Vista and choppy audio

[pacumeni]

I bought an MJ about 3 weeks ago to entertain the thought of losing my landline (fed up with AT&T!). I hooked it into my laptop, running Windows Vista and tried it out. My test is simply to call into a conference line and get put on music hold. If the music plays without interruption, great, it works. But it's never worked. I get hesitations, stutters and when I try a casual phone call to a mobile line or a landline, the receiver gets a bit frustrated because I keep cutting out.

I have other computers in my home and when I hook it up to my XP machine, it runs flawlessly. In fact, I've sat on several hours of conference calls without an issue.

I've worked over 13 hours in 6 different chat sessions over the last week with MJ support. I've been escalated to the upper level support every time--now I just ask to be put straight through. Every session ends with "let us fix it on our end"

My complaint is...IT'S NOT FREAKING BROKEN ON YOUR END!! All I want is someone that knows how to fix my Vista machine settings to make it work.

Here is what has been suggested thus far

1. Plugged MJ into laptop and powered hub, both with and without USB cable. Tried all various USB ports

2. Added reg.talk4free.com and my.magicjack.com in my Internet sites so that it would use HTTPS

3. Formatted MJ and upgraded the software (going on 7 times now!!)

4. Removed device drives in Device manager and unplugged device, then reinserted

5. Used two different corded phones--no cordless

6. Added exceptions to my MS firewall for MJ UPD ports 5060 and 5070

7. Connected to www.speedtest.net. Download is 5100 kbps, upload is 540 kbps

8. Set processor scheduling to "Background Services"

9. Set speakers to default (NOT Tigerjet as default device)

10. Downloaded latest DivX player and codec

11. Set volume to 1/3 of maximum for both headset and microphone

12. Deleted AppData/Roaming folder and reinstalled

13. Changed drive letters for MJ from G: and H: to X: and Y:

14. Closed down all programs except technical chat and MJ to minimize CPU activity

15. Rebooted modem, router and computer many, many times (this is their main tactic to get you off their back because you lose their chat session with them and have to reach a new supervisor who conveniently cannot seem to reach the person you were just talking to. All 6 chat sessions have ended this way)

So I'm just a tad bit frustrated. Anyone else having issues with Vista Enterprise (32 bit) SP1?

If you can help me, I would be deeply indebted to you and vote for you for president.

[az2008]

See the wiki FAQ which refers to a how-to for diagnosing "choppy voice." http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MagicJack/ ... 9_voice.3F

Based upon what you said you've already done, you're probably going to want to focus on QoS and/or changing your proxy (to see if it's specific to your proxy). Both are discussed in the referenced how-to.

Mark

[pacumeni]

Yes, I read the FAQ and tried out some of the things in there. I did turn on QoS on my router.

I didn't change my proxy because I figured if it's working just fine through my XP machine using the same router, wouldn't that mean it's not a proxy problem (or problem with my router for that matter)?

[mberlant]

I didn't change my proxy because I figured if it's working just fine through my XP machine using the same router, wouldn't that mean it's not a proxy problem (or problem with my router for that matter)?

I would agree with that logic.

[az2008]

I didn't change my proxy because I figured if it's working just fine through my XP machine using the same router,

Sorry. I didn't catch that part in your original post. No other ideas from me.

Mark

[pacumeni]

That's ok, I'll take any help I can get at this point! The MJ folks have been working "behind the scenes" to fix it for a week now. One of the supervisors told me that if I just left my computer, router and modem off for 5-20 minutes that the problems would all fix themselves. When I told him that I didn't believe him, he said "try it and see!"

::sigh::

So yeah, I'll try anything at this point.

[az2008]

One of the supervisors told me that if I just left my computer, router and modem off for 5-20 minutes that the problems would all fix themselves. When I told him that I didn't believe him, he said "try it and see!"

Actually there have been reports that MJ stores a profile on the proxy server and deletes it after your connection disappears for 15 minutes (which, coincidentally happens to be approximately how frequently the SIP connection re-authenticates).

I know I've experienced an issue shutting down my PC (or killing the magicjack.exe process) where the softphone doesn't inform the proxy it shut down. For the next 15-20 minutes calling my number results in it ringing like I'm online instead of going directly to voice mail.

So, I think this is one of the rare cases chat support is correct.

Mark

[Himiko]

lol.. I don't know if these will help but since you said you'll try anything...

1. PS. I don't know how to do this in Vista.. Try to play around..
Go to the Control Panel and click on "Manage Audio Devices" Then click on "Handset" and then "properties" and then select the "levels" tab and turn up the volume. Volume was on 32 , turn it up to 68.

2. Since you already added the ports in Windows Firewall, why won't you try to forward them in your router too? Go to www.portforward.com for the step-by-step instructions

3. Update your USB hubs then reboot

lol, those supervisors are really funny.. they'd do anything to make you leave off the session if they can't solve the problem

[az2008]

2. Since you already added the ports in Windows Firewall, why won't you try to forward them in your router too? Go to www.portforward.com for the step-by-step instructions

AFAIK, port forwarding will only fix a problem with MJ being inoperable in some way (calls disconnect after 30 seconds, phone keeps ringing indefinitely after going to voice mail). Not choppy voice.

Furthermore, MJ doesn't require port forwarding because all connections are initiated by the softphone to MJ servers, not the other way around.

There are some routers with buggy firmware that may require port forwarding just to bypass the buggy NAT translation.

When recommending people to expose their LAN to the external internet with port forwarding it should be clearly stated when this may be necessary, and the risks a user exposes themself to.

And, this is different than someone opening a restrictive firewall that blocks LAN to WAN access. That's not port forwarding, and isn't dangerous like port forwarding is.

Mark

[Himiko]

I don't really know what term to use but since it is in portforward.com, I decided to name it port forwarding, lol.. but anyway, good luck pacumeni! I hope this problem will just be solved on its own.

Like what happened to mine. I really didn't do anything. One day, the echo is gone lol

[pacumeni]

lol.. I don't know if these will help but since you said you'll try anything...

1. PS. I don't know how to do this in Vista.. Try to play around..
Go to the Control Panel and click on "Manage Audio Devices" Then click on ...

2. Since you already added the ports in Windows Firewall, why won't you try to forward them in your router too? Go to www.portforward.com for the step-by-step instructions

3. Update your USB hubs then reboot

lol, those supervisors are really funny.. they'd do anything to make you leave off the session if they can't solve the problem

I did #1 already. Didn't change anything.

#2, they actually suggested, but I told them I wasn't going to do that because I had a laptop that I'd be moving all over the place and there was likely no way to assure that every router in Starbucks that I connect to will have port forwarding turned on.

#3? Update my USB hubs? Never heard that one before. Is there a way to update the USB hubs on my laptop??

[pacumeni]

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if it's just not some software running on my machine that's causing the problem. I can shut almost everything down and run the CPU around 40%, but still get blips in the sound. It's probably no secret that I might have some software running in the background (can you say Symantec??) that would be sending out some type of net broadcasting that may cause some traffic lag?

This is over a wireless connection, but I've also plugged the laptop straight in to the router (gigabit) and the issue still remained. I've updated the firmware on my router with the latest DD-WRT firmware. I'll keep scouring the net, I guess...

[az2008]

This is over a wireless connection, but I've also plugged the laptop straight in to the router (gigabit) and the issue still remained. I've updated the firmware on my router with the latest DD-WRT firmware.

How did you configure DD-WRT's QoS? If you setup layer 7 rules for SIP and RTP, the latter probably isn't working because the layer 7 filter didn't work with MagicJack until 6 weeks ago. I doubt DD-WRT has picked up the latest layer 7 filter, and released an update.

The current layer 7 RTP filter is:

Code: Select all

^\x80[\x01-\x22\x60-\x7f\x81-\xa2-\xff]?..........*\x80

You could go to the DD-WRT forum and ask for help to determine if DD-WRT uses this pattern, or how to find the .pat file in your router, and how to override it.

I've got the instructions for Tomato. You could try them. I don't know how similar DD-WRT's filesystem is, etc. Here they are:

Code: Select all

# Create the file
echo rtp > /tmp/rtp.pat
echo '^\x80[\x01-"`-\x7f\x80-\xa2\xe0-\xff]?..........*\x80' >> /tmp/rtp.pat

# See original ROM value
cat /tmp/etc/l7-protocols/rtp.pat

# Overlay the original ROM value
mount -o bind /tmp/rtp.pat /etc/l7-protocols/rtp.pat

# See new, replaced/overlayed value (not really in ROM)
cat /tmp/etc/l7-protocols/rtp.pat

# Restart QoS in your UI by stopping/starting QoS

Mark

[Rickiev]

My complaint is...IT'S NOT FREAKING BROKEN ON YOUR END!! All I want is someone that knows how to fix my Vista machine settings to make it work.

I had to change the Vista power setting from Power Save mode, and turn it off. I have it setup to screen saver in 10 minutes, monitor power off in 15 minutes. Hard drive also off at 15 minutes, and the system does not go into sleep mode.

When I change the power setting, and reboot, it started to work fine.

Hope this helps.

[pacumeni]

I tried changing the power settings to "Never" turn off nothing for nobody, but it did not make a difference.

I'm still a little leery of changing much on my router (related to QOS) as I'm just not sure that will fix it--especially since it works just fine on my other machines attached to the same router. Can you talk me into it, perhaps?

[JohnnyFreightTRAIN]

my friend also has a problem with choppy audio and vista.
we have learned to live with it, almost...