Ring 2 audio problems

We installed two Ring 2 doorbells this weekend. We are having the same issues on both. Video is great but sound is not. We hear the person at the doorbell fine (95% of the time) but it’s very hard to hear the person indoors from the doorbell. At first we had horrible feedback. The person indoors would talk and it would continue to repeat. Customer service had us do many things including resetting. Now the volume is too low and it breaks up, sometimes on both ends, mostly from the person indoors. When we have customer service as a shared user, we can hear both ends fine. We added a friend as a shared user and we could hear him from the doorbell fine. It seems like it would be our phone but we don’t know how to fix it. Also my phone works even worse than my husband’s even though they were purchased it the same time, it’s the same brand and all settings are the same. We have Samsung Galaxy 8 Pluses.

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HI @palolake, thank you for sharing your experience with the Community! Would you be open to including a Ring video share link here so we can see an example of the audio concern you are experiencing?

Not yet. They think it may be our internet. Seems we have a new problem every day. We’ll see what tomorrow brings ?

I have exact the same issues as described above!

New Ring Door View Cam - very less doorbell speaker volume not suitable for daily use!

Maqy I guess that you use a Samsung mobile?

If yes, proceed!!

The clue is: My problem startet after activating the new “event timeline viewer” in the app. Before the audio at the door cam was much louder.

This seems to be a samsung specific problem, and there exists at least on temporary solution (which imprives the speaker volume a lot, but not as much as it should be).

see here in the samsung forums they are discussing the issue here:

https://us.community.samsung.com/t5/Galaxy-S10/Ring-doorbell-speaker-volume-very-low-if-answered-ring-from/td-p/554160/page/3

The fix is on the bottom of page 3 and following.

This audio problem is due to how samsung handles the microphone processing, and a change RING did with introducing the “event history timeline” feature. turn this new feature off in the RING app and the audio is much improved!!

I think whats going on is the following:

ring app uses different microphone API (or audio interface) settings if you are using the app with or without the timeline viewer. with the viewer, some of the newer Samsung phones have problems in microphone processing, maybe due to the two mics for noise cancellation. The “old” RING interface uses an other method of getting the phones microphone input as the new RING rinterface will do.

So the problem relates to RING and Samsung. They both would be able to fix it. Samsung has to work on the noise cancellation, RING app has to be redesigned to use the same audio method as before the new “timeline event viewer”.

Hope this helps, as to figure that out was very stressfull to me, and at least I’m glad that it is not hardeware related and there is a temporary “improvement-fix” (as even with this method the sound is less loud than using a iphone or any other brand, and you lose the comfort of the new timline viewer…)!

A method to check: even on the video recordings the own voice is very low, after disabling the timeline-event viewer the sound in the videos would much improve… This is the proof that the problem comes from the mobile stream which the app delivers!

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Thanks. That’s interesting. We spoke with 4 different tech support people and 3 of them had us turn off the event timeline viewer. So it must be an issue.

I think we also have a WIFI problem. We have high speed internet but have so many things running off WIFI. (phones, echos, computer, smart plugs, printer, tablets, etc.) We hooked up the Chime Pro extender and that may have helped also. It’s so frustrating to set something up correctly and yet it doesn’t work. Seems like that happens every time to us :slight_smile:

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Thanks for commenting!

I’m almost sure the above is the reasion for the troubles people with Samsung mobiles and Ring doorbells experience at the moment.

Conclusion for ring-engineers:

Ring app uses a different method for obtaining microphone sigal depending on mode.

With timeline-event-feature turned ON: Samsung noise reduction (it has to be a “newer” Samsung model, and use two mics) inteferes heavily with microphone signal, so it is very silent or not understandable due to loud noise in the signal.

With temeline-event-feature turned OFF: Microphone signal is ok, although it is still less loud than on other mobile phones as source.

Only Ring and/or Samsung could provide a fix for this issue. Ring has to change/repair the new event-timeline-feature to use the “old microphone source”.

And maybe Samsung could fix their microphone audio processing interface which ring app uses to make it acceptable in terms of signal quality. The noise reduction using both mics definitely does not work as it should!!

@Ring: Please provide a fix for that soon!

I’m sure Ring is aware of the problem, as the Samsung forum stated that ring support now tells the people to turn off the time-line-feature:

https://us.community.samsung.com/t5/Galaxy-S10/Ring-doorbell-speaker-volume-very-low-if-answered-ring-from/td-p/554160/page/4

@palolake:

a better WIFI signal is never a bad thing, althoug this would not fix our problems. I also have 20+ devices in my WIFI-network, plus 2 neighbors using my guest-network. For sure a better signal makes a better connection to our doorbell. So a bad signal would make the original problem even worse…

I understand your frustration, and I’m also hoping that there would be a fix from either Samsung or Ring real soon…

Best regards from Vienna,

Markus

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Hi @palolake and @ML1504, thank you for sharing your experience with us here in the Community. Can you both please try deleting and re-adding the Ring app and let me know if you notice any changes with the Timeline Feature turned on.

Hi Riley,

Sorry, I did not see your post here in this thread as well.

I answered your question to deinstall/reinstall the app in this thread: https://community.ring.com/t5/Video-Doorbells/ring-doorbell-2-community/td-p/105/page/2

I am now on the latest Android app, and the behavior of the app stays the same: When timeline event feature is turned on, the microphone recording from a lot of Samsung phones is unusable. When timeline feature is turned off, the mic recording again is way better!!

If you talk to an app engineer, I’m sure there are different methods of mic recording used, depending on timeline feature turned off or on. If they would use the “old” method with the timeline feature turned on too, I think that should solve the problem!

Best regards, Markus

We are having the same issues with our S10 especially with the feedback while talking outside through the doorbell. Hearing our own voice feedback is horrible. Also while inside talking using our S10 phones the volume is very low for the person outside to hear. Any advice will be greatly appreciated. We just bought this 2 days ago and we’ve been very frustrated. It doesn’t do this on iPads or S7s. We’ve read other fourms and tried all suggestions including turning off history timeline.

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Hi @Levelline . As discussed previously in this thread, disabling the timeline feature in the app seems to improve audio for most. We have the team working to resolve this as we speak, feel free to let us know any other observations you have related to this.

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I do not have the timeline feature enabled. I’ve done some testing with 4 different devices; iPhone 6 (latest OS), iPAD Air2 (latest OS), Samsung Galaxy S7, Samsung Galaxy S10 (I tested using 2 different S10’s with idential results). Only the S10 produces feedback and an echo. I’ve made a recording that demonstrates each test.

I’ve done all the health checks of the Ring device. My results are:

* RSSI-50
* Voltage good

* Internet Download speed right next to the door bell is: 16.52 Mbps
* Internet Upload speed right next to the door bell is: 11.13 Mbps

* Firmware - up to date

On the devices the audio is fine on the iPhone 6, so-so on the iPad, good on the S7 and terrible on S10.

The 2-way audio on the S10 is basically useless. I’ve tried all of the forum suggestions (playing with the audio, uninstalling - reinstalling) with no success.

I tired attaching the video, but the forum says that .mp4 is an invalid format. If someone from Ring wants this video as well as the screen shots, let me know how to get it to you. The video is short in time and about 16 Mbytes in length.

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Thank you @Levelline ! These observations and testing is extremely helpful and beneficial to the team over here. Yes, this does seem isolated to Samsung (if you have other examples, please drop me a note), and the team is currently testing and working on a fix. If a video example is required, I will certainly be in touch to grab that. For now, I truly appreciate this helpful information and I will continue to update the thread with any information from the team. Thank you!

Is engineering really working on this? The Samsung forum has complaints about this same issue since April, related to Samsung Galaxy S10’s and Ring. Someone suggested that Ring is using the wrong api’s. Don’t know about that, but this is a serious usability bug for an important feature that shows up in Ring commercials. This is one on the reason I purchased the product, to be able to talk to people at the front door when I’m not home. Can you post a case # to the forum that other S10 users can track and reference?

I hope they are working on this. I have a Note 10+ and the the two way audio is horrible. And I’ve tried everything to make it audible but no luck. Before using my Note 10+ I was using an iPhone XS Max and Note 9 with no audio issues. Please fix this ASAP! BTW I’m having this problem with my Floodlight Cams and Spotlight Cams.

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This has to be a software bug in the mobile app related to S10 and Android, since the hardware and software works with other Samsung devices. I did a review on Google play (1 star) warning S10 users about this problem. If enough of us complain, maybe Ring will fix the issue?

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Thanks neighbors. Video examples to get to the team will definitely help. The team is actively looking into this. I appreciate your patience!

Hi Jennifer, which email do I send it to?

Jennifer it won’t let me upload a video here so please tell me which email I can send the video to?

You can upload videos here, look at my postings…

Just ZIP it and it will let you upload!

Also judging to most recent postings it seems most new users do not read the threads before they post, although a lot of their questions already got answered…

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Thanks ML1504

Front - Live View, 090319 12∶38PM 2.mp4.zip (5.65 MB)