Severe Echo on incoming calls

[PCLarry]

Device = OBi110 used with Google Voice

I am getting a severe echo (or feedback) of MY VOICE on ALL INCOMING CALLS.
At the same time, the other party can barely hear me, and I can barely hear them.

I have replaced the phone connected to the OBi110 and had the same results.

NOTE: If I dial out, there is no echo, and the call quality is good.
Thank you very much for your time.

[Rick]

Try setting to full duplex:

http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=3788.0

[PCLarry]

Thank You Rick, for your very prompt response.

I changed the setting to 'full duplex', as you suggested (it was at 'half duplex').

However, the problem still exists.

a. echo of my voice on all incoming calls answered by phone connected to the OBi110
b. very low volume of my voice for caller, and of the callers voice to me.

I would appreciate any further suggestions to try.

Thanks again for your time in answering this.

[CoalMinerRetired]

A couple of high level things:
1. Try the **9 222-222-222, http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=537.0 - Note: not clear it's still working.
2. Run the speed and jitter and etc. tests here: http://www.phonepower.com/wiki/Speed_Test.
3. Plug Obi directly into cable modem, i.e., eliminate router or switch(es) from home network, and observe if you still have it.
4. Try a different analog phone.

Note that these will not necessarily point to any one particular issue, what they will do in get you pointed in the right direction.

[Lavarock7]

1. Try the **9 222-222-222, http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=537.0 - Note: not clear it's still working.

I'm not the OP, but I just tried **9 222 222 222 and it worked fine for me.

[PCLarry]

Thank you Coalminer and Lavarock for your feedback.
I will attempt the modifications you suggested later today, and give you feedback.

Have a good weekend.

[PCLarry]

Feedback:

a. I tried the **9 222 number and the echo test passed fine, but remember, my echo(feedback) problem only occurs on INCOMING calls, therefore this test may not flush out the problem.

b. I ran the speed test you recommended, and it passed with flying colors (actually, just one color - green).

c. Connected the OBi110 to our modem, to eliminate our local network, with same results.

d. Had already swapped phones connected to the OBi110.

I am beginning to suspect we may have a defective OBi110, but all outgoing calls seem to work very well, with excellent quality, so I'm still leaning toward some setting that needs tweeked for inbound calls.

Thanks again, you guys, for taking the time to assist.

[Rick]

Have you looked at how the inbound calls are coming in?

For example, are they all made by cell phones?  Or all by one cell phone?  Or all by one carrier?  Or all international?  Do they have anything in common?

Another thing to look at is whether you have any other phones plugged into the system, i.e. if the OBi is plugged into the wall and then you plug phones into the wall jacks.  If the wall jacks are never touched, this is irrelevant.

I would also look at other electronic devices located near the OBi or the phone, to see if it's possible they are generating interference, i.e. like a big A/C adapter plugged in near by. 

Otherwise, I'm out of ideas.

[CoalMinerRetired]

To add to what Rick said, is this on all INCOMING calls, or only certain calls?

A big FYI, almost universally you'll get lots of echo if the person on the other end is on a speaker phone (in an office, in a car, etc.), whether you initiate the call or the other party initiates the call.

[PCLarry]

Thank you Rick and Coalminer for your suggestions.

Rick and Coalminer, as I said earlier, this problem occurs with ALL incoming calls regardless of the source (cell, landline, ect.).

There is no connectivity issue with the rj11 jacks or devices. Please remember that there is NO PROBLEM with any outbound calls.

The phone that is currently connected to the OBi110 is a cordless 900MHz phone, and it is located within a couple feet of the device.
I will move it, or exchange it with another phone (again) to test your theory of interference.
However, if it does interfere with incoming calls, why wouldn't it interfere with outgoing calls?

Will provide feedback after I move/replace the phone.

Thanks again for the suggestions.  Seems like we have to think outside of the box on this one.

[CoalMinerRetired]

One last point to get you pointed in the right direction.

Echo is in all likely hood going to be caused by the analog components in any call, for example data packets do not get sent twice and appear as duplicates or echo. Your Obi is analog from where the received data packets are decoded and send out the analog phone port. On the other end, the party calling you, the analog to digital handoff could be occur in different places, right at their phone (A cisco IP phone), at the phone companies central office, etc., etc.

[PCLarry]

Thanks for the quick response, coalminer.

I understand what you are telling me, what I don't understand is the problem occurrs on INCOMING call, which are from a variaty of sources, some analog, and some digital.

The 'ECHO' I'm hearing might be feedback of some type.

Since the 'echo' is of my own voice, and what you are telling me is the problem is some type of analog issue (ie: my phone), why would it not also provide the 'echo' during outgoing calls (which are of perfect clarity)?

I'm beginnig to think the problem might be that I have a defective OBi110, and should request an RMA.

What are your thoughts?

[CoalMinerRetired]

Gut feeling is it's something other than your Obi. But you cannot completely rule it out.

I didn't pick up on "the 'echo' is of my own voice". That sort of points to the analog components of your analog phone and handset. Here's a fairly summarized write up, see if anything stands out, http://www.voipmechanic.com/phoneandvoicequality.htm, such as, if you press some digit keys, i.e., sound not generated by the microphone in the handset, do they echo also?  If you use your finger to scratch near the microphone in your handset are the sounds generated also echoed?

I hope all this helps.

[PCLarry]

Coalminer,

You are right on top of this for me, and I really appreciate it.

Most people, when presented with a complex problem, will just walk away.

I'll look into the web resource you provided, but have to attend to something else right now.

However, I would like to point out again, that I have NO PROBLEM when I use the same phone and DIAL OUT.

Will provide feedback later - - - -

Thanks buddy

[ScottyD_42]

PCLarry,
I believe that I'm seeing similar behaviour to you on my Obi110.  I'm finding on incoming calls (not outgoing) I get a bad echo, but in my case it seems to resolve itself after 2-3 seconds.  I'm using the Line port for incoming calls right now and I haven't checked the behaviour for the VoIP (SP1) port yet.  For outgoing calls on either the Line or SP1 services, I don't get any echo problem...

[lk96]

I have been trying to think of situations where echo may happen only on incoming calls.

Is it possible by any chance, that more than one
devices answer an incoming call ?

for example, this could happen if you forward the call to multiple devices
(your home handset, may be a cell phone), etc. So if lets say you answer the call
on your home phone, but you had configured some other device (ie your cell phone) to
auto answer at the same time, then what you hear would sound as echo.

Does the remote party also hear the echo? or just you? (you did mention in the OP that
the remote party can barely hear you but wan't clear if they hear distorted sound or just
very low volume).

L.

[CoalMinerRetired]

> Is it possible by any chance, that more than one devices answer an incoming call ?

The easy way to test this would be to disable forwarding to all but the Obi device (Google Chat in GV Settings), then observe if the echo is still present.   Sounds a test to add to the list.

I hope PCL checks back in and gives us an update.

[ScottyD_42]

I don't think that it's due to multiple devices answering (I'm only forwarding to the phone port).  I've checked and I don't see the same problem on an incoming call from a VoIP port (SP1).  It only seems to happen on the PSTN and the echo is only heard on the local side.  Looking further through the forums, I have the identical symptoms to the person in this thread:

http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=1035.0

If you dial manually (press # first) out the PSTN port, there is an echo for the first one or two digits.  If I let the Obi process the number first and then forward it out the PSTN, I don't hear the outgoing dialing, so it's possible that it's doing it there as well, but I can't hear it.

I'm no expert on the internals of the PSTN bridging, but it looks to me like the echo cancellation isn't kicking in immediately on the PSTN port.  After a second or two, it seems to adapt and things sound good.  I don't know if that the nature of the echo cancellation requires some time for the feedback loop to work or whether it can work right from the start.

[Lavarock7]

I do not know if certain devices act differently on inbound vrs outbound calls, but hearing your own voice too loud may be related to "sidetone".

From Wikipedia "Sidetone":

In telephony, sidetone is the effect of sound picked up by the telephone's transmitter (mouthpiece) and instantly introduced at a low electronic signal level into the receiver (earpiece) of the same handset, a form of feedback.

So if someone tells me their own voice is too strong in their ear (an echo), I would try talking in a lower voice and see if that helps. Again, why this would be happening only on outbound calls could be the way the phone or other device handles the levels of the audio in transmission based upon who talks first (perhaps). Only a guess.

In any event, can you try adjusting the phone volume in the Obi? Perhaps the Port channel gains would help. It is worth a try.

Perhaps someone else with more info about Phone volumes can "chime" in (sorry for the pun)

[PCLarry]

Sorry about the delay in getting back to you folks.
Been out of town for a bit.

It occurred to me after trying the suggestions posted here (a special thanks to all who participated), and having no positive improvement, that I may have unintentionally left out an important bit of information.

Our primary use of this device, is to reduce long distance telephone charges on our land-line.
Therefore, we not only have it connected to a telephone, but to the land-line as well.
NOTE: we DO NOT use GoogleVoice for messaging.

The echo/feedback DOES NOT OCCUR when the GoogleVoice number is dialed by the caller.
In fact, the call quality is good.

***The problem happens when the land-line is dialed by the caller, and then picked up at the phone connected to the OBi110.

So, to clarify:

1. All OUTGOING calls from any phone - Quality GOOD
2. INCOMING calls received by 'Land-line only' phone(not connected to the OBi110) - Quality GOOD
3. INCOMING calls received by the OBi110 when the GoogleVoice number is dialed - Quality GOOD
4. INCOMING calls received by the OBi110 when the Land-line number is dialed - Quality VERY BAD (severe echo/feedback)
5. Final symptom - The land-line phone will ring about 5 sec. BEFORE the OBi110 phone rings (when the INCOMING call is to the land-line number).
6. I deleted the device from the OBi 'dashboard', did a 'factory reset' of the OBi110,  and re-created/reconnected it to the 'dashboard'.

Lastly, there is no problem with the land-line itself, or any of the phones used (had the phone company over to test everything, to assist with diagnosis)

There, you have it.

Hope this information helps some of you OBi-Wizards out in OBi-Land to understand this perplexing issue.

Peace All