Optimization team update (11/23 ~ 11/29)
Al Johnson
openmoko at mazikeen.demon.co.uk
Sun Dec 7 18:26:51 CET 2008
On Sunday 07 December 2008, Neil Jerram wrote:
> 2008/12/2 Andy Green <andy at openmoko.com>:
> > "buzz / echo / hiss"... no software change can fix buzz. It's baked
> > into the hardware and you will have to do fairly extreme meddling with
> > your soldering iron to impact it.
>
> Thanks, I hadn't seen that so clearly stated before! (i.e. that buzz
> is known to be 100% a hardware issue).
>
> > "Echo" reacts to some tweaking in alsa and maybe Calypso firmware option
> > selection, I guess this turn up in rootfs images as best it can.
>
> OK, but do you need to be so imprecise about this? What can't there
> be a definitive solution?
It depends partly on what you mean by a definitive solution. If you mean "one
alsa state file that everyone's happy with" it'll never happen because
the 'correct' volume level is subjective and depends on ambient noise among
other variables outside our control. If you mean something that's reasonable
out of the box and only needs a small tweak of the volume then my experience
is we have had it since the calypso echo suppression was enabled.
It doesn't help that the echo suppression and noise reduction functions we
need from the Calypso are undocumented. It seems there are some gain controls
in the Calypso too. Some of us find that the echo suppression remains
effective until a reboot while others report it only working for the first
call, and we don't know the cause. There are several settings available for
both echo suppression and noise reduction, and they have different audible
characteristics. Generally the stronger the suppression the more audible its
action. People don't agree on which ones sound acceptable, and which one you
use can have a significant effect on the gain you can use before you start
getting echo.
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