New Digium Cards

Steve, Bill, and Mark all hyped about their new cards back at Astricon and I can't wait to hear how they perform.

Sorry Guys but what are the cards you are talking about please.

Which models are they? I would like to take alook at them, I am sorry but I have not kept up with Digium cards as I have only one installed and working and I do not use it for my calling (yet).

Ok thanks I found it the TDM410, Looks great I am going to order one tonight and start playing with it.

Again Thanks

As I understand it, the cards in our current lineup with the VoiceBus technology include:

Analog Cards
---
TDM410 - four ports of either FXO or FXS in any combination + echo can, PCI connector
TDM800 - eight ports (two four-port or single-port daughtercards) + echo can, PCI connector
AEX800 - eight ports (two four-port or single-port daughtercards) + echo can, PCI Express connector
TDM2400 - 24 ports (six four-port daughtercards) + echo can, PCI connector
AEX2400 - 24 ports (six four-port daughtercards) + echo can, PCI Express connector

Digital Cards
---
TE122 - single port T1/E1/J1 card with echo can, PCI connector
TE121 - single port T1/E1/J1 card with echo can, PCI Express Connector

As you can well imagine, we'll be adding more cards to the VoiceBus lineup as time goes on. There's also a distinct possibility I've missed one -- I have as much trouble as everybody else keeping up with the model numbers. :-)

Hi Paul,

I understand how frustrating echo can be in a voice system. It's infuriating to invest hours making your Asterisk-based PBX work just the way you need and then wrestle with line echo, too.

The source of your trouble is not a known bug in the Digium products you purchased (thanks for your business!), but the telephone hybrid or a handset's acoustic coupling. If we found a bug in the product, we'd fix it -- and provide the new firmware code to all existing registered customers.

The VPMADT032 offers echo cancellation that meets or beats industry standards, converging quickly and canceling up to 1024 taps (128ms) of echo. All this without any additional CPU load on your host processor like with software based EC efforts. It's the best echo canceler available for use with Asterisk, hands down.

We occasionally -- no, rarely -- hear from customers that encounter echo problems so extreme or so unusual that the VPMADT032 algorithm cannot cancel all the echo, or gets too zealous and cancels valid speech, which then sounds like sounds like half-duplex audio. In these unusual cases, our tech support team will ask customers to use the ztmonitor utility to record samples of the audio. We then escalate the case to engineering to analyze those recordings. Perhaps it becomes an opportunity to improve the G.168-compliant algorithm. Perhaps the echo exceeds the capacity (128ms) of the canceler. Whatever the outcome, we take care of the customer.

I've reviewed your case history in our tracking database, and I ask for your patience as we analyze the recordings from your system. We received them yesterday and the case was escalated to our engineering group. Even Mark Spencer is aware of your particular issue and I've exchanged email with him about it. It would be a shame to lose your faith in Digium products when we're actually working quite hard to understand and resolve the echo trouble you're experiencing on your lines.

Paul, thanks for your business. (That's a sentiment worth echoing!) If you'll give us a little time to dig into the diagnostic data, I'm confident that we'll come up with a solution.

rm
--
Rod Montgomery
Director of Services, Digium, Inc.

This does not make any sense. I can see the NLP threshold thing and the explanation of the root cause but the fix does not make sense. can you explain to me how audio processed in the hardware would be magically fixed when it hit chan_zap? By the time the audio gets to asterisk the hardware has given it GHB and gone to town on it so the gains post processing wouldn't seem to matter. Maybe you misunderstood and there is a hardware gain adjustment or something that we would adjust in the driver? Ah what do I know.

Did all of that help from Rod make a difference, or was ADDman right?

Seems to me that the gain settings are after the fact. I've been waiting for a response from paulhuynh.

Where does that issue stand?

Bump.

TDM800 - eight ports (two four-port FXO daughtercards) + echo can, PCI connector = NUTTIN BUT TROUBLE. The vpmadt032 hardware echo can apparently only works in half-duplex with the TDM800 and 2400. There are LOTS of posts on this on various forums (including this one). It took me WEEKS to figure this out - mostly because digium and fonality kept sending me on snipe hunts suggesting the problem was with everything and anything OTHER than the hardware echo can on the TDM800. Digium needs to recall the vpmadt032 modules and refund everyone's hard-earned $$$$.

what I would like to know right now is how to disable the hardware echo can without physically having to remove it.

Chuck,

First, I apologize that you're having trouble with echo. It's one of the most frustrating challenges we all face. I'm also sorry for the delay in responding to your post here, but I was not notified of the reply by email and only found your post because someone told me about it.

As Digium announced over a year ago -- http://blogs.digium.com/2008/05/19/zaptel-project-being-renamed-t... -- there was a trademark conflict with another company over the name "Zaptel," and we cooperated with them to resolve the conflict by renaming that software to DAHDI.

The DAHDI drivers load firmware for the VPMADT032 that runs on its DSP. The firmware is updated periodically, and the DAHDI drivers are updated as well to make use of additional capabilities of the firmware. Just as Zaptel changed and improved before the name change, DAHDI has done so in the time since. You should not expect to see updates to Zaptel, nor are you able to run the latest VPMADT032 firmware using Zaptel -- the older drivers simply don't use the API required by newer firmware. This is not a bug, or what I'd agree is a "known issue."

Whether you charge your clients to install these (free, no-cost) upgrades is up to you. Asterisk and DAHDI are repackaged and sold in more ways than I track, but I know updating these drivers in Switchvox requires a couple of mouse clicks and a few minutes for installation and restart. Compiling from source on dozens of customer boxes would not be a fun approach, though I hear from plenty of folks that choose that route.

As always, I invite you and all other registered Digium customers to contact us if you need help with our products. You may not like our advice (upgrading DAHDI may be inconvenient for you or your customers), but it's probably less bothersome than living with echo on your calls. We want to help.

Thank you for your business. We'll continue to provide free improvements to DAHDI, the VPM firmware, and Asterisk for everyone.

Sincerely,
rm
--
Rod Montgomery
Director of Services, Digium, Inc.

Nonsense - What cost other than your time is the upgrade? THe "web GUI" based on FreePBX has supported DAHDI since v2.5. A simple switch in amportal needs to be turned on.

Zaptel can be disabled (don't forget to turn off modprobe) and DAHDI installed right on a 2.6 trixbox. I just upgraded a customer to Asterisk 1.4.29 and DAHDI 2.2 on a trixbox that started life as trix 2.4

DAHDI compatability settings are documented at freepbx.org

I don't want to just give you the setting, you need to know ahat it does.

Hello,

I'm a realy novice on linux and TRIXBOX, and I want know how can I do to install an configure my new card (DIGIUM TDM400) on my TRIXBOX server (2.6.2.3)

at first, I tried to use the same command ( setup-pstn) but I don't have the same resault you descript.

can some one help me; for I can explain the issues ??

I have the new echo cards.
Do I need to turn off the software echo cancellation off in the trixbox software?

My trixbox software was install with the cards inplace

Thanks
Randy