[e92law]

How hard is it to make a speakerphone with decent sound quality?

I can hear people fine, but on the other end it sounds like crap. The best is when I call any of my friends and they are in a BMW also. Neither of us can hear anything. I know this is not a priority in Germany, but here where the speed limit is 65 and you never go that fast anyway and end up doing things other than just driving, like talk on the phone. (maybe you can really drive on Tuesday mornings between 3:00am and 4:00am if it is a Jewish holiday or something).

I mean, with the new legislation coming out next year, many are going to have to either use a Bluetooth headset (worry about recharging, carrying it around on my freaking head) or rely on the BMW speakerphone.

Is there a better way? Has anyone improved the sound quality of the BMW system? New microphone setup?

[!Xoible]

u have a windows based phone by any chance? or HP phone?

my experience is excellent with BT and speakerphones. i can hear people clearly and loudly and they can hear me too

[phantom330]

I tried calling a friend of mine while I was on bluetooth, and he was on bluetooth in his BMW, we couldn't understand a word the other was saying. The sound quality is bad on the other end almost always, and if you're talking bluetooth to bluetooth it's almost impossible to have a conversation. Technology definitely needs to be stepped up a little.

[!Xoible]

really? which phones are you guys using?

i talk to blueSummer, Snohman, and OC335i all the time in our cars

[aspiring335]

That's odd, the sound quality is great via my BMW's bluetooth connection. People actually comment on how good it is. It must be something to do with your specific make / model of phone.

[BretNJ]

Originally Posted by aspiring335

That's odd, the sound quality is great via my BMW's bluetooth connection. People actually comment on how good it is. It must be something to do with your specific make / model of phone.

Same here, people don't believe me when I tell them I'm using the speakerphone in the car. I have a T-Mobile Dash.

[tintivilus]

Originally Posted by e92law

How hard is it to make a speakerphone with decent sound quality?

Short answer: very hard. There are lots of patents in this area every year.

Originally Posted by e92law

I mean, with the new legislation coming out next year, many are going to have to either use a Bluetooth headset (worry about recharging, carrying it around on my freaking head) or rely on the BMW speakerphone.

or, you know, use a wired headset if you hate Bluetooth that much. Unlike a loudspeaker-based handsfree, headset audio is almost impossible to screw up.

Originally Posted by e92law

Is there a better way? Has anyone improved the sound quality of the BMW system? New microphone setup?

No; the DSP is set up for the mic/speaker configuration of the car. Replacing the mic or speaker will almost invariably make things worse unless you tweak the DSP (echo canceller, noise suppressor, response curves, etc) parameters for the new acoustics.

Originally Posted by aspiring335

That's odd, the sound quality is great via my BMW's bluetooth connection. People actually comment on how good it is. It must be something to do with your specific make / model of phone.

Mine's been pretty good, too. It's not absolutely to-die-for, but it aint half bad.

I've seen some phones that don't honor the carkit's command to let it handle its own audio processing (which all HFP speakerphones/carkits need) so the audio gets all shot to hell by the echo cancellers in the phone and the carkit fighting each other.

Are your windows closed? What phone are you using?

[phantom330]

I've had several different phones with my car, and they all perform pretty similiar. Interesting. Have you guys tried talking bluetooth to bluetooth? It's pretty bad.

[tintivilus]

Originally Posted by phantom330

I've had several different phones with my car, and they all perform pretty similiar. Interesting. Have you guys tried talking bluetooth to bluetooth? It's pretty bad.

Shouldn't make any difference except for making it more likely that one of the sides has a lousy connection.

The audio between the phone and the network doesn't care whether the local user has a bluetooth, wired, or no accessory. Each phone is responsible for properly processing the audio it's passing off to the network.

The only really bad scenario I can think of is if both sides have crappy bluetooth links (eg bad BT RF performance or environment) and SCO packet loss is making both uplink and downlink staticky. In this case you're getting double-static due to packet loss on both sides. This is rarely blamable entirely on the accessory (car).

What do you mean by "pretty bad"? That's not exactly descriptive of an audio failure.

[GregL]

My Nokia 6126 works very well, people can rarely tell that I'm using handsfree other than hearing my indicator ticking and rear parking sensors beeping now and then.

[e92law]

Thanks for the responses.

I use a Samsung X820 most of the time, but no real difference v. my BlackBerry. I really think it has more to do with the placement and quality of the microphone. People sound fine through my speakers, but many complain about the quality. Just seems like it SHOULD be much better.

I guess not an easy proposition to upgrade the system. Somone needs to move the existing microphone to the headrest or something.

[Neema]

i wish that while our phones were connected the car, that they could use the cars GPS antenna fin on the roof for reception. We'd probably have WAY better reception. I dont like using the car's speaker phone settings and i actually dont know what the quality sounds like to the person on the other end, i wonder if it sounds good. I use a samsung black jack with Cingular.....wait no AT&.......uhhh Cingu.......umm wait no AT&T

[tintivilus]

Originally Posted by e92law

I really think it has more to do with the placement and quality of the microphone....

I guess not an easy proposition to upgrade the system. Somone needs to move the existing microphone to the headrest or something.

Sufficiently "high quality" microphones for telephone-grade voice are trivially cheap, and the placement has little to do with audio quality in a setup like we have. Moving the microphone isn't going to help, and could hurt depending on the algorithms used for audio processing and how sensitive they are to the expected acoustic environment.

Why do you think it would be better to have the microphone behind you than in front of you?

edit: it makes no sense to toss around hypothetical solutions without a clearer problem statement. What's wrong with your audio? Can you be more specific than "sounds like crap"?

Originally Posted by Boost_Nation

i wish that while our phones were connected the car, that they could use the cars GPS antenna fin on the roof for reception. We'd probably have WAY better reception. I dont like using the car's speaker phone settings and i actually dont know what the quality sounds like to the person on the other end, i wonder if it sounds good. I use a samsung black jack with Cingular.....wait no AT&.......uhhh Cingu.......umm wait no AT&T

You can connect to the shark-fin antenna if you get the docking cradle.

[sdwilly]

Originally Posted by e92law

How hard is it to make a speakerphone with decent sound quality?

I can hear people fine, but on the other end it sounds like crap. The best is when I call any of my friends and they are in a BMW also. Neither of us can hear anything. I know this is not a priority in Germany, but here where the speed limit is 65 and you never go that fast anyway and end up doing things other than just driving, like talk on the phone. (maybe you can really drive on Tuesday mornings between 3:00am and 4:00am if it is a Jewish holiday or something).

I mean, with the new legislation coming out next year, many are going to have to either use a Bluetooth headset (worry about recharging, carrying it around on my freaking head) or rely on the BMW speakerphone.

Is there a better way? Has anyone improved the sound quality of the BMW system? New microphone setup?

Only complaints I get about the quality from my end is from my wife when I'm doing 70 with the windows down, with the windows up I've been told it sounds fine (BlackBerry 8800 BTW).

[OC Guy]

It does pretty good considering what it is imo. What the OP might be looking for is some noise cancelation technology. Not really what I would expect to find in a car unless it was a flagship model. The technology isn't THAT common yet (common as in common enough to find in a car). I expect the LS460, S-Class, 7-Series, etc. to come out with it first then find the technology being passed down to lower models like the 3 series.

[tintivilus]

Originally Posted by OC 335i

It does pretty good considering what it is imo. What the OP might be looking for is some noise cancelation technology. Not really what I would expect to find in a car unless it was a flagship model. The technology isn't THAT common yet (common as in common enough to find in a car). I expect the LS460, S-Class, 7-Series, etc. to come out with it first then find the technology being passed down to lower models like the 3 series.

I'm not quite sure I'm thinking about the same thing you are, but if you're talking two-microphone noise cancellation, then yes, it is something reasonable to include in a car like the 3er. The only issue is lead time; there are several licenseable solutions (ie algorithms) on the market now, but I'm really not sure how long ago the setup we have now was spec'ed out and finalized. My TCU says "Everest E60" on the sticker, so I guessed it was just re-used from the 5er. I'd be really surprised if it cost more than a few bucks a unit to license a two-mic noise cancelling algorithm, and adding the second mic wouldn't be too hard. It's not like a car-based system is current- or MIPS-constrained. (hell, you can run it on a headset - http://www.jawbone.com/)

There are probably more exotic multiple-microphone setups kicking around as well, but a second mic and the right DSP magic would do wonders for uplink voice quality for a few tens of dollars marginal cost.

Once you have noise estimates that solid it's (relatively) easy to make the downlink speech more intelligible as well.

Of course, none of this will help if the problem is staticky SCO audio due to RF issues.

[phantom330]

Originally Posted by tintivilus

Shouldn't make any difference except for making it more likely that one of the sides has a lousy connection.

The audio between the phone and the network doesn't care whether the local user has a bluetooth, wired, or no accessory. Each phone is responsible for properly processing the audio it's passing off to the network.

The only really bad scenario I can think of is if both sides have crappy bluetooth links (eg bad BT RF performance or environment) and SCO packet loss is making both uplink and downlink staticky. In this case you're getting double-static due to packet loss on both sides. This is rarely blamable entirely on the accessory (car).

What do you mean by "pretty bad"? That's not exactly descriptive of an audio failure.

Well I realize it isn't the bluetooth I guess, it's just the background noise from both vehicles makes it almost impossible to understand what the other person is saying. Give it a try and you'll probably see what I mean, or maybe it's just me? Either way I like the bluetooth, just sometimes I can't understand what somebody is saying

[tintivilus]

Originally Posted by phantom330

Well I realize it isn't the bluetooth I guess, it's just the background noise from both vehicles makes it almost impossible to understand what the other person is saying. Give it a try and you'll probably see what I mean, or maybe it's just me? Either way I like the bluetooth, just sometimes I can't understand what somebody is saying

Who's your cell provider? I've noticed that AT&T consistently sounds less noisy than T-Mobile for reasons I don't quite understand. They seem to have some kind of network-side noise suppression going, at least on their 3G towers.

I really haven't had much trouble with background noise in the car, though, assuming the windows are closed and the fan isn't running full-bore.

[drwtsn32]

My experience is that the sound quality is great, as long as your windows aren't down and the A/C isn't blasting. I usually turn down the fan speed when I make a call.

[phantom330]

Originally Posted by tintivilus

Who's your cell provider? I've noticed that AT&T consistently sounds less noisy than T-Mobile for reasons I don't quite understand. They seem to have some kind of network-side noise suppression going, at least on their 3G towers.

I really haven't had much trouble with background noise in the car, though, assuming the windows are closed and the fan isn't running full-bore.

I have T Mobile. 99% of the time it's okay, I can hear the person on the other end of the line just fine, it's usually a problem with them hearing me. Oh well, it still works pretty nicely, but speaker to speaker conversations (in my experience) leave a lot to be desired.

[e92law]

It really is the background noise that is transfered through the system. Considering that the car is fairly quiet, this should be better controled. I will make a call later while the car is parked and see what the quality is like. That should isolate background noise. Maybe I am just driving too fast?

[saildoc]

When I use the bluetooth hands free speaker phone on my 335i the other person sounds great over the car's speakers, however my callers often report poor sound quality. It seems to be better when I sit in the car with motor off, so there may be some issues with background noise. I am surprised at the poor quality of the mic-is this a mic specific issue or is it the noise reduction softwear acting up. I wonder about splicing into the system and mounthing a nice directional mic from a hands free wired head set somewhere up near the mirror? I use T-mobile with a samsung t627.