Microphone Volume? - Acer Iconia A500

Has anyone had any luck increasing the microphone volume? people can't hear me when video chatting or calling using GrooVeIP

bwassef said:
Has anyone had any luck increasing the microphone volume? people can't hear me when video chatting or calling using GrooVeIP
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Not been able to increase the microphone volume yet. However, I have learned from this thread that the mic is located on the front, top, middle of the A500. If you look very closely you will see a tiny rectangle hole in the groove between the glass and the case.
I know it's not much help at this point, but perhaps if you were to put more emphasis specifically on directing your voice to that spot on the tablet (not that you are not facing your tablet already...) you hopefully may have better results.

I see. I hope a fix for this is coming soon. I have been reading up about this and apparently if we can disable or modify the noise cancelling mic, it would help this situation, but I have not the slightest idea how to go about doing this
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Related

Microphone problem?

Is anybody having problems with mic? People i am talking to can't hear me most of the time... I was just wondering if this is happening with everybody?
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App
Same Issue
I am having the same problem. During the first call I made, the person on the other end complained that my voice was "garbled." That is, the said that they couldn't really understand me. I just got off the phone with my Grandmother (who is hard of hearing) and she nearly hung up on me because she couldn't understand me. I am curious if this is just the unit I have, or if it plagues all Atrixes.
Try turning off noise cancelation
I am also having the same problems. I've fiddled with all of the noise cancellation settings and it didn't help. I even returned the phone and made them give me a new one thinking it may have been just mine but still have the same problem.
If this doesn't get fixed ASAP I'll be returning it to AT&T within the 30 day window.
Mic and speakerphone issue
Same issue with mic on the Atrix. Two people told me my voice sounded muffled. When I called them from the Captivate they could hear me clearly.
Also, they hear fine when I put the Atrix on speakerphone but I hear static on my side but no such problem on Captivate.
Anyone having the speakerphone static issue?
Call quality on my Atrix has been the best of any smart phone I've ever owned. I have it set up just how it came out of the box, pretty much. Not sure if noise cancellation is on or not.
I am having to return my atrix because no one can understand me!!! If I use bluetooth the sound quality is great but as soon as switch to the handset, they say it sounds like I am talking through a cardboard tube. Man, what is up with this? I went back to my iPhone for now.
i think it's a production issue. on my first atrix, straight out of the box, i could not hear anyone when they called me and they couldn't hear me. all i got was static, not even a garbled voice. i exchanged it and voice has been flawless on the new one. i would suggest doing that, there may have been a bad batch.
At this early date, no complaints on a number of calls, and I did call myself on another line to check. Earmic sounded fine too. (A Klipsch.)
But today one person said she couldn't understand me. I think because there was a motormouth making too much noise in the room, or maybe because I was inside a building and the call strength wasn't very good. But then again...the other things that person DID say, made me think she shouldn't be allowed to answer phones in a business office anyway.
So far, so good.
Same problem
Rezznor said:
i think it's a production issue. on my first atrix, straight out of the box, i could not hear anyone when they called me and they couldn't hear me. all i got was static, not even a garbled voice. i exchanged it and voice has been flawless on the new one. i would suggest doing that, there may have been a bad batch.
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No one can hear me either. Need to exchange it tomorrow.
As far as I can tell, the mic on this phone is pretty sensitive but only for about an inch or two. This is what noise canceling is about: letting in sounds near the mic while keeping out ambient noise. I had the same problem on my N1 too, though not as severe.
You can set voice quality on call setting
there are 4 modes for your mic
Looks like some people fixed this problem with an exchange. When i posted on the moto owners forum. The board manager PM'd me asking if they could do the exchange and are investigating the issue.
Yea I think you should go and change the nnoise suppression options and test more calls before taking it back.
I had it on high and people said they couldn't hear mme either.
ANDY12001 said:
You can set voice quality on call setting
there are 4 modes for your mic
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I see the supression settings what other settings are there?
FLAC Vest said:
Yea I think you should go and change the nnoise suppression options and test more calls before taking it back.
I had it on high and people said they couldn't hear mme either.
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I have tried it on normal high and off, a new sim card (att usggestion) turned on that MOS optoion and the only time people can hear me is if the mic is right in front of my mouth, i am on speaker phone or using a wired or BT headset.
i have tried quite a bit.
This is my biggest problem with my Atrix right now.
There's a long thread on the subject of Atrix voice quality on supportforums.motorola.com.
Their moderator named Mark has promised a diagnosis on this from Motorola within 48 hours from yesterday, so hoping to know something soon.

About microhone

As I had problems with microphone (sound very metallic and very low) I did a test, that is, I removed the back cover and I have unplugged one microphone because there are two, one for the front camera and one camera back (the one on the cover).
Before disconnecting a microphone two, I had a rotten side of his hood and side camera screen and acceptable side mainitenant that I have unplugged the microphone, I have a good quality sound in all cases of figures. Now I ask myself the question, is there no conflict of microphones? (interférences. ...) when the two are connected. If anyone wants to try to confirm my intuition I'm sure of myself and be able to offer the problem to Acer.
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Thanks
I would LOVE to get this microphone problem fixed. Voice input, which I have come to rely on with my Droid 1, 2 years old, is unusable on my A500. Aside from that, I love it. But this problem makes me want to return it.
My mic has never worked. Can't record sound at all. And try as I might with a jewelers eyeloop, I cannot see the mic hole where it's supposed to be (in the groove, just above the glass near the center.) I'm tempted to try to take it apart and swap the mics to see if there's any difference.
The mica are where everyone says they are.the rear mic is not for sound pickup but to cancel out background noise.I can see how unhooking it could improve the Mic loudness.but at the same time I think it would cause.static in its quality or feedback.
I am considering going to radio shack and replacing the mics.
from what I have heard the hardware is not the issue. I hear it worked fine before a certain 3.1 OTA.
Why the hell the mice is on the back where the unit has a front facing camera obviously for talking that's just wrong.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
dito33 said:
Why the hell the mice is on the back where the unit has a front facing camera obviously for talking that's just wrong.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
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As someone already said it's for noise cancellation. The front mic picks up voice + noise, the back one picks the same noise. So you can cancel the noise using proper dsp techniques.
Sent from my A500 using XDA Premium App
I just bought GrooVe IP and made a test call last night. The other person could hear me just fine. I'll make some more tests, but maybe I'm not having the mic problems that others are having. I've never had any problems with the wifi not connecting or being slow after waking.
msimindlessmsi2 said:
from what I have heard the hardware is not the issue. I hear it worked fine before a certain 3.1 OTA.
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That is what I have read too, but cannot confirm as I updated to 3.1 right after I received my Iconia.
I've tried the whole plug in a wired Cell Phone Headset/Mic, but that does not resolve the low mic volume for me (the other side still can barely hear me, even with their speakers on max)
I am hoping one of the custom ROMs or Kernels that are being developed fix this issue. So far, I have not seen it addressed, and does not seem many people are concerned :-( (with exception of a few people here)
GShyneDM said:
That is what I have read too, but cannot confirm as I updated to 3.1 right after I received my Iconia.
I've tried the whole plug in a wired Cell Phone Headset/Mic, but that does not resolve the low mic volume for me (the other side still can barely hear me, even with their speakers on max)
I am hoping one of the custom ROMs or Kernels that are being developed fix this issue. So far, I have not seen it addressed, and does not seem many people are concerned :-( (with exception of a few people here)
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The last A500 I owned had a good working microphone. I tested it multiple times and playback volume was good even if the sound was slightly muffled. As soon as I updated it to 3.1 OTA, the microphone recording level became very low and barely audible unless I spoke loudly and directly into the microphone. I flashed a backup of 3.01 and the microphone recording level was still poor. I returned the A500 and decided to buy a different brand of tablet.
Rob

[Q] Really quiet microphone. Normal?

Hi guys, I didn't see anything posted here about this so maybe it's just my phone, but does anyone else seem to have a quiet microphone? People are telling me they can barely hear me. I notice this issue on all ROMs including stock, and even though I have the phone NV unlocked for AT&T, even the sound recorder app is playing back my audio at a low volume.
Has anyone else experienced this? Is there any fix (software or hardware)?
If you have taken the phone to the gym and sweat or simply haven't cleaned out the mic area that will probably fixture issue. I took the phone to the gym a couple times and my fiance couldn't hear me afterwards whatsoever. Cleaned the mic and all of as back to normal.
Sent from my XT907 using xda app-developers app
Jersey846 said:
If you have taken the phone to the gym and sweat or simply haven't cleaned out the mic area that will probably fixture issue. I took the phone to the gym a couple times and my fiance couldn't hear me afterwards whatsoever. Cleaned the mic and all of as back to normal.
Sent from my XT907 using xda app-developers app
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Hmm, well the mic area looked clean to me, but this was a pre-owned phone I bought from Swappa so I'm not sure if the previous owner did anything. In any case, I called some friends and they said they could hear me fine. I don't know if cleaning the mic did the trick, because using a voice recorder app it still sounds low, but as long as other people can hear what I say, I'm fine with it. Thanks a lot for your help!
phantomsniper773 said:
Hmm, well the mic area looked clean to me, but this was a pre-owned phone I bought from Swappa so I'm not sure if the previous owner did anything. In any case, I called some friends and they said they could hear me fine. I don't know if cleaning the mic did the trick, because using a voice recorder app it still sounds low, but as long as other people can hear what I say, I'm fine with it. Thanks a lot for your help!
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Glad it's working better.. let me know if it persists and I'll do some more research.
I recently snagged an M from Craigslist. The phone is in pretty much brand new condition, not a scratch on this thing, the guy even threw in a brand new Otter Box case for it. It works great, except for the terrible mic quality. No matter who I call, they all complain about the quality, whether I have 5 bars of 4G or not. I've downloaded a few voice recorder apps, and they seem to record in fairly reasonable quality, so I'm not quite sure what the deal is. I've been looking for any reference to poor mic quality for the xt907 for a few days now and this is one of maybe 3 threads on the topic. So obviously it's not a very widespread issue. But I'd still like to be able to use my new phone without resorting to Bluetooth or a wired headset.
Does anyone have any experience with this issue? Or replacing the actual physical mic inside the phone? I've found replacement parts here and there, but they all just say 'XT907 Replacement Mic" etc. If someone has an actual model/part number for the microphone, or know where to find it, I'd greatly appreciate the info.
For the OP, when you cleaned your mic, how exactly did you go about it? I've hit it with compressed air but I haven't taken the phone apart yet.
Thanks again for any help.
WusteHase said:
I recently snagged an M from Craigslist. The phone is in pretty much brand new condition, not a scratch on this thing, the guy even threw in a brand new Otter Box case for it. It works great, except for the terrible mic quality. No matter who I call, they all complain about the quality, whether I have 5 bars of 4G or not. I've downloaded a few voice recorder apps, and they seem to record in fairly reasonable quality, so I'm not quite sure what the deal is. I've been looking for any reference to poor mic quality for the xt907 for a few days now and this is one of maybe 3 threads on the topic. So obviously it's not a very widespread issue. But I'd still like to be able to use my new phone without resorting to Bluetooth or a wired headset.
Does anyone have any experience with this issue? Or replacing the actual physical mic inside the phone? I've found replacement parts here and there, but they all just say 'XT907 Replacement Mic" etc. If someone has an actual model/part number for the microphone, or know where to find it, I'd greatly appreciate the info.
For the OP, when you cleaned your mic, how exactly did you go about it? I've hit it with compressed air but I haven't taken the phone apart yet.
Thanks again for any help.
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Compressed air would probably work, I just blew into it to clear any dust, and I tried to take a small microfiber cloth and insert the corner into the mic piece just in case there was any extra dust, though the mic hole was pretty clean to begin with.
I mostly had the problem when I called my dad though, and I found out the problem was a problem with the earpiece in the Droid 2 Global that my dad was using. When I switched him to an older Sony Ericsson w518a, the voice still seemed a *tiny* bit quieter than I think it should, but by no means was it as bad as with the Droid 2 Global.
tl;dr: I pretty much came to the conclusion that the earpiece of the other person was faulty, not the mic of the Razr M.
I also have the same issue with the outgoing voice quality of the Razr M. After a lot of researching I have come to the conclusion that it is actually the Noise-Cancelling feature of the phone that is not tuned correctly or outright defective on some devices. The secondary mic is located on top of the back camera. If you try to cover it completely with tape or something rigid, the voice quality improves somewhat.
Since the default phone application is the only one that seems to utilize the noise cancelling feature, it also seems to be the only one that suffers from horrendous outgoing voice quality. All my other apps that use a mic, like Viber, Voice recorder and VoIP apps, do not have this problem.
There is no way to disable this feature, on some phones it's a simple toggle but not on the Razr M with JB. I know of other mods where it can be disabled in the Phone.apk by disassembling it and removing the lines of code that way, but I have no knowledge of doing that. If someone is able to shed some light on this process, please help us out.
Problem with noise suppression, nothing else. Try to remove second mic from the board.

Using shoulder to hold phone on call

Anyone else use their shoulder to hold their phone while on a call? People say they can't hear me and I'm cutting out. This really sucks because I'm usually using both hands when talking on the phone.
That's crazy that you mention that. I've been having the exact same thing happen on my Nexus 6.
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
I'd assume if you're not holding the phone a certain way, noise cancellation thinks your voice is a background voice and blocks you out. If you're at home or in quieter environments, turning off noise cancellation to fix this shouldn't be much of a problem.
mosincredible said:
I'd assume if you're not holding the phone a certain way, noise cancellation thinks your voice is a background voice and blocks you out. If you're at home or in quieter environments, turning off noise cancellation to fix this shouldn't be much of a problem.
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There's a setting for this?
640k said:
There's a setting for this?
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Hell if I know. I've been pending for like 18 days. I just know on my current phone, noise cancellation is very aggressive and gets in the way sometimes. Does the 6P have a setting for noise cancellation?
motox502 said:
Anyone else use their shoulder to hold their phone while on a call? People say they can't hear me and I'm cutting out. This really sucks because I'm usually using both hands when talking on the phone.
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Headphones? Or perhaps Bluetooth ear piece?
Sent from a phone that is not a 128GB Frost Nexus 6P
Or speakerphone?
Sent from my LG-v410 using Tapatalk
I vaguely remember having this issue with my N6. It might be related to how stock Android does noise cancellation. I made the switch to a wired headset. So much easier/consistent.
Antenna is up in that glass near the camera. If you grab that part with your hand signal will drop. I imagine if it's pressed your shoulder same thing will happen. Not sure if that is the cause of the issue just something I noticed
motox502 said:
Anyone else use their shoulder to hold their phone while on a call? People say they can't hear me and I'm cutting out. This really sucks because I'm usually using both hands when talking on the phone.
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Othoric said:
That's crazy that you mention that. I've been having the exact same thing happen on my Nexus 6.
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
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daewond3r said:
I vaguely remember having this issue with my N6. It might be related to how stock Android does noise cancellation. I made the switch to a wired headset. So much easier/consistent.
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My nexus 6 has the same problem. Haven't been able to find a fix. Was hoping it wouldn't be an issue on 6p
Othoric said:
That's crazy that you mention that. I've been having the exact same thing happen on my Nexus 6.
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
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I had the problem with the Nexus 6 but haven't experienced the issue with my 6P.
daewond3r said:
I vaguely remember having this issue with my N6. It might be related to how stock Android does noise cancellation. I made the switch to a wired headset. So much easier/consistent.
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Noise cancellation is not a feature of Android, it's part of the electronics of the phone itself.
The 6P probalby uses Qualcomm's Fluence noise cancellation, which is built into Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipsets. Other phones have a separate chip for noise cancellation, like in the Nexus One, which used the Audience chip (now called Earsmart)--Audience is much superior to Fluence, but people are using it less and less (probably to avoid licensing feeds). The Nexus 6 uses Motorola's Crystal Talk (also better than Fluence). In any case, active noise cancellation is a hardware feature and has nothing to do with Android per se. Even Apple once used the Audience chip (in the iPhone 4)--now Apple uses it's own in-house and very much inferior solution (being cheap is universal).
In any case, the 6P has three microphones, two of which are used for noise cancellation. One of them is clearly right below the camera hump, on the back. You can easily see the hole. If you block that hole, you probably can cause problems with how the microphones are supposed to work in conjunction with each other. Given that holding the phone between your shoulder and your ear is going to press your shoulder against and cover up the top of the back of the phone, it seems probable that the microphone below the camera hump is being blocked.
The main mic that you speak into on the 6P is probably in the bottom speaker grill. I can't really figure out where the third mic is. In theory, three microphones, instead of two, should improve noise cancellation, but I haven't see anyone do a good review of this yet on the 6P (reviews pretty much ignore this feature these days, even AnandTech that used to do a nice test on it with new phones and post recordings for people to hear the differences).
The Nexus 6 has four microphones, so it would be even easier, I suppose to block a microphone on that phone and mess things up.
interesting thought. i wonder if there's a difference between "disabling" a mic and "blocking" a mic. if you think about it, your shoulder on the rear mic is probably louder than the one you're talking in to as you are rubbing against it.
Could someone test covering that mic with your finger and reporting the results?
cb474 said:
Noise cancellation is not a feature of Android, it's part of the electronics of the phone itself.
The 6P probalby uses Qualcomm's Fluence noise cancellation, which is built into Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipsets. Other phones have a separate chip for noise cancellation, like in the Nexus One, which used the Audience chip (now called Earsmart)--Audience is much superior to Fluence, but people are using it less and less (probably to avoid licensing feeds). The Nexus 6 uses Motorola's Crystal Talk (also better than Fluence). In any case, active noise cancellation is a hardware feature and has nothing to do with Android per se. Even Apple once used the Audience chip (in the iPhone 4)--now Apple uses it's own in-house and very much inferior solution (being cheap is universal).
In any case, the 6P has three microphones, two of which are used for noise cancellation. One of them is clearly right below the camera hump, on the back. You can easily see the hole. If you block that hole, you probably can cause problems with how the microphones are supposed to work in conjunction with each other. Given that holding the phone between your shoulder and your ear is going to press your shoulder against and cover up the top of the back of the phone, it seems probable that the microphone below the camera hump is being blocked.
The main mic that you speak into on the 6P is probably in the bottom speaker grill. I can't really figure out where the third mic is. In theory, three microphones, instead of two, should improve noise cancellation, but I haven't see anyone do a good review of this yet on the 6P (reviews pretty much ignore this feature these days, even AnandTech that used to do a nice test on it with new phones and post recordings for people to hear the differences).
The Nexus 6 has four microphones, so it would be even easier, I suppose to block a microphone on that phone and mess things up.
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Thanks for the info! I also had a feeling that, at least on the 6P, the mic hole on the back could cause issues if covered.
Hmmmwell sounds like there isn't a fix for this issue. VERY annoying.
motox502 said:
Hmmmwell sounds like there isn't a fix for this issue. VERY annoying.
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Yes I'm having the same issue. I'm sure it's the noise cancelling feature because if I adjust the phone upwards then the problem is gone. However, it's not easy to shoulder the phone like that.
motox502 said:
Anyone else use their shoulder to hold their phone while on a call? People say they can't hear me and I'm cutting out. This really sucks because I'm usually using both hands when talking on the phone.
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You should stop doing that. You will mess up your neck/spine. Get a bluetooth.
Never use bent neck/shoulder. Prefer Speaker phone.

Modding Call Volume

So I think everyone knows how awesome these speakers are with how loud they can get. Though you would think that would carry over to the in call volume when NOT on speaker mode. In some outdoor situations its really frustrating being barely able to hear someone especially since I know its a software limit. I understand that mixer_paths.xml under system/etc/ holds all the min and max's for volume though I can't figure out which controls the earpiece while in a call. Any ideas?
I would also like to know this, as well as if its possible go use both speakers in speaker instead of just the bottom one. Hope we can get some feedback.
Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

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