868060 - Media volume through the headphone port is very quiet on the Geeksphone Keon

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox OS Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Chris Lord [:cwiiis]]

When plugging headphones in, even at maximum volume, audio is very quiet. Probably an incorrect mixer value/mapping/setting somewhere?

Either way, this makes listening to music on the device very frustrating unless you have noise-cancelling headphones... (and even then, it's still a touch on the quiet side)

Nominating for tef, in case this is a general issue - I don't have another device to test this on.

Verified the issue exists in v1.0.1 and v1-train.

Comment 1

[Edwin Flores [inactive from 2016-12-01] [:eflores] [:edwin]]

Are you using the headphones that came with the device (if any)?

IIRC the Otoro and Unagi had weird TRRS connectors which were arranged differently from most devices that caused a similar issue on almost any headphones other than those that came with the device. An adaptor fixed the issue.

Comment 2

[Chris Lord [:cwiiis]]

(In reply to Edwin Flores [:eflores] [:edwin] from comment #1)
> Are you using the headphones that came with the device (if any)?
> 
> IIRC the Otoro and Unagi had weird TRRS connectors which were arranged
> differently from most devices that caused a similar issue on almost any
> headphones other than those that came with the device. An adaptor fixed the
> issue.

I'm using my own headphones - What kind of adaptor do you mean? I'm not in the office today, but will try to use the packed in headphones (if there were any, I can't recall) as soon as I can.

Comment 3

[Daniel Coloma:dcoloma]

It is not buri or ikura and it is not happening with the device headset, so tef-

Comment 4

[Chris Lord [:cwiiis]]

Just to clarify, no one's said if this happens with the device headset or not yet, it's untested - that info was about the unagi device.

Comment 5

[Daniel Coloma:dcoloma]

(In reply to Chris Lord [:cwiiis] from comment #4)
> Just to clarify, no one's said if this happens with the device headset or
> not yet, it's untested - that info was about the unagi device.

Sorry, I forgot to mention I tested it with the Keon headset

Comment 6

[Chris Lord [:cwiiis]]

Edwin, what adaptor are you referring to? Having trawled through the source a bit, it does seem the phone thinks my headphones are a headset when I plug them in - can we work around this in software? Or is there something we aren't doing that would make this work properly?

Just find it hard to believe that anyone would ship a device with a headphone port that doesn't work with standard headphones :/

Comment 7

[Chris Lord [:cwiiis]]

Sidenote; forcing headphone output as opposed to headset output while the device thinks it has a headset connected causes a crash. I've not looked at the stack or anything, just playing around atm.

If there was a way to force headphone output, I'd have thought always using headphone output unless a call had been initiated/recording was otherwise active would be a nice work-around for this, if it were possible.

Comment 8

[Edwin Flores [inactive from 2016-12-01] [:eflores] [:edwin]]

I never tried getting an adaptor myself; I'm just relaying what I heard. This sounds like it could be it though: http://www.meelec.com/MEElectronic_TRRS_Adapter_for_P_Version_Headphones_p/adptr-trrs-35.htm

They list a couple of tests on that page you can try out to confirm it's the right tool.

Failing that, the b2g-testdrivers list will most likely have somebody on it who knows.

Comment 9

[Chris Lord [:cwiiis]]

More notes; hacking the kernel driver to report headphones instead of headset results in the same crash as just enabling headphone output instead of headset in AudioManager (the driver in question is arch/arm/mach-msm/rpc_server_handset, incidentally) - I should probably look at this stack...

I'm not entirely convinced that this isn't solvable in software, but I think without looking at the headset, this is pretty futile - might have another look at it next weekend (definitely, if the Peak has this same issue).

Comment 10

[Chris Lord [:cwiiis]]

Well a bit of good news, this bug doesn't affect the Geeksphone Peak (despite having the same trss headphone input) - I'm probably not going to spend as much time trying to debug this now, but I still think this may be a software issue.

Comment 11

[Sayak Sarkar]

An interesting thing related to this bug is that having the FM Radio app running in the background tuned to a blank muted station gives the media volumes a big boost. (Atleast makes the audio audible!) Checked this with and without earphones, and the results are same. 

Also, it seems that the earphones shipped with the Keon do play a major role in the low volume levels. I've tried using the streo 3.5mm earphones from my older Nokia N73 device on the Keon and the Audio quality is a delight then (With the FM app running in the background ofcourse.)

Interestingly the FM Radio app's volume as well as system sounds (keypad and unlock sounds) are considerably higher than other media volumes, which makes me doubt if its at all a Hardware-specific issue. 

These scenarios make me believe that a software patch for this should ideally be possible.

Comment 12

[Sayak Sarkar]

To make the following statement a bit clearer:-

> Checked this with and without earphones, and the results are same. 

If we compare the system volume (keypad/unlock sounds) with the media volumes on Keon's speakers (not the earphones), the results are again the same. The system sounds are much louder than the media apps on the device's own hardware (read: speaker).

Comment 13

[epx]

Any news on this bug?

Comment 14

[Daniel Zorro]

With keon and FFos 1.1 this problem is on music player but not in radio

Comment 15

[BMO Automation]

Firefox OS is not being worked on