I have contacted support nearly two days ago now but have not had a reply yet. This is one of the reasons that using support is not a great replacement for having a good manual - it takes time for them to respond. In addition, with a product with the breadth of capability of the BX2000 I am really surprised that you think that people would be able to set it up without ever referring to a manual - the UI is very lacking in definition of the way in which many of the fields should be used.

Can you point me to the knowledgebase article which addresses the question of how to set hold/waiting music? When I have searched in the knowledgebase for articles relating to the BX2000 nothing has come up that is relevant.

Finally with regard to the call quality I have ordered a new NTE5 faceplate DSL filter to replace the existing faceplate (installed when the line was upgraded to VDSL a couple of years ago) to see whether that resolves the problem. I can certainly see that It would be possible that the mush I am hearing is an incompletely filtered DSL signal interfering with the voice signal, and that might mess up the encoding/decoding process by introducing noise that the codec can't handle well. We'll see when it turns up, but thanks for the suggestion.

ncollingridge wrote: I have contacted support nearly two days ago now but have not had a reply yet.

Disappointing, agreed.

Can you point me to the knowledgebase article which addresses the question of how to set hold/waiting music?

Maybe https://www.draytek.co.uk/support/guides/kb-bx2000-prompts ?

Finally with regard to the call quality I have ordered a new NTE5 faceplate

As long as the PHONE socket on that is feeding the voice line input on the PBX then that should be fine but obviously I don't know how it's wired up. Sometimes, for convenience, people connect an unfiltered line to both the DSL input and phone input.

If you call from the analogue extention to a digital, that's noisy too ? Are any of your CAT5 cables shielded (metal bits around the plug) ?

Hi,

I had the same trouble with regards PSTN call quality. 2 things helped:

- Earth the device via a network port. The manual doesn't state this but it should. If you look at the supplied network cable you will see it is a shielded type. It will only help if it goes to a switch which has its own direct earth. I ended up soldering a cable to the metal rj45 and connected the other end to a pc's case.

- The firmware released late 2017 (3.8.1.6 ? )made a big improvement too. Possibly a bit quieter than the SIP trunks but quite acceptable.

Try the above and post back your results.

cheers, Gordon

Answers to the points raised in the last two posts:

1. Tech support - yes, it does make using tech support instead of a decent manual a very inefficient and long-winded business.

2. Hold music - the article you referred me to, which gives guidance on setting up system prompts for voicemail etc, does assist, but I don't personally think that it is obvious that one would find information about hold music in this area. There is an obtuse reference to user prompts in the manual but it is only after you find out that the music files are considered prompts that you understand how it is meant to be read.

3. Obviously you don't know how it is wired up, but I can assure you that the phone socket on the faceplate (both the old one and the new one) was and is connected to the FX01 (or FX02, I've tried both) ports. I could connect an unfiltered line to the FX01 port but I would have assumed that this might cause problems with the DSL signal interfering with the use of the PSTN line by the BX2000. Certainly the manual says on page 5 to connect the filtered output to the Phone adapter. The new NTE5 faceplate has not improved matters with the analogue line at all, and in fact the use of it has resulted in the VDSL (FTTC) speed dropping from around 32 mbps to about 25 mbps.

4. Analogue extension - I haven't tried one as all the extensions in the office were to be ethernet-connected VOIP phones. Calls from extension to extension are clean and sound fine, but calls to/from the PSTN line remain awful.

5. Cat5 cables - no, these are not shielded, but I don't have any apparent problems with the ethernet connections. See 6 below for further comment on this.

6. Earthing the device via a network port. As you say, there is no mention of this being needed, and the patch cable included with the BX2000 is not an earthed one anyway. I have however taken a short earthed patch cable, soldered a length of conduit cable to the earth and connected the other end to an earth pin in a plug which I have plugged into a mains socket. None of the network devices (BX2000, switches etc) have an earth as they are all fed from a wall-wart which are all two pole only. I have not previously had any problems with everything floating but I could earth one of the switches. Obviously one has to be careful when earthing things to avoid earth loops which can just make things much worse!

7. I am on the very latest (3.8.1.7) firmware after being advised to try this by tech support, but it has not addressed the problem and I still have rubbish quality on the FX ports. I am beginning to wonder if I have a faulty BX2000.

To be clear about the poor quality of calls, this is what you hear on the extension phone:

1. Continual crackle and white noise at a slightly lower level than the volume of speech but much too high to be acceptable.
2. There is a loud slightly delayed echo of the voice of the person speaking on the extension phone which is very off-putting. This breaks up sometimes into a sort of dalek-sound if there is a volume peak.

When listening on the external phone there is a fairly low-level white noise in the background which is greater than one normally hears on other calls, but does not interfere too much with the call. It does however result in a lower quality call than one would normally expect if the BX2000 were not involved. In addition the voice quality of the user of the extension phone is fairly good but does sometimes break up on peaks of volume.

With calls between extensions the quality is absolutely fine. Not perfect but of a totally acceptable quality and only a very low-level white noise far in the background.

For the record, the two VOIP phones I am testing are (1) a brand new Yealink T19PE2 which is a simple one-line VOIP phone, and (2) a second-hand VigorPhone 350 to rule out this being a problem with the handset on the basis that a Draytek phone should not have any incompatibility issues causing the problems. Both of these phones have the same symptoms for external calls via the PSTN line.

To summarise - the main problem is using the extension handset when calls come in through the PSTN line. The quality of this is not acceptable and rules it out for my proposed office use.

I will experiment next with using the DrayTel voucher to see what the call quality is like with a VOIP line, but at least in the short term I do need to be able to use a PSTN line in conjunction with the BX2000 so if I can't get to the bottom of this issue it will sadly rule it out for my office use.

ncollingridge wrote:

2. Hold music - the article you referred me to....I don't personally think that it is obvious that one would find information about hold music in this area.

I typed 'Music on Hold' into the search box.

4. Analogue extension - I haven't tried one

Seems like a good test.

5. Cat5 cables - no, these are not shielded, but I don't have any apparent problems with the ethernet connections.

The question wasn't because of signal interference but that shielded cables can be earthed as you've now said.

7. I am on the very latest (3.8.1.7) firmware after being advised to try this by tech support, but it has not addressed the problem and I still have rubbish quality on the FX ports. I am beginning to wonder if I have a faulty BX2000.

Possibly, but I'd try an analogue phone to narrow it down.