Low volume from wired mic in all custom ROMs - Redmi K20 / Xiaomi Mi 9T Questions & Answers

Hello guys and gals
I've been trying a lot of custom ROMs for our beloved 9T, and as is usual they all have their little bugs and quirks, some more some less.
However, one problem I noticed affects ALL custom roms for our device (well, the ones I tried at least) is that the microphone audio from any wired (3.5mm jack) headset has a VERY LOW VOLUME. Whenever I record a voice note in Whatsapp or any other app, or when I have a meeting with Google Meet, or even just recording my voice with a Voice Recorder app, it's extremely quiet, unless I talk right into the mic.
This was not the case on MIUI, so it's clearly a custom ROM issue. I wanted to know a couple of things:
1) I'm not crazy right, external mics DO have low volume on custom ROMs, yes? Or is this some issue specific to my device?
2) Any workarounds/solutions you can suggest?
By scouring the forums and searching on google, I think the problem is some misconfiguration in the /vendor/etc/mixer_paths_idp.xml file, however I have no clue which values to modify, since from what I read the values you should change are different depending on the device.
Any help or suggestion on this matter would be appreciated.

Related

Crackling in voice calls

I know that other posts on this topic exist, but I've done a bit of digging and believe the problem doesn't lie with the speakers, so hence, new post. Sorry it's so long...
I've had my HD2 a week now and have noticed the same problem as some others here (it's the crackling during calls, it's driving me nuts, even on the lowest volume setting). But something about the "quality" of the distortion got me thinking (ie it didn't sound quite like what I would expect from a speaker taken beyond its capabilities).
I therefore tried a few different things to try and see where the problem was:
First I needed to identify if this was source related, therefore I tried playing different things through the earpiece. I downloaded audioroute from xda (I forget where) and tried routing all sorts of things through the earpiece. I tried music, skype, video and normal voice calls and the only one that caused crackling appeared to be the normal voice calls. I made sure my sources were loud enough to rival the loud calls, but no matter how hard I tried, it was only the calls that caused crackling (at least the type that was p****** me off)!
Next I tried to see if it mattered which output I routed the sound through. I tried the earpiece, the back speaker and the headphone jack (with both the supplied headphones and some good quality Sennheisers). Again, I found that all sources, other than the normal voice calls, were fine. What surprised me though, was that the normal voice calls taken through the headphones crackled too (not just through the earpiece and back speaker).
Finally, I tried to determine the effect of volume on the crackling. To my surprise, I found that with my Sennheisers, the crackling did not appear to get worse with increasing volume. I chose the Sennheisers here because they could handle volumes way in excess of what the phone could produce.
These tests lead me to conclude that the audio path including the amplifier and speakers in the phone, may not be to blame. I also believe the problem is voice call specific. My understanding of what happens to a normal voice signal is somewhat limited, but here's what I think. I reckon the digital signal processing in the decoder for the phone signal may be to blame, as it has to pass through this BEFORE moving through the rest of the audio path (the volume independence was the clincher). This does provide some hope of a fix though, since the decoder is probably in software so can be modified. I'm thinking radio ROM here though, so not something we can hope to mod ourselves.
Anyway, sorry for the long post, if you're still with me, what do you think? Am I talking a load of bull. Can any of you replicate what I've found?
Interesting post, I have the same issue with my HD 2, definitely gone backwards from my previous phone which was an N95, I'm always adjusting the volume to reduce the distorted crackle when talking to people, the speaker phone is borderline crap as well, at least with the N95 you can actually hear a little bass.
when you say crackling do you mean like the person talkin on the other line says your voice gets messed up ? because this has been a problem with my hd2 since i baught it...about 1 month ago and im running 1.66 latest official WWE rom....
I had this problem with my first HD2 and also with two replacements phones from my provider T-Mobile in the UK. These phones were running ROM 1.43.
I have found the problem is completely fixed (on the same handset), by updating to the new 1.66 ROM.
I didnt really understand how to flash my phone with a new ROM despite reading a few posts. However, after following the thread (The Complete HSPL Video Guide - 621930 - in the HD2 ROM Development forum), I realised it was very easy, and had successfully flashed to the new ROM within an hour.
I have had and still have this problem. I havecontacted HTC, flashed different ROMs, and have had a replacement but the problem still persists. I am learning to live with it as the good out weigh the bad.
Thanks for all who have replied so far. I like the phone too and don't intend to change to any other, but may consider sending it back for repair. I also have a rattle (not the volume switch though, this is coming from near the rear speaker, this definitely doesn't seem right). I run the 1.66 WWE official ROM and it hasn't fixed the problem for me when I moved from 1.48 which it shipped with.

Increase mic volume

Has anyone found a way (or an app) to increase the mic volume? When I am google video chat with someone they say they can hardly hear me.
Snap! I was just about to post the exact same question. I've hunted aroudn and found a fair few people asking the quetsion in various threads but can't seem to find an answer, I know it can be done as I've had it too loud on other phone and they've tweaked it and altered the volume so surely it's fairly easy tweak (if you know what to tweak) to do it the other way. Probably just altering a register somewhere.
We got my mother in law a transformer and she calls us on Google talk. She can't hear us very well and we can only just hear her too. I know the speakers are very quiet but Google talk is just silly, even at full volume it's still very quiet.
I would also be very interested in learning if there is a way to increase mic volume.
Thus far I'm not aware of a way, but I too have the same issue. Mic is ludicrously quiet, only picks me up reasonably well if I turn the tablet so the microphone points directly to me (and hence, I can't see the screen).
Short of Asus fixing it, or a third-party making a fix (which will likely need root access to apply), the only solution is to use an external microphone.
Similar experience with Gtalk.. however not much of a problem with Skype.. heard that the pinout is similar to iphone.. so any iphone compatible headset should do the trick.
when speaking to my mother in law my father in law iss often there as well so headset is not an option.
Yet another thing we need a fix for! This fix list is geting longer Poor sound at the best of time to having quiet poor sound makes it almost unuseable!
i have the same problem with Fring
lets hope one of the clever bods can fix it for us
I am rooted and this was one of the reasons I did it.
Rooting is very easy to do on here now with the pure root package and I can't really see any downside to it other than it doens't update OTA but thats hardly a killer.
The microphone is bad on the Acer A500 as well. Trying to use the google voice to text is rather frustrating because it affects the accuracy of the translation. I was hoping the asus would be better in this regard, but if it's not then there's no point in switching tabs. I guess I will just have to speak LOUDER!
Rob
nobody worked out a way of fiing bad mic volume then?
The sad thing about the mic's location on the TF is that it is facing the wrong direction to pick up any voice. I too, am having issues with the TF not picking up my voice very well. I was hoping that there is a fix by now, but guess not.
voodoo
For rooted users you can install the voodoo kernel which improves audio including micropone volumes. From what i read I am tempted to root my device just for this.
Search on the market for voodoo, (and then show me how you did it
iansykes said:
For rooted users you can install the voodoo kernel which improves audio including micropone volumes. From what i read I am tempted to root my device just for this.
Search on the market for voodoo, (and then show me how you did it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wasn't aware voodoo had any effect on mic? Plus it has not effect on speaker volume, only volume / quality on headphone output (can connect external speakers to it via that) I may be wrong though. I already have voodoo but use volume+ to increase built in speaker volumes. Mic is still terribly quiet

Speaker Issues with Custom ROMs

When I first got the V20, one of the things I was always impressed by was the speaker. It was loud, clear, and it seemed like LG had implemented some sort of volume compression/limiting to keep things clear without clipping or distortion. I rooted the phone about six months ago, finally, and have tried a few custom ROMs. Some amazing work done by the people here, but it seems that the speaker no longer sounds anywhere near as good, and it often crackles and distorts when playing anything just slightly above hearing level. I reflashed the h918 stock mod and all was taken care of, but I don't wanna be stuck with a stock ROM and lose the versatility being rooted brings. Another thing I noticed was that when I send audio messages on Facebook Messenger, they don't record nearly as loud and clear as they do with the stock ROM.
I'm currently using LOS16 with Gamma Kernel (SS).
I was wondering if anyone could maybe figure out what LG did with their speaker (and possibly mic) settings and find a way to implement them somehow with a mod? I'm not sure if this can be done via XML or anything like that. I just hate how all my custom ringtones sound now and having YouTube, my music player, and anything crackle has just taken my enjoyment of these ROMs a notch. Maybe even come up with some similar settings via Viper4Android using the compression tool?
Thanks a lot of any help! :laugh:

How to fix low mic volume in custom roms?

I would like to preface this by saying I love all the Custom ROM's available, especially the Android 10 ones. But, I've noticed one problem shared by all the ROM's I've tested so far (almost all). It's that the mic quality is simply horrible on every single one of them. The first thing I do when I download a Custom ROM is to test the mic using the Google Recorder app and so far, no custom ROM has even come close the loudness and quality of stock. I wouldn't mind if the mic quality was bad, but that's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that the mic VOLUME is extremely low. I have to shout while calling just so the other person can hear me. How do I fix this problem? The same problem cropped up a lot on Pie ROM's too. I've tried editing the mixer_paths.xml but I don't really know where to look.
I would greatly appreciate if anyone could help me. Cheers.
Bump
Bump
WideTracked said:
I would like to preface this by saying I love all the Custom ROM's available, especially the Android 10 ones. But, I've noticed one problem shared by all the ROM's I've tested so far (almost all). It's that the mic quality is simply horrible on every single one of them. The first thing I do when I download a Custom ROM is to test the mic using the Google Recorder app and so far, no custom ROM has even come close the loudness and quality of stock. I wouldn't mind if the mic quality was bad, but that's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that the mic VOLUME is extremely low. I have to shout while calling just so the other person can hear me. How do I fix this problem? The same problem cropped up a lot on Pie ROM's too. I've tried editing the mixer_paths.xml but I don't really know where to look.
I would greatly appreciate if anyone could help me. Cheers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use kernel with mic gain and increase it to your liking.

Help with microphone audio noise

Hi all,
I'm writing here in the hope of getting some better understanding of how microphones works, and maybe some hints on how to fix the problem I'm currently banging my head on.
I'm porting the Xiami Redmi Note 7 Pro to Ubuntu Touch, and I'm facing an issue with the audio recorder from the microphone: the top microphone works perfectly, whereas the lower one (the one used for phone calls) records a lot of background noise, in addition to the voice. I've spend several days trying to debug the issue, trying different stuff both with the kernel and with the mixer_paths.xml configuration, but every time when I thought I fixed the problem, after some reboots the issue was back.
I believe that the noise that the microphone is picking up is coming from the internal device circuitry: the noise changes depending on whether the screen is on or off, and it also changes when, for example, I'm scrolling a page. I think I do not hear this sounds when the device is running LineageOS, but I didn't try it extensively, so I might be wrong.
So, my questions are these:
if these sounds are indeed coming from the circuitry, how is the microphone supposed to deal with them? Is this what the noise cancellation is meant for?
Is there a generic way to enable/configure it?
And why is the upper microphone not capturing these sounds?
Can you recommend me some documentation to learn more about this issue (especially how it's dealt with in Linux or Android)?
Any help will be appreciated For complete reference, I believe that the audio SoC on the Snapdragon 675 is made up with the TI TAS2563 and with the Qualcomm Aqstic wcd937x.

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