Audio quality during phone calls on Xperia 10 II

nevis · 21 September 2021 19:19

REPRODUCIBILITY (% or how often): 100%
BUILD ID = OS VERSION (Settings > About product): 4.2.0.21
HARDWARE (XA2, X10, X10 II, …): X10 II
UI LANGUAGE: German
REGRESSION: (compared to previous public release: Yes, No, ?): ?

DESCRIPTION:

During phone calls the phone ear speaker produces the hum/buzz sound (known from a cellphone being placed next to an external speaker) for the complete time of the phone call. This sound is also heard by the receiver of the call on his telephone. Changing the sim card to another provider did not solve this problem. Also setting the network from 4G to 2G did not solve the problem. Signal strength is above 50% or much higher. This sound is not heard when making a phone call e.g. via Whatsapp.

PRECONDITIONS:

None

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:

Make a phone call

EXPECTED RESULT:

Clear audio, similar to previous phones (e.g. Xperia X with Sailfish OS)

ACTUAL RESULT:

hum/buzz sound during phone calls

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Maybe similar to Terrible sound quality during voice call when roaming - tested on multiple phones but not related to roaming.

thomas.mueller · 15 January 2022 14:31

REPRODUCIBILITY (% or how often): 100%
BUILD ID = OS VERSION (Settings > About product): 4.3.0.12
HARDWARE (XA2, X10, X10 II, …): X10 II
UI LANGUAGE: German
REGRESSION: (compared to previous public release: Yes, No, ?): No

I have the exact same issue, does not look like anything has changed since the last updates.

ljimonad4iks · 15 January 2022 16:34

the same issue
(xperia 10 II + os 4.3 + network 2g)

wite · 31 January 2022 20:02

REPRODUCIBILITY (% or how often): 100%
BUILD ID = OS VERSION (Settings > About product): 4.3.0.12
HARDWARE (XA2, X10, X10 II, …): X10 II
UI LANGUAGE: English

I just bought a xperia 10 II and Im also having the exact same issue
If I use the speaker phone functionality, person on the other end hears the same distortion.

Inte · 31 January 2022 20:44

I use a 10ii too, but for me the call quality is great. However, the people on the other hand of the line are complaining pretty often, and handsfree/speaker mode seems to be completely broken.

jovirkku · 3 February 2022 17:08

Are your Xperia 10 II phones single SIM (xq-au51) or dual SIM (xq-au52) models?

nevis · 4 February 2022 07:34

I am using the dual-sim model (XQ-AU52). Unfortunately, the problem still persists and even if the phone is reverted back to the Android operating system. Therefore, it might be a hardware problem as the noise is not hearable, when

a headset is plugged in
the phone speaker for hands-free talking is used
a Bluetooth headset/ car audio is used

Sony and the seller refuses a warranty repair and they wanted to replace the mainboard first. However, I am not sure, if that is the problem or if only the speaker/ internal microphone has a defect. Any suggestions?

rdomschk · 28 March 2022 19:15

Any News here. My Xperia 10ii make also during phone calls hum/buzz sound for the other site. I mean its a problem with the sensitivity control. Whenever I make a noise, the hum better buzz goes away. I will try to set the micro on 90% with pactl set-source-volume 2 90% and systemctl --user restart pulseaudio.service…
The embarrassing thing is, you can’t hear it yourself.
pactl list sources gave follow information:
Quelle #2
Status: SUSPENDED
Name: source.droid
Beschreibung: Droid source droid
Treiber: module-droid-card.c
Abtastwert-Angabe: s16le 1ch 44100Hz
Kanalzuordnung: mono
Besitzer-Modul: 1
Stumm: nein
Lautstärke: mono: 58982 / 90% / -2,75 dB
Verteilung 0,00
Basis-Lautstärke: 65536 / 100% / 0,00 dB
Ziel-Monitor: k. A.
Latenz: 0 usec, eingestellt 0 usec
Flags: HARDWARE HW_MUTE_CTRL DECIBEL_VOLUME
Eigenschaften:
device.description = “Droid source droid”
device.class = “sound”
device.api = “droid-hal”
droid.input.external = “true”
droid.input.builtin = “true”
droid.hw_module = “primary”
device.icon_name = “audio-card”

JoOppen · 28 March 2022 19:33

I have the noise with the dual SIM device (xq-au52)

rdomschk · 6 April 2022 15:20

I have solve this for me!
I changed the file “etc/pulse/xpolicy.conf”.
I add “, limit_volume” in line 131:
old:
129 [group]
130 name = call
131 flags = set_sink, set_source

new:
129 [group]
130 name = call
131 flags = set_sink, set_source, limit_volume

ber · 17 November 2022 18:55

Same humm/buzz sound here as well (Sony Xperia 10 II 2 simcard model).

I have tried to modify /etc/pulse/xpolicy.conf as suggested by @rdomschk (Thanks!) and did a restart, but this did not fully solve the problem for me. (Maybe it got improved, but if so, only a little bit.)

Does somebody know, what the limit_volume flag does? (Did not find it in the pulse documentation).

rdomschk · 17 November 2022 19:25

I think with “limit_volume” the phone use also in a call the microphone volume limit from this here “pactl set-source-volume 2 150%”. But I am not shure.

ber · 8 December 2022 17:01

Still a problem here. With limit_volume in /etc/pulse/xpolicy.conf I did a test and found out that

pactl set-source-volume 2 30%

does not change the microphone level for me (during a call).
While pacmd list-sources did show different value, and pactl set-source-mute 2 1 and back worked, changing the volume did not.

ber · 3 February 2023 12:26

Still unsolved for me.

Details (analysis, learning)

The phone is running pulseaudio in user mode, started via systemd, as seen by systemctl --user status pulseaudio.
The pulseaudio source for regular sound can be found by pacmd list-sources | grep -A11 'index: 2'

    index: 2
        name: <source.droid>
        driver: <module-droid-card.c>
        flags: HARDWARE HW_MUTE_CTRL DECIBEL_VOLUME
        state: SUSPENDED

However during a call all pulseaudio sources are suspended, as verified by pacmd list-sources | grep 'state:'
So for a regular run of the Jolla app “Audio recorder”, the source source.droid is active and thus command like pacmd set-source-volume source.droid 50000 will work, and will reduce the microphone sensitivity.
The description of the used pulseaudio module from https://github.com/mer-hybris/pulseaudio-modules-droid-jb2q has a hint, it says that

When voicecall virtual profile is enabled, active droid-sink is internally switched to voicecall volume control mode. What this means is changing the sink volume or volume of normal streams connected to the sink do not change active voicecall volume.

Used version and arguments of the module can be seen by pacmd list-modules:

    index: 1
        name: <module-droid-card>
        argument: <rate=48000 quirks=+unload_call_exit,+audio_cal_wait,+no_hw_volume,+speaker_before_voice,+standby_set_route>
        used: -1
        load once: no
        properties:
                module.author = "Juho Hämäläinen"
                module.description = "Droid card"
                module.version = "14.2.94"

During calls the pulseaudio card is set to profile voicecall and there is a virtual sink-input now, detectable with pacmd list-sink-inputs:

1 sink input(s) available.
    index: 17
        driver: <module-meego-mainvolume.c>
        flags: START_CORKED NO_REMAP NO_REMIX 
        state: CORKED
        sink: 2 <sink.null>
        volume: front-left: 48211 /  74% / -8,00 dB,   front-right: 48211 /  74% / -8,00 dB
                balance 0,00
        muted: no
        current latency: 0,00 ms
        requested latency: n/a
        sample spec: s16le 2ch 44100Hz
        channel map: front-left,front-right
                     Stereo
        resample method: speex-fixed-2
        module: 5
        properties:
                media.name = "Virtual Stream for MainVolume Volume Control"
                media.role = "phone"
                policy.group = "internal"
                policy.stream_flags = hex:00000000
                module-stream-restore.id = "sink-input-by-media-role:phone"

Using the hardware sound volume buttons, I can change the volume of this virtual sink-input, but I have yet to find a way to change the microphone sensitivity, it seems that this has to be done elsewhere and is not done in pulseaudio.
In a search for where pulseaudio might get its idea of microphone sensitivity, I found the configuration that are read by module-droid-card:
- /vendor/etc/audio_policy_configuration.xml
- In a neigbouring file /vendor/etc/audio_platform_info.xml there is data about microphone sensitivity, but it is unclear who interprets this file.
There is an official(?) repo for the Android port to the phone device-sony-pdx201/rootdir/vendor/etc at master · sonyxperiadev/device-sony-pdx201 · GitHub
There are people developing a LineageOS port, which also have these files like GitHub - lineageos-on-pdx201/android_device_sony_pdx201

hypothesis

(Wild) hypothesis:

It may make a difference at which sensitivity levels the phone is set to before flashing.
It may make a difference when the phone is flashed because of the Android version on there. (I did flash the phone late and upgraded a lot of Android versions.)

Both could explain the difference some people are seeing with the same device.

Still puzzled, hints welcome.