directly from the mobile handset at the other end as itā€™s received (these calls are via the 3G network across two network providers)ā€¦

1 Like
70

I do wonder how long there has been open questions with Broadmobi, and what sort of time frame has to elapse before itā€™s decided that the questions are not going to be answered.

While I fully understand the desire to avoid routing or remapping in user space, the Librem 5 does create a number of loopback and filter streams in user space for voice calls today. I think any negatives to having an additional temporary stream would be offset by the gains in outgoing voice call quality.

71

Clearly you are right. The 0%-80% is best.

OK this is a community forum but it is on puri.sm site and people directly relating to Purism participate. So the company knows we have problems with audio from the very first release of Evergreen. I believe that Purism as a company (and not a particular developer) should have reacted to people complains on this. My conclusion from this story is that Todd (for example) does not use L5 for calls. Maybe he uses it daily for other things, but not for calls.

1 Like
72

I use it now daily for calls. The remaining problems are:

  1. Sometimes on incoming calls I can not unlock the device in time.
  2. Sometimes mobile broadband goes away and I found no other way than reboot to get it back.
  3. The proximity sensor switches on/off the display during calls.
  4. The dialpad has no audio feedback.
  5. The call list has no duration information about the calls.
5 Likes
73

I would add that call app sometimes pretends to call but it doesnā€™t, it seems frozen. In such a situation you donā€™t even get calls and the caller hears ringing empty, you donā€™t get any notification.
Iā€™ve gotten into the habit of calling my landline every day after I turn on my phone to make sure I can receive calls.

1 Like
74

This I think can be related to the following, supposedly solved in a new version of the Calls app to be released soon:

As I understand it, what happens begind the scenes is that the gnome-calls process is crashing, and since that process is the one that is supposed to ba always running and be ready to react to incoming calls, you never notice that people are trying to call you.

The fix is, hopefully, this change:

6 Likes
75

Any tips on how you got that to happen aside from audio ? Haha :slight_smile:

1 Like
76

Probably best to take that to Round Table. :slight_smile:

77

Did Broadmobi ever answer those questions? Iā€™ve been getting complaints about call quality on the receiving end since I got my Librem 5.

3 Likes
78

There have been significant changes around call audio deployed last month, you may want to make sure your system is up-to-date (librem5-base-defaults 54pureos1) and check it with your receiving ends again.

79

Just checked, itā€™s up to date. I tried restarting the phone and called myself on my landline and it sounded completely clear, then tried calling back the person who had mentioned the call quality and he said it was clear, so I guess itā€™s only an intermittent issue.

80

Before you paste in vim, type (in vim)

:set paste

to make vim not breakup lines (or apply any other autoformatting).

To make the file immutable, type (on the commandline):

sudo chattr +i /etc/pulse/librem5.pa
1 Like
81

Please donā€™t do things like that, unless you enjoy having to dig into configuration files on updates to see what has been broken by partially applied changes.

The default configuration already uses only a single microphone (bottom one) for call audio, thereā€™s no need to apply any changes to achieve that.

1 Like