noise while making a phone call: hardware or software?

[John Locke]

Sorry to respond to an old thread, but just thought I would add my
observations...

Lorn Potter wrote:
> Richard Reichenbacher wrote:
>>> From what I can tell the noise comes and goes.  When I'm in a good
>>> signal
>> area I really don't hear it but when I'm in a bad signal area it's very
>> loud.  I asked Lorn Potter what he thought and he said it was probably a
>> software issue.  
>
> If I was told that was the problem, and I said that sounded like
> software, I was probably wrong. :)
> That problem sounds like it might be radio interference.
>
> There _is_ a problem with the level of some of the mixer elements in
> the default gsmhandset.state, though, which seems to cause echo type
> of thing.
>
When I started using the phone regularly back in September, I managed to
find some setting in the gsmhandset.state, which I lowered. Sidetone, or
something like that. After doing that, calls sounded fine on both
ends--my wife said I sounded like I was talking on any other cell phone.
That was on an early Qtopia build.

However, after flashing a couple more times (both OpenMoko and Qtopia) I
never found the right setting again--people I spoke with commented on
the echo.

It seemed like the mixer controls actually changed at some point in
September, and whatever setting was responsible for the sound was no
longer available in alsamixer. So I'm thinking this is a software or
driver issue...

Hope that helps,

-- 
John Locke
"Open Source Solutions for Small Business Problems"
published by Charles River Media, June 2004
http://www.freelock.com