[Asterisk-Dev] Voicemail sound level threads?

[Rich Adamson]

> Are there any threads anyone can dig up (and bump) on the 
> voicemail-too-quiet issue? And yes, Steve, I DTFG and didn't find 
> anything on it, and could not find anything immediately obvious in the 
> archives.

Greg,

There have been several on asterisk-users since about July 12th when bugs 
2022 and 2023 were submitted. However, since the Subject line did not 
necessarily include those keywords, finding them via google is almost 
impossible. Before opening those two bugs, I had conducted several tests. 
Today, I summarized those tests at:
  http://www.routers.com/asteriskprob/asterisk-config.htm

As sort of a short summary, I tested both the x100p and tdm04b cards with
multiple pstn analog lines. Both exhibit the low voicemail volume problem.
SIP or IAX users have not incurred the same problem.

In addition, Frank has opened a case with digium support based on the same
low voicemail problem using a digium TE405 T1 card. He has been working
with John Bigelow (support) to document/diagnose the problem, however
Frank's system is not Internet exposed. As of last week, I volunteered
to contact John and allow him to use our * system to diagnose the problem
since I can make our system Internet accessible and both of us have the 
same problem. I've not heard back from John as yet (Thanksgiving?).

In an email/irc discussion with Mark relative to the problem, he asked if
I would document the test config so that a digium employee (specifically
James) could "lab" it and recreate the problem. I did that on August 27th
and have never heard from anyone again.

Around August 29th, Mark and Russell Bryant added the app_test routines
to help diagnose the problem. Mark's comment of "I can definitely measure 
a surprising mismatch between FXS -> FXO and FXO -> FXS paths..." in 2023
indicates an issue was observed (but not yet diagnosed/fixed) involving
a T1 card, but that app apparently is not usable by those of us with 
digium fxo (non-T1) cards.

There has been some suggestions from bkw and others this could be a 
hardware/motherboard issue. I don't have a clue whether it is or isn't, 
but I don't think anything has formally or informally been ruled out 
at this time. Could it be something involving dropping a significant bit,
word alignment, or some other weird thing? Don't know, but it certainly
suggests there are some unknown x100p/tdm motherboard/system dependencies 
impacting these digium cards that are unknown at this time.

(For those that haven't bothered to read bug 2022 and 2023, we've all
tried the tip/ring reversal, rx/tx gain adjustments, different vm recording
formats, no shared interrupts, zttest = 99.987793%, no GUI, latest cvs
head several times since July 2004, etc. I believe I can say our * systems
have been stable otherwise. I have not tried the "raw" vm recording format
as I didn't know it even existed.)

I can make our * system available to anyone with the skills to diagnose
the problem, including three pstn numbers to access the system, sip acct,
etc. I'm a non-programmer and really don't have a clue how to get closer 
to the problem at this point. Any thoughts?

Rich Adamson