atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems Vertical Telephones & Systems SBX garbled vm messages

Has anybody had issues with garbled vm messages on the SBX? I have one customer that had garbled messages. Tech support had me upgrade the phone system and vm to the latest and greatest. A month later, the problem came back. Tech support had me replace the vm. Worked fine for 6 months. Now the garbled messages came back. Any thoughts?

I would say you need to check your CO line voltages. If calls come in too hot they may garble. If the incoming volume is too low they may garble, but I tend to thing the first is more likely. The way to test this is to use the VM send fuction and create some "internal" messages in the boxes that have had garbled messages. If you don't have a problem with internal messages, then you really need to start looking at the co line parameters.

Thanks for replying. Talked to tech support today and they are going to have me swap out the cabinet. Some messages are good and others sound good for 10-15 seconds, get garbled for 5-10 seconds and then sound good again. Very sporadic. Timing varies of garbling. I guess we'll see in a couple months if the problem comes back. I have plenty of SBX's out there and this is the only one that's had this issue.

I think that the fact that there is so much inconsistency with your problem pretty much rules out CO line parameters. It surprises me that ANY system in this day and age would not tolerate the inconsistencies between real CO lines and those that are derived by CLECs, CATV, etc.

Any system being marketed in today's environment should be able to adapt to these anomalies without having to replace hardware.

Please do keep us posted with regard to your progress. I'm forming a journal for these issues and would appreciate any input that you manage to have in your quest.

I agree with Ed. Just curious though. Are the bad messages only outside calls? Did you try the send message suggestion? It could still ba a bad control unit but I think it is good to "narrow down" the problem so to speak.

I have experieced garbled messages coming across voip lines. A line volume adjustment fixed that issue.

I would say default the system, and reprogram from scratch. I have seen garbage in SBX databases cause weird problems.

It seems to be only on calls from the outside. They are digital lines through the cable company. I have a tough time recreating it. They just save the bad ones for me to listen to. What's odd is on some, you'll hear like a faint reorder tone in the backgroung (like if you leave the SBX phone off the hook and not dial anything, along with the garbling). Again though, only for part of the message and then it'll sound good again. Swapping out the system tomorrow. It could easily be something corrupt, I've also had odd problems where only a default and program from scratch would fix it.....

Please let us know if the swap makes any difference.
Thanks!

I've had similar issues and other problems with VM. I think it has something to do with weird power surges/spikes/brownouts that get through the UPS. It's fairly random, but seems to happen on the some systems and not on others. I've done a complete reprogram and had it crop up.

Too high CO volume settings can also cause problems.

I've had same problem with one of our clients and had the vm replaced but came back after like 3 months or so...I also noticed that there's garbled characters on those people experiencing the garbled messages...but I thought clearing them out will fix it but it didn't. ...now I've replaced the BKSU and also the vmail to start with a fresh system again. Hopefully, that garbled messages will be gone for good.