Weird sound problem (S5, Root, Marshmallow)

[softmonaut]

Hi community,

since a couple of days I have a strange sound problem. All sound output except for phone calls is disabled. Example: When activating a flow I let AutoMagic announce the title of the flow . I can hear only a part of the first word, after that the sound is dead.
I'm not saying that is a problem of AutoMagic. I simply don't have an idea where to start to fix that problem.

Any ideas?

Thx and regards
Jörg

[Martin]

Hi,

Maybe the text to speech engine has a problem and just stops before the entire flow title was read.
Please use an action Sound with a ringtone that plays on the same audio stream to see if the whole file is played or if it is also interrupted after a second or two.
Please also check if the volume of the audio stream in use is not lowered by another flow or another app to zero.

I recommend to reboot the device and to go to System settings->Languages & input->Text-to-speech output and to check if 'Listen to an example' works properly.

Regards,
Martin

[softmonaut]

Hi Martin,

thx for your reply.

A reboot to recovery + wiping the cache partition solved the issue temporarily.
After that, I deinstalled the FritzBox Fon app which i found to be suspect and somehow involved (without having any concrete proof).
Until now the problem is gone and your recommended checks pass.

Regards
Jörg

PS: Btw. AutoMagic is a great app!

[Martin]

Thanks! Glad you could fix the issue.

Regards,
Martin

[softmonaut]

Hint: I don't say that my problems are caused by AutoMagic. This is just a call for help.
Unfortunately, the Text-to-Speech problem on my Samsung S5 continues.
Here are the symptoms:

• Media and System audio streams are totally muted in combination with internal loudspeaker but could be heard via headphone
• The phone is NOT stuck in headphone mode as far as I can see. Amongst other things I tried SoundAbout App but nothing solved the problem.
• Phone call partners could be heard but not the ringing
• Text-to-Speech could be heard via other streams using headphone or internal loudspeaker (e.g. DTMF. I use a Speech output action to test this)
• Text-to-speech output + 'Listen to an example' doesn't work using loudspeaker
• Reboot doesn't fix the problem
• Cache wiping doesn't solve the problem either

Other observations/settings/states:

• I use a Sound Output Action as part of various flows to announce the currently activated flow via media audio stream
• I use a flow for reading incoming messages via bluetooth SCO. I observed that messages from K9-Mail are read twice while messages from e.g. WhatsApp are read only once. (Yes, there's an action to remove the announced notification)
• Unpairing/Pairing the phone/car bluetooth connection doesn't solve the problem. I've heard about so called 'bluetooth ghost connections' causing sound problems

Any ideas what could cause the mentioned streams to be completely dead on the loudspeaker channel?

Thanks for spending a minute or two on this topic.
Regards
Jörg