Ooma Forums

Bill D asked:
Have you measured your audio delay using the method described earlier in this thread at viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9569&start=30#p67874 - Knowing your delay measurement would help very much to compare to the delay measurements made by me and others on this thread.

Answer:
I just measured my delay, using the record method above:

It’s a very consistent 225ms.

Bobby B wrote:For those users experiencing high delay during calls, it'd help us if you could measure how much delay you've been experiencing. Measuring this delay is somewhat technical - but it'd definitely help us further troubleshoot this problem.

Here's how to measure your delay:

1. Open a sound recording program on your computer. A free one that you can download is Audacity.
2. After verifying that your attached or built-in microphone is working, press the record button.
3. Bring your phone next your microphone or laptop, and dial test number 909-390-0003 using the speakerphone on your phone.
4. Speak a short word like "one" - you'll see the microphone pick up your word and the echo response.
5. Stop the recording, and then highlight the waveforms that contain your word and the echo response. Click the magnifying glass to zoom in on the area and give you a more precise timeline measurement.
6. Afterwards, measure between the start of the your word and the echo response. To make this measurement easier, you may delete any audio that was recorded prior to your word, so that time "0.00" aligns with the start of your word.

In the below example, there was approx 500ms of delay between your spoken word and the echo response.

After you take the measurement, please post your delay measurement to this thread.

OK, not sure what this proves.

I measured around 900ms, yet I have ZERO problems with echo, lag on calls or call quality. I've never noticed anything like this delay when calling from my home phone to my cell phone for instance. I tried calling my cell from teh ooma phone and this test registered more like 450ms one way (saying the word into ooma line, hearing it out of Cell speaker.) and 900 round trip to hear the word echoed back.

But I'm real picky about lag (It irritates the heck out of me) and I have noticed none at all in real calls.

Color me confused. How can I measure 900,s on this test and yet have been able to talk lag free when calling long distance here on the east coast?

Edit. I've got a 20Mbp+ comcast connection

thunderbird wrote:It’s a very consistent 225ms.

I'm surprised your delay is so low. I've never seen anyone else post such a low result from this delay test. Maybe you are doing something in your configuration that we all should be doing. Are you sure it measured 225 ms?

bonflizubi wrote:How can I measure 900,s on this test and yet have been able to talk lag free when calling long distance here on the east coast?

I'm confused too. I measure similar numbers to yours and I'm occasionally very annoyed by the lag (but not always). I've thought it was the style of the talker I was speaking with, but maybe not.

OK, folks, I've been watching this thread for some time now and am utterly appalled at Ooma's lack of response. It's obvious that using this forum as an avenue for complaints and problem resolution is not working. Face it -- we're being blown off.

It's time to resort to old-fashioned snail mail addressed to various executive officers. There's nothing like getting a pile of complaints in the morning mail to focus a CEO's attention on the problem at hand.

What say you all? I'll see if I can hunt down the names of appropriate executives for this letter-writing campaign.

More later ...

Peter Johansson

Berkeley, CA

This a user to user forum with occasional participation by Ooma.
We can help with the common configuration mistakes.
If you have a problem call Ooma Customer Support.

Definitely... if you're able to find / post the names / titles of executives at Ooma to contact via snail mail, I'll gladly write a letter or two... thanks...

Bill D:
When I first purchased our Ooma Telo, We experienced a huge amount of delay and poor voice quality. But our biggest problem was call disconnects. So I didn’t pay much attention to delay at the time. I searched the Internet and this forum for VoIP solutions. I tried many things, which I won’t all list. I did trace routes and pings both through the Ooma Telo’s home port, and than without the Ooma Telo in the mix. I noticed that, (not at all times), but at certain times, the ping through the Ooma Telo’s home port took longer than a direct ping without the Ooma Telo. I looked at the slower pings through my Ooma Telo, and a one time Ooma Telo hiccup that took down our router and LAN, and the continuing dropped calls. For those reasons, I moved the Ooma Telo to behind (LAN side of) the router. I connected nothing to the Ooma Telo’s Home port. I used the Ooma Telo’s built-in MAC address, than assigned a static IP address. I put the Ooma Telo in the router's DMZ. I replaced all of my cat5 unshielded network cables with Shielded cat6 cables. Everything is one hundred percent shielded from the modem to the router, to the Ooma Telo. Those actions stopped the dropped calls and also helped with the delay. But it didn’t completely remove all of the delay. When the last Ooma firmware update occurred, my delay went down more. But the delay wasn’t totally gone, and at times it was still annoying. My wife complained to me about delay when on calls to China. I noticed that while using a very old wired Slimline phone in the basement, there seemed to be no delay at all. So as a last resort, I replace our old 5.8 cordless phones, with Panasonic Dect 6 PLUS cordless phones. After that, using any phone in the house, we haven’t had any, at least noticeable, delay at all. One last thing, I read on the Internet that using a gigabit router will help control delay, when using other devices on the wired LAN. I purchase a “little more upscale” gigabit router with excellent QoS control. I was still experiencing keypad noises, when I read on this forum that a Radio Shack snap-on Ferrite Data-Line Filer P/N 273-0105, snapped around the phone wire coming out of the Ooma device phone port, will help with noise. I purchased and installed the five dollar filter. It’s been about three weeks now and we haven’t heard the key pad noise once yet, but I think the jury is still out on that one. If it is working, probably the filter de-tunes the audio circuit just enough to “not” allow the voice to activate the keypad noise.
As you can tell, I just keep going never wanting to quit until things are functioning properly, plus its fun.
I hope there is something in this post that I provided, which will help someone else with their delay problems.
Good Luck!

thunderbird wrote:Bill D Asked: I'm very curious if there any Ooma users actually mesuring low delay times right now.

Pinging www3.ooma.com
My delay is 157ms not going through my Ooma Telo Home port.
My delay is 433ms going through my Ooma Telo Home port.

My wife called me from her workplace a few minutes ago, and and neighbor called shortly after, the call quality for both calls were next to perfect.

I just can't understand why some people have so much trouble, but other have little or no problems. There has to be some common link, like Internet provider, or Internet speeds or ?????

Strange and stranger.

I have complained long and loudly about call delay and the "half-duplex" stepped-on call quality disaster.

Last month I received a call from the UK and the quality was almost perfect -- minimal apparent delay and perfect "full-duplex" conversation. Someone else said the same thing about calls to India. WTF? Meanwhile calls in the US suffered the ongoing dismal delay, echos, and stepped-on interruptions of the other person's words.

Last week, something magic seems to have happened. All my calls have become essentially perfect! There is a bit of a delay, but none of the half-duplex blocking whatsoever. The voice quality is as good as any phone I've ever used. WOW!

My phone is usable now, no longer an instrument of awkward annoyance, frustration, and despair.

All I can say is Thanks Ooma. You have essentially slain the monster your system used to be.

Bill D:

I just measured my delay again using the record method. It's 200ms today Jan 11, 2011.

Late addition: My cell phone measures 310ms.

The phone call quality is so much better than AT&T ever had.