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Garbled/Robotic audio on Wifi calling on Bluetooth

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Dixit

Occasional Visitor
Ok, this might be a long thread, so apologizing up front, need to try to lay out as much detail as possible here.

I have currently two Asus AC68 (one is a U and one is the P model). Both are running the latest Merlin 380.59 Beta 2 firmware. I have the feature set on the AC68 called Roaming Assistant. I also have a Unifi UAP AC wifi AP on the 2nd floor, also have a Dlink DIR 868L. The Unifi AP has a similar Roaming Assistant like feature, so I have that to similar dbm values. Dlink doesnt have that feature as its running Tomato. I have it set for both my 2.4ghz and 5ghz. Its set to around -70dbm (for 5ghz) and -80ghz (for the 2.4ghz). Most of the other settings are stock. I have a different SSID for the 2.4ghz and 5ghz wireless. Try to keep most of my newer devices on the 5ghz. Alot of my smart home devices like Thermostats, Wemos, pool controler, etc is sitting on the 2.4ghz side.

I work from home mainly. Im on conference calls basically all day or talking to my team. So I mainly use my bluetooth headset (Have a Plantronics Voyager Legend, also picked up a Mpow Wolverine recently). I used to have a Galaxy Note5 but now recently have an iPhone 6s Plus. Im on AT&T and they released the WiFi calling feature on the iPhone 6s (and plus). My basement where I normally work doesnt have much cell signal, so that WiFi calling feature was huge for me (used to use a cell booster device, but didnt always work very well). Now my phone connects to the WiFi calling whenever there is less than 2bars of Cell signal. Works great there. Here is where the problems start.

Remember im mainly on my bluetooth headset. I also like to walk around my house alot. So if Im on a call, on my bluetooth, and walking around say end up coming to the main floor, Im almost certain the phone switches to another AP, and when that happens, my audio to the caller or if the caller is talking to me turns deep Robotic voice/extremely Garbled to where you cant make out a word. Now Im fairly certain it just switched from one Asus AC68 to the other one because coming up the stairs the next closed AP is the other AC68, so sort of ruling out the other two APs at the moment. Now, Only way to fix it this weird audio issue is really simple, I just switch the audio to my iphone (the phone itself, can be either speaker or the earpiece) and simply switch it back to bluetooth (can do this within 1sec) and the audio problems is fixed. This same issue happened back when I had the Note5, (so that sort of rules out WiFi calling, cause that phone didnt support it). Now if I turn off Wifi (basically now relying on cell signal only) the issue doesnt crop up at all. So tells me might have something to do with the phone switching APs and causing bluetooth interference somehow. My phone is normally always on the 5ghz band. It doesnt have the wifi password for the 2.4ghz band. I may try tomorrow switching that around (put phone purely on the 2.4ghz band, forget the 5ghz wifi ssid) and see if that solves the issue.

Just want to add that it happens with 3 different types of bluetooth headsets, so I know its not the headset itself. It happened like I said on my Galaxy Note 5, before that even on my Note 4, and now on my iPhone 6s Plus. So I know its not the devices for sure. Not sure who is causing it (if its a setting on the Asus, or maybe my other APs, or it is just a general Wifi Bluetooth interference issue). All my APs have different channels so they are not the same.

Just wondering if anyone has or heard of this issue before.

Dixit
 
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Just a followup, keeping my phone only hooked to 2.4ghz didn't fix it, I told the iPhone to forget the 5ghz SSID, so it wouldn't connect to it, and still got the garbled/robotic noise. Same fix of flipping call back to iphone and then back to Bluetooth fixes it. So doesn't seem like its the 2.4ghz or 5ghz wifi its connected to.

Keeping it off Wifi does fix it, but not really a fix since that defeats the whole purpose of using wifi calling. But like I mentioned my older Note5 and Note4 didn't have that feature and it also had that same issue on those phones, I kept wifi on just cause there was no point keep turning it off and on as there is no battery savings by turning it off. So don't think its related to wifi calling at all.

Something has to do with the Bluetooth stack and Wifi also being connected at the same time on the phone.

Dixit
 
I wonder if this is WiFi interference with Bluetooth - seen it before in hot 2.4GHz areas...
 
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