821957 - Audio almost inaudible through TRRS (3 ring) headphones

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox OS Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

Play the HTML5 audio demo (mp3) in the URL. Through the handset's built-in speaker, things sound just fine, but through my headphones, audio is very quiet and sounds somewhat garbled.

Comment 1

[Ben Francis [:benfrancis]]

What headphones are you using? I've heard people say that with some headphones no sound comes from the headphones and audio leaks from the speaker instead. Seems like a low level problem, maybe even the hardware level.

Comment 2

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

These are with the stock headphones that come with the Galaxy S 3.

Comment 3

[Andrew Overholt [:overholt]]

Jason, can you reproduce this?

Comment 4

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

Is this simply a volume issue?

v1 won't have a headphones-specific volume, we're simply using the same volume as for the speaker. So if that's set at 10%, the headphones volume will be low too.

Comment 5

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

Nope - volume is set at maximum.

Comment 6

[Ralph Giles (:rillian)]

I assume this is B2G-specific? I can't reproduce on either my CM7 phone or my ICS tablet with fennec.

NB the test player offers aac-in-mp4 and ogg vorbis, not mp3.

Comment 7

[Jet Villegas (inactive)]

WFM on Unagi and headphones.

Comment 8

[Fabien Cazenave [:kaze]]

I’ve reproduced this issue with a lot of headphones yesterday: I wanted to buy a headset and *none* of the headsets I could try in the shop worked with my Unagi — I had the low volume + noise distortion issue that Joe has reported.

Back home, I tried the Unagi with my own headphones (Sony MDR-NC13) and it worked fine: audible volume + no noise distortion.

Wild guess, *maybe* all the headphones I tried in the shop had a TRRS connector (three rings) whereas my Sony headphones come with a TRS connector (two rings). If that is confirmed, does that mean that the Unagi is not usable with common smartphone headesets, i.e. w/ microphone? 
And can we really ship it with such a limitation?

That’s probably a low-level issue, but if it’s fixable on the gonk side I’d say it should be a basecamp-blocker. Hence, renominating.

Comment 9

[Fabien Cazenave [:kaze]]

(In reply to Fabien Cazenave [:kaze] from comment #8)
> Wild guess, *maybe* all the headphones I tried in the shop had a TRRS
> connector (three rings) whereas my Sony headphones come with a TRS connector
> (two rings).

Just found a super-basic Nokia headset with TRRS connector and it works fine with my Unagi.

I don’t know what all the headphones I tried yesterday had in common, besides being unusable with the Unagi…

Comment 10

[Andrew Overholt [:overholt]]

I just tried 2 sets of TRS connector headphones and 1 set of TRRS connector headphones.  I experienced:

- first TRS set worked no problem and volume adjusted well
- FM radio paused when I took them out
- second TRS set worked but didn't respect volume changes
- TRRS set gave incredibly low volume level and didn't respect volume changes
- yanking the TRRS set hung the phone and it restarted itself (back to Turkcell screen)
- I can't reproduce the crash after a few tries

Comment 11

[Andrew Overholt [:overholt]]

This (or at least my issue) seems like a Gonk issue and/or an Unagi- or Otoro-specific issue.  Triage decision is that this is a blocker.

Comment 12

[Chris Jones [:cjones] inactive; ni?/f?/r? if you need me]

We had this discussion in another bug, sorry can't find it.  The problem is that the hardware on these phones has a different configuration than headphone jacks on most US phones.  There's nothing we can do about that in software.

Changing this requires a reconfig from the OEM, which is a product issue.

Comment 13

[Daniel Coloma:dcoloma]

(In reply to Chris Jones [:cjones] [:warhammer] from comment #12)
> We had this discussion in another bug, sorry can't find it.  The problem is
> that the hardware on these phones has a different configuration than
> headphone jacks on most US phones.  There's nothing we can do about that in
> software.
> 
> Changing this requires a reconfig from the OEM, which is a product issue.

Chris, do you have more info about what that different configuration is? Wondering how to ask OEMs to be compatible with headsets widely available in the target markets. Adding Beatriz and David to the loop.

Comment 14

[Chris Jones [:cjones] inactive; ni?/f?/r? if you need me]

Yep, quoting bug 812607 comment 4

(In reply to Randy Lin [:rlin] from comment #4)
> Dear Tony, 
> Refer to
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_connector_%28audio%29    (on Mobile
> phones part)
> 
> We found unagi's headset is designed by china standard (ground on the
> sleeve).
> But the headset designed for apple/Samsung/HTC, the ground pin assignment is
> on the second ring. So the headset microphone wouldn't work well due to this
> different HW design.

Basically, China has a national standard TRRS configuration that's different from what pretty much the entire rest of the world uses nowadays.

Regardless of the audio jack hardware, the headset that comes with the phone will work.

So the question is whether third-party headsets are an important market consideration.  If they are, then we need to understand which configuration is most common (in all probability, the not-China configuration).

Comment 15

[Daniel Coloma:dcoloma]

(In reply to Chris Jones [:cjones] [:warhammer] from comment #14)
> Yep, quoting bug 812607 comment 4
> 
> (In reply to Randy Lin [:rlin] from comment #4)
> > Dear Tony, 
> > Refer to
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_connector_%28audio%29    (on Mobile
> > phones part)
> > 
> > We found unagi's headset is designed by china standard (ground on the
> > sleeve).
> > But the headset designed for apple/Samsung/HTC, the ground pin assignment is
> > on the second ring. So the headset microphone wouldn't work well due to this
> > different HW design.
> 
> Basically, China has a national standard TRRS configuration that's different
> from what pretty much the entire rest of the world uses nowadays.
> 
> Regardless of the audio jack hardware, the headset that comes with the phone
> will work.
> 
> So the question is whether third-party headsets are an important market
> consideration.  If they are, then we need to understand which configuration
> is most common (in all probability, the not-China configuration).

Thanks!

It is pretty clear that we should ask OEMs to support the rest of the world standard :)

Comment 17

[BMO Automation]

Firefox OS is not being worked on