Echo in latest Android 10 on Pixel phones

[snon]

Hi,

starting from the Aug 5 update to Pixel phone (2 in this case, running QQ3A.200805.001) we are getting echo from these phones.

I.e. a remote peer (in a person to person chat) hear his/her own voice after roundtrip, and looking at the voice activity of the mixed feeds we store, we can be sure that the echo comes from the phones (i.e. loundspeaker goes back into mic).

This does not happen on Android 10 before this update so we assume this is something with OS, but seems strange that we should be the first ones to find it.

We have tried:
- Setting various combinations of echoCancelling on the audio constraints (including the goog* vendor specfic ones)
- Lowered the bitrate, tested fixed bitrates, other codecs
- Assured that it's not our code (i.e. the problem occurs in Flashphoner admin/demo and https://appr.tc/ )
- Tried setting "muted" and/or volume on the video object of the local stream.
- Tested with Firefox
- ...

We have run out of ideas and are now posting here as well to hear if anyone else is seeing (hearing...) this and if they have found any solution.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Max]

Good day.

- Assured that it's not our code (i.e. the problem occurs in Flashphoner admin/demo and https://appr.tc/ )

If the issue can be reproduced on https://appr.tc/, we unfortunately cannot do something with it.
Please check if the issue occurs using handsfree (external earphones and mic). If not, this can be workaround.
And you can try to ask firmware developers about this issue.

 

[snon]

Thanks Max,

this was what we expected, but better to ask than spend more time on it.

We'll try to reach out to Google somehow.

Related, just to confirm: right now there is no way to perform server-side audio processing in Flashphoner right?

Is this something that has/is being considered?

The reason for asking is of course both the issue at hand and the new range of "AI" based filters such as https://krisp.ai/ and others that can be a bit heavy to run client side.

 

[Max]

Related, just to confirm: right now there is no way to perform server-side audio processing in Flashphoner right?
Is this something that has/is being considered?
The reason for asking is of course both the issue at hand and the new range of "AI" based filters such as https://krisp.ai/ and others that can be a bit heavy to run client side.

Now, there's no any interface to process audio on server. Audio can only be mixed, added or removed (using mixer).
We raised the ticket WCS-2863 to implement Java interface class to acess to decoded audio like IDecodedFrameInterceptor for video. But this take a time to do.

 

[snon]

I can confirm that the echo is not present when on bluetooth headset. So something with the pixel2 internal mic/speaker combination.

 

[Max]

Good day.
Since build 5.2.795 it is possible to extract raw audio data from published stream in PCM 16 bit format with a following processing on server side.
To do this, you should implement Java class, please read details here

 

[snon2]

Sorry for change of username - but cannot login with the old snon and cannot reset password (no email is sent out)...

Anyway - thanks for the update!

The echo issue seems to affect more phones now as later versions of Android is rolled out to other brands (Samsung etc).

Still no 100% clear clue on where this happens in the stack, we have tried all kinds of "echocancellation flags" out there with no luck.

The closest discussion I have found is this: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=687574#c63

I tried to look at the FP code a bit to understand if webaudio is used, but there are to many unknowns for me here... If that indeed is the issue, possible workarounds are discussed in the same thread.

We're here to facilitate any testing/prototyping needed!

 

[Max]

Good day.

I tried to look at the FP code a bit to understand if webaudio is used

Web SDK uses Web Audio inteface AudioContext (browser dows not allow to play audio without it).

The closest discussion I have found is this: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=687574#c63

We raised internal ticket WCS-2963 and will try to apply this workaround.

 

[snon2]

Hey,

just curious - any news/thoughts on this?

 

[Max]

Happy New Year!
Unfortunately, there are no news yet, due to more priority tasks. We'll let you know here about any news.

 

[Max]

Good day.
We've tested a various Android 9, 10, 11, 12 devices (Nokia, Samsung, Xiaomi, Pixel) and can't reproduce the problem in latest Chrome build using Two Way Streaming and Video Chat examples:
1. There is no echo if two phones are in different rooms
2. There is echo if two phones are in the same room and one device microphone can hear other device speakerphone
In the second case, such echo cannot be cancelled by an way due to physical acoustick feedback. And this is not a real life case. So we recoomend you to test two way streaming applications either from different rooms or using headset to prevent such echo.