DTMF tones

[Xponder1]

I have read about other people hearing DTMF tones during a call before but I have never had the problem until the last couple weeks. It's really annoying. Has anyone else noticed this more frequently lately?

[dswartz]

Only during 2 calls with the same female friend. Always happened when she was speaking, and she wasn't hearing them, only me.

[sommerfeld]

Only during 2 calls with the same female friend. Always happened when she was speaking, and she wasn't hearing them, only me.
I've heard them during more than two calls with my fiancee; she was on the voipo end, I was on a cellphone.

I thought she was hitting buttons on the phone with her cheek. She says she was being careful to not do that.

Last night she was on the phone with her sister, and her sister was hearing them as well.

Update: I've changed the DTMF Method setting (Vpanel/Features/Preferences/Advanced) to InBand and reset the adapter. Let's see if it goes away..

[burris]

I wish there was an answer to this..

I have never, ever heard these tones and no one on the other end has ever said they have heard them-cell/land or otherwise.

I use either my SPA2102 or the VOIPo supplied PAP2T....each one set up as they provision it.
ATT is my DSL provider and I have a Netopia/Motorola DSL modem 2210-02-1006 along with my absolutely great ASUS WL-520GU router-STUN disabled..DTMF=auto...strict hold off time=90. Every DTMF driven access works without a flaw..

[mrkarron]

I was talking to my daughter, who was on the VOIPo phone, when I heard a DTMF tone.. she did not hear it. I was on a standard wireline. Using the PAP2T with Comcast.

[TomP]

I hear these from time to time as well. It's always when I'm on a non-VOIPo line talking to someone on my VOIPo line (usually my wife). She does not hear them, but I do. They always occur when she's talking, not when I'm talking. They're quite random. I mostly ignore them, but they can be a bit annoying at times.

[VOIPoTim]

Basically if you hear this, it's the PAP2 interpreting a sound/voice as DTMF. By default it essentially "listens" for a DTMF tone and if it "hears" a hint of what it thinks is one, it'll generates it. This is why it only happens to some people (the sound/voice has to be the pitch/sound its looking for. This has been going on for years with those.

If you do experience, here's what you can do.

1) Go to vPanel - Features - Preferences - Advanced and set your DTMF Method to Inband. This will require the adapter to reboot.

2) If you still have it the, go to vPanel - Features - Preferences - Advanced and set your Audio to pass through the VOIPo network (more strict with DTMF).

It should be able to be resolved 99% of the time with these two things.

[Xponder1]

Basically if you hear this, it's the PAP2 interpreting a sound/voice as DTMF. By default it essentially "listens" for a DTMF tone and if it "hears" a hint of what it thinks is one, it'll generates it. This is why it only happens to some people (the sound/voice has to be the pitch/sound its looking for. This has been going on for years with those.

If you do experience, here's what you can do.

1) Go to vPanel - Features - Preferences - Advanced and set your DTMF Method to Inband. This will require the adapter to reboot.

2) If you still have it the, go to vPanel - Features - Preferences - Advanced and set your Audio to pass through the VOIPo network (more strict with DTMF).

It should be able to be resolved 99% of the time with these two things.

Are there any negative effects from using these settings?

[usa2k]

Although rare, its too bad DTMF couldn't be outside the normal vocal range.

[burris]

Don't think it can be since DTMF has to be in the voice band in order to work..

[VOIPoTim]

Are there any negative effects from using these settings?

There shouldn't be. Inband DTMF basically just sends the "signal" for the DTMF tone instead of the DTMF sound...at least the way I understand it.

[Xponder1]

Support had put me on these settings before you posted them and I am still hearing the tones. Oh, and I have rebooted the ATA several times.

[VOIPoTim]

Support had put me on these settings before you posted them and I am still hearing the tones. Oh, and I have rebooted the ATA several times.

Out of curiosity, how long have you had STUN on? Depending on the network setup in some cases STUN can force the audio to be routed directly instead of being proxied regardless of what we set it to do.

Has it always been enabled or was it enabled around the time this started?

If STUN wasn't on for a reason, let's try disabling it (and rebooting) and see if that solves it since it being disabled will make sure the audio preference is followed.

[Xponder1]

Out of curiosity, how long have you had STUN on? Depending on the network setup in some cases STUN can force the audio to be routed directly instead of being proxied regardless of what we set it to do.

Has it always been enabled or was it enabled around the time this started?

If STUN wasn't on for a reason, let's try disabling it (and rebooting) and see if that solves it since it being disabled will make sure the audio preference is followed.

I turned STUN on last night trying to resolve the other issues I am having. I did not really think it would make any difference (and it didn't). I have never needed a STUN server and have not changed my setup. As you requested I turned it back off.

I noticed that in Vpanel there is a option for support and it has a recent ticket summery but it only has two old tickets? Were you aware that tickets do not show up there?

Thanks,

Edited out part of the above after getting a reply from support.

[VOIPoTim]

I noticed that in Vpanel there is a option for support and it has a recent ticket summery but it only has two old tickets? Were you aware that tickets do not show up there?

Thanks,

Edited out part of the above after getting a reply from support.


Have support verify the email associated with your vPanel account. The tickets are linked through e-mail.

[dswartz]

Confused about something here. If the false tones happen because the ATA hears a sound from the other end that it mistakes for a DTMF tone, why would making the setting "Inband" fix it? If the ATA is doing RFC2833, why would this ever happen, since it would not be looking for DTMF tones in the inbound audio stream? Obviously, I am misunderstanding something here...

[VOIPoTim]

Confused about something here. If the false tones happen because the ATA hears a sound from the other end that it mistakes for a DTMF tone, why would making the setting "Inband" fix it? If the ATA is doing RFC2833, why would this ever happen, since it would not be looking for DTMF tones in the inbound audio stream? Obviously, I am misunderstanding something here...

It doesn't make complete sense to me either (or I'm misunderstanding it) but check around on Google and there are tons of PAP2 situations where changing it to inband fixes completely with a bunch of different providers.

I think it's some kind of bug they have, but it happens with so few people they refuse to look at it.

Whenever we've had reports of it, that almost always fixes it.

[bwarden]

In RFC2833, the ATA is listening on the local port for DTMF. When it thinks it senses it, it sends an out-of-band message. Wherever the call enters the PSTN, the corresponding DTMF sound is regenerated and inserted. If the DTMF detection in the PAP2T is buggy, it will mistake speech, generate an out-of-band message to the PSTN gateway, and that gateway will regenerate the tones as instructed.

With inband DTMF, the ATA just passes through the audio unchanged, without itself attempting to detect DTMF, so normal conversation is uninterrupted. The problem is that with various compression schemes, while speech is still intelligible, DTMF is sufficiently damaged that an IVR at the other end will have trouble recovering it.

[dswartz]

But what people are reporting are false DTMF tones inbound, not outbound, so I am not getting how tweaking any of these settings would change that (except as Tim said, maybe a PAP2 bug?) FWIW, I don't have NAT or STUN or a PAP2 (I have a GS503 unit), and I still hear this sometimes :(

[sommerfeld]

Although rare, its too bad DTMF couldn't be outside the normal vocal range.
The PSTN was engineered to carry just the normal vocal range; tones outside that range would be lost or mangled in transmission.

[sommerfeld]

But what people are reporting are false DTMF tones inbound, not outbound, so I am not getting how tweaking any of these settings would change that (except as Tim said, maybe a PAP2 bug?) FWIW, I don't have NAT or STUN or a PAP2 (I have a GS503 unit), and I still hear this sometimes :(
At least three posters (myself in #3 on this thread,
mrkarron in #5, and TomP in #6) heard false outbound DTMF tones listening on a non-voipo phone when a female was speaking on a voipo phone.

[dswartz]

So what I'm wondering is: if hearing certain voice patterns in the incoming audio stream can fake the ATA into think a DTMF tone was present, wouldn't you think configuring the channel for RFC2833 should prevent that? After all, if you are telling the ATA that the other end will send DTMF either via RFC2833 or SIP INFO, it shouldn't be looking in the audio stream for DTMF, no? Or am I missing something?

[dswartz]

Ah, my apologies then. Sounds like two different problems?

[voxabox]

I cannot believe it
My hearing impair works to my advantage;)
J/K, I do not think I've ever heard the DTMF tone with my SPA-1001
being a very old ATA, perhaps, it's impervious to the problem!?!

[mrkarron]

After making the suggested changes, I still hear the tone(s) calling the VOIPo line from a wireline. It seems to be related to the pitch of the voice as I only hear the tones while talking to my wife or daughter. When I am using the VOIPo line, the person on the other end, using a landline, never hears them. Could this also be related to inbound vs outbound calls?

[usa2k]

I would think you should only hear these erroneous tones outbound.
Inbound would be the sending equipment's job.

[dswartz]

My suspicion, though, is that the ATA can incorrectly generate a DTMF tone and play that out the FXS port if it thinks it heard one or something?

[bill875]

Just for the record, I too have experienced hearing DTMF tones when my mom calls out from the VOIPo line to my POTS line at my office. It is irritating and I too would like to know how to solve it.

Also, mostly when talking to someone on a cell phone, the person on the cell phone claims to hear an echo of their own voice. :( These are the only problems I've had though.

[burris]

Just for the record, I too have experienced hearing DTMF tones when my mom calls out from the VOIPo line to my POTS line at my office. It is irritating and I too would like to know how to solve it.

Also, mostly when talking to someone on a cell phone, the person on the cell phone claims to hear an echo of their own voice. :( These are the only problems I've had though.

Generally, the cell phone echo problem you mentioned might be helped by turning down the volume on the cell.

Conversely, you might ask support to turn down the transmit and receive levels in your adapter.

[Xponder1]

Conversely, you might ask support to turn down the transmit and receive levels in your adapter.

You can do this yourself in VPANEL.

[ptrowski]

Just for the record, I too have experienced hearing DTMF tones when my mom calls out from the VOIPo line to my POTS line at my office. It is irritating and I too would like to know how to solve it.

Also, mostly when talking to someone on a cell phone, the person on the cell phone claims to hear an echo of their own voice. :( These are the only problems I've had though.

I have had the echo crop back up again. It seems to come and go.

[caseydoug]

I've had some intermittent echo issues as well.

[VOIPoDylan]

The 2 options I think are worth toggling are the Volume controls (FXS I/O Gain) and the Audio option.
Both of these options are available under your vPanel > Features > Preferences.> Advanced.

I would recommend lowering the Volumke controls (both) to Very low or Low to suppress the echo's and feedback you're reporting. The majority of the phones we use today have built-in volume controls, use those instead to toggle the volume.

Echoing usually relates latency, seeing as this is the internet -- it will be sporadic. In this case I would try toggling between Audio Direct/Proxying through our servers if you continue to hear echoing on the previously selected Audio option - simply toggle this value.

If you're hearing beeps/tones, try toggling the DTMF mode option to InBand.
You may lose some compatibility dealing with other DTMF menus such as the automatted "touch key" systems you get when you call your utility providers, bank, ect. It's worth a shot though..

[caseydoug]

I would recommend lowering the Volumke controls (both) to Very low or Low to suppress the echo's and feedback you're reporting. The majority of the phones we use today have built-in volume controls, use those instead to toggle the volume.

I had acceptable audio with the volume set to low, but I had a hard time hearing my voicemail on my laptop's speakers, even when they were turned all the way up. This got better when I set volume to medium (unless it was my imagination). Is there any way to turn up the volume for voicemail without affecting the phone?

[Russell]

Fwiw, I heard a couple of tones today in a short conversation with my child (who was at home on the VOIPo line).