voice quality gets very poor lately

This forum includes tips for maintaining the best audio quality possible with the Ooma System. If your Ooma system is having issues with dropped calls, static audio or echo, look here for assistance.
EFlores
Posts:86
Joined:Fri Oct 02, 2009 7:46 pm
Re: voice quality gets very poor lately

Post by EFlores » Thu Aug 11, 2011 8:37 am

I hope the fix is released soon, My Telo was perfect until the new version release 47785, I can start a conversation and it is fine but after a few minutes it becomes robotic, the person on the other end can hear me just fine. I will wait patiently for the update.... other than this recent problem OOMA is the best. :D

thecgmguy
Posts:46
Joined:Tue Nov 16, 2010 3:33 pm

Re: voice quality gets very poor lately

Post by thecgmguy » Thu Aug 11, 2011 10:49 am

It's a little early to tell, but I THINK unplugging for 20 minutes may have helped. My wife just had a 26 minute call that worked fine.

Then again... my support ticket has been escalated to third-tier support so maybe they changed something recently. I haven't heard back from them to confirm yet.

-M

DTR
Posts:48
Joined:Thu Aug 11, 2011 5:03 pm
Location:Western NC

Re: voice quality gets very poor lately

Post by DTR » Thu Aug 11, 2011 5:39 pm

Well I'm new to OOMA, but a seasoned vetern of H.323 voip and the later SIP (Session Initiated Protocol) voip and there is a problem indeed with firmware. From a simple Alpha/Beta testing point of view.... too many people are barking the same symptoms.

I'm only one month into a two month trial, and I have already purchased one year of premier and got a telo handset. And all I can say is something is going to have to change soon for me to continue with my investment. I ahve the same exact symptoms of others..... call is fine for a while, then all the sudden like a switch was flipped the inbound audio is garbled and obviously out of sync without any error correction happening.

Has anyone at OOMA reproduced this problem in the lab enviroment and analyzed the packets to see what is happening? I timed it this evening and it happened between 8 to 10 minutes into the call for me today. It happens so frequent I can't believe that it couldn't be reproduced on an engineer's desk easily.

To the guy that said his wife is hating it. I know what you mean..... My wife is giving me hell for switching to this. Remember.... we are still in our trial period and have a year of Premier paid on top of that.

I can tell you this.... the guys I do contract work for at the big M (motorola) wouldn't let me and my team release something that acted like this. We write voip software and firmware for critcal radio systems, and they wouldn't let us get by with a QOS (quality of service) like this.

On the surface it seems as if the SIP server is slipping out of sync, and over more time it gets so worse that error correction doesn't correct anymore, and then it's all garbled. Like error correction gets to a point that it fails to correct and all goes sour all the sudden. Like the correction is turned off, like flipping a switch?

I sure hope a fix comes soon, or I'm gonna have to bow out of OOMA. My OOMA phone works great if you don't talk over about 6 or 7 minutes. In other words enough time hasn't gone by to allow for accumulated slippage to break the inbound audio.

thunderbird
Posts:6388
Joined:Mon Nov 08, 2010 4:41 pm

Re: voice quality gets very poor lately

Post by thunderbird » Thu Aug 11, 2011 5:55 pm

DTR:
Read the previous posts, page 8, in this thread by Ooma Moderation Bobby B. to find out what is happening and when corrections will be made.

thecgmguy
Posts:46
Joined:Tue Nov 16, 2010 3:33 pm

Re: voice quality gets very poor lately

Post by thecgmguy » Thu Aug 11, 2011 6:07 pm

DTR wrote:Well I'm new to OOMA, but a seasoned vetern of H.323 voip and the later SIP (Session Initiated Protocol) voip and there is a problem indeed with firmware. From a simple Alpha/Beta testing point of view.... too many people are barking the same symptoms.

I'm only one month into a two month trial, and I have already purchased one year of premier and got a telo handset. And all I can say is something is going to have to change soon for me to continue with my investment. I ahve the same exact symptoms of others..... call is fine for a while, then all the sudden like a switch was flipped the inbound audio is garbled and obviously out of sync without any error correction happening.

Has anyone at OOMA reproduced this problem in the lab enviroment and analyzed the packets to see what is happening? I timed it this evening and it happened between 8 to 10 minutes into the call for me today. It happens so frequent I can't believe that it couldn't be reproduced on an engineer's desk easily.

To the guy that said his wife is hating it. I know what you mean..... My wife is giving me hell for switching to this. Remember.... we are still in our trial period and have a year of Premier paid on top of that.

I can tell you this.... the guys I do contract work for at the big M (motorola) wouldn't let me and my team release something that acted like this. We write voip software and firmware for critcal radio systems, and they wouldn't let us get by with a QOS (quality of service) like this.

On the surface it seems as if the SIP server is slipping out of sync, and over more time it gets so worse that error correction doesn't correct anymore, and then it's all garbled. Like error correction gets to a point that it fails to correct and all goes sour all the sudden. Like the correction is turned off, like flipping a switch?

I sure hope a fix comes soon, or I'm gonna have to bow out of OOMA. My OOMA phone works great if you don't talk over about 6 or 7 minutes. In other words enough time hasn't gone by to allow for accumulated slippage to break the inbound audio.
Hi DTR, welcome to the Ooma forums!

I understand your frustration and share it. That said, I can also understand the need for Ooma to be cautious and make sure the issue is resolved before releasing an update.

My advice: If you've already tried all of the suggestions, please report this to ooma support (and be respectfully persistent... they tried to close my support case 2-3 times before I got it properly escalated).

The more people who report this issue, the more attention/priority it will receive.

-M

DTR
Posts:48
Joined:Thu Aug 11, 2011 5:03 pm
Location:Western NC

Re: voice quality gets very poor lately

Post by DTR » Thu Aug 11, 2011 7:19 pm

Thanks and I will enter a support ticket regarding this now. I just wanted to make sure I tried everything I could with the tools provided first. There is a lot of good information here regarding OOMA devices, and the information was very helpful for me to make settings in my telo in a short period of time. I feel like I have my settings where they need to be for my Telo. I didn't break out wireshark and dig in, and actually don't want too. I just want decent phone calls and hope my $200 investment pays off. I absolutely love the look and feel of the Telo product line, and want dearly for it to work well for me. I don't mind to be a Premier customer and pay the annual fee for that..... and buy the four handsets and add ons like bluetooth as long as it will work for somewhat decent calls that can last over a few minutes.

DTR
Posts:48
Joined:Thu Aug 11, 2011 5:03 pm
Location:Western NC

Re: voice quality gets very poor lately

Post by DTR » Mon Aug 15, 2011 7:01 am

Well, I called this morning and opened a support ticket for my issue of garbled inbound audio after a few minutes on the call. The girl that helped me started picking on the amount of upload speed that I have..... yet no one has ever complained that they can't hear me or any problems that might suggest the culprit being a lower upload speed of a typical ADSL connection. She said my 2.91 Mbps download is fine, but my 320kbps upload is not. So I asked her to explain why my lower upload speed would garble the download audio..... and why has no one ever complained that they couldn't hear me or so forth. She was speachless until I strongly asked to her to answer my question. She then said that she just has to say that my upload was a little low and that it was probably my problem. So I asked her..... why do you say you have to say that my upload is the problem??? She said that she is required to say that!!!! I asked her to explain to me a complete call sequence using SIP and show me where her theory is that the upload breaks the inbound audio..... and she couldn't do it. I asked for a technical person or Engineer that can really talk SIP to me and she couldn't provide a person for that talk.

Bottom line, OOMA is grasping for any old answer to tell me, or item to blame on my end rather than see my issue as valid and reasonable. I had high hopes for OOMA........ but it looks like they don't really care that my calls are good for just a few minutes before it goes all garbled. It would be best if they would just be truthful and responsive, rather than look bad trying to make excuses!!!!

I really wanted OOMA to work out for me..... but it doesn't look like it will. I have a couple more weeks before my trial is over. I'll try to wait until to last minute for a fix, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

PS. I'm also running firmware build 47785

thecgmguy
Posts:46
Joined:Tue Nov 16, 2010 3:33 pm

Re: voice quality gets very poor lately

Post by thecgmguy » Mon Aug 15, 2011 7:42 am

DTR wrote:Well, I called this morning and opened a support ticket for my issue of garbled inbound audio after a few minutes on the call. The girl that helped me started picking on the amount of upload speed that I have..... yet no one has ever complained that they can't hear me or any problems that might suggest the culprit being a lower upload speed of a typical ADSL connection. She said my 2.91 Mbps download is fine, but my 320kbps upload is not. So I asked her to explain why my lower upload speed would garble the download audio..... and why has no one ever complained that they couldn't hear me or so forth. She was speachless until I strongly asked to her to answer my question. She then said that she just has to say that my upload was a little low and that it was probably my problem. So I asked her..... why do you say you have to say that my upload is the problem??? She said that she is required to say that!!!! I asked her to explain to me a complete call sequence using SIP and show me where her theory is that the upload breaks the inbound audio..... and she couldn't do it. I asked for a technical person or Engineer that can really talk SIP to me and she couldn't provide a person for that talk.

Bottom line, OOMA is grasping for any old answer to tell me, or item to blame on my end rather than see my issue as valid and reasonable. I had high hopes for OOMA........ but it looks like they don't really care that my calls are good for just a few minutes before it goes all garbled. It would be best if they would just be truthful and responsive, rather than look bad trying to make excuses!!!!

I really wanted OOMA to work out for me..... but it doesn't look like it will. I have a couple more weeks before my trial is over. I'll try to wait until to last minute for a fix, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
Sorry to hear that phone support didn't work out well. I haven't called their phone support so I can't comment on that. I'd imagine that a lot of their support cases are relatively simple "how to" scenarios so their initial tier is probably intended for that.

I've actually found email to be the most effective means of escalating technical issues. My technique? Right from the get-go, I'll provide answers to their most common questions even if I don't think they are related. Here's some examples (you don't need to answer them here -- I'm just providing them to make your email easier):
----
- May we know when did the problem started? May I know what's your Internet Service Provider (ISP)?
- What's the brand name of your Modem and Router? Please check and make sure that the firewall on your Modem (and Router if you have one) was disabled.
- Have you encountered that issue while your using the phone or even without using the phone?
- What's your current setup, modem>Telo>router>PC or modem>router>Telo>PC?
- Are you using a cordless phone with your Ooma Telo? If yes, your cordless phone(s) might be disrupting your wireless signal, please try connecting a different phone (we suggest a corded phone).
- Please make sure that there are no other devices surrounding your Ooma unit that may affect or interfere on the signal of your Ooma Telo. Please try moving your Ooma device away from electronic devices that could generate interferences such as microwave ovens, treadmill, Wi-Fi (b/g/n), 2.4 GHz cordless phones, some baby monitors, etc
- Can you also try connecting the Ooma Telo to another power outlet and see what will happen.
- What are upload/download speeds?
- What QOS settings are enabled? Does the problem persist if these are changed?
- Can you try unplugging the ooma device for 15+ minutes and plugging it back in?
----
In addition, I'll usually provide a summary of speedtest and voip test results. That usually rounds out the efforts of tier 1. If you go to tier two, ask if they can confirm if the issue you're experiencing is related to this bug (don't remember it off hand but it's listed somewhere in the thread).

Also, if/when you submit email cases, you'll usually get an email questionnaire about the support service. This would be a great opportunity to present respectful and constructive criticism about the support experience.

Hope this helps.

-M

bohicaIL
Posts:37
Joined:Fri Jan 08, 2010 3:08 pm

Re: voice quality gets very poor lately

Post by bohicaIL » Mon Aug 15, 2011 12:46 pm

OK, I've made 3 long Ooma calls since Friday (each > 40 minutes), and didn't have a single roboto voice occurrence. I've made no changes to my settings since the last time I had a problem... and my firmware is still the same too- 47785. Was anything changed at the Ooma server end? Are others still experiencing problems, or are you all also seeing improvement?

bohicaIL
Posts:37
Joined:Fri Jan 08, 2010 3:08 pm

Re: voice quality gets very poor lately

Post by bohicaIL » Mon Aug 15, 2011 1:04 pm

bohicaIL wrote:OK, I've made 3 long Ooma calls since Friday (each > 40 minutes), and didn't have a single roboto voice occurrence. I've made no changes to my settings since the last time I had a problem... and my firmware is still the same too- 47785. Was anything changed at the Ooma server end? Are others still experiencing problems, or are you all also seeing improvement?
Well, so much for my experience... I just talked with a neighbor whom I convinced to switch to Ooma about a year ago, and she just told me that she just got off a call that was absolutely terrible incoming voice quality...

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