Meraki Camera Audio Quality

[MCITDept]

We have several of the MV cameras, MV32, and MV12W.  All our camera's audio quality is pretty bad.  You can't understand what people are saying very easy, you have to listen really hard.  They all sound muffled and even almost distorted.  We have had to reboot all the cameras, due to large amounts of distortion, this cleared up the distortion mostly, but you still can't understand what people are saying really.  Then I listened to some of our Ubiquiti cameras, they sound so much better than the Meraki's and are a fraction of the price!  I could not believe the difference!

My question is this, do others also have the poor audio quality, and hard to understand what people are saying?  I have not found anyway to change the audio settings other than you either have it on or off.  At this point I am very displeased in the audio, especially after hearing audio on other brands of cameras at much cheaper prices. 

[NolanHerring]

I had terrible audio quality as well on an MV72 at home, so I performed a factory reset, and it fixed the issue so I can actually understand what someone is saying. Before though it was terribad.

[MCITDept]

OK, I will try that and see if it helps, I hope so, these are some pretty nice cameras, but not much good if you can't understand the audio.  Will post back and let you know, once we have a chance to do this, will likely be tomorrow.  

[MCITDept]

Well after we reset the camera, it has not really helped the audio much if any.  This particular camera may have an issue with the audio, we have contacted support, they had us try a few things, to no avail, they have now give us an RMA on the camera, so we will just return this one.  However we still have several more that are having bad audio issues as well, but not as bad as the first cam mentioned. 

It sounds like the gain on the audio tries to ramp up to fast and thus any sound made sort of causes the level to fluctuate, and makes it sound pretty odd, hard to understand and almost echo some.  I am going to try and reset the others as we can get to them.

Thanks for the info.

[jetaylor]

I also have this issue with our MV12, MV32 and MV72's. I'm not sure what the deal is but when you power cycle them the audio issue will go away for a few weeks and randomly return. And it's not cabling or firmware issues either. I have spoken with support about it and sometimes you get "upgrade the firmware" and sometimes it's a no go on a resolution.

All in all, recorded Audio and video is the same so it's not just a live playback issue. I honestly think its a camera microphone quality control issue. Unless they are able to correct them with firmware im not sure what to do.

[jetaylor]

Just in case you are having the Audio issues still. MV Firmware 4.5 Corrected the audio issues from 4.0 and below. Support stated that they would continue to monitor my case and for me to view for audio issues on any new footage. Just in case, upgrade yours to 4.5 and it should resolve your audio issues.

-Jonathon

[MCITDept]

We are still having the bad audio issue, so I will make sure to upgrade to the new firmware and check the audio out again at that point.  It will be next week before I can get that done though, thanks for letting me know about this fix, I am looking forward to it, and hope it fixes ours as well.

Dave

[jetaylor]

I hope you have the same results as i did. Support is keeping my ticket open to track any potential bugs, so if i see any i'll post back here. Keep an eye on the firmware notes as some will not allow you to roll back assuming you are on the low 3.0's. Let me know how yours pan out!

-Jonathon

[MCITDept]

Well, sad to report that it has not really changed much at all.  We just had an incident at a location, that required us to download the video and audio for, once the owner saw and heard this video, we were basically told to replace this trash with something we can use.  You could hardly hear and make out any of the audio. 

The people in the video were standing about 15 to 20 feet from the camera, the audio was so muffled it was useless.  I have other cameras, that are much much cheaper, and the audio is much much better!  This is what is so crazy, you would think that Cisco would have the best audio, not the worst. 

At this point, I will not be purchasing any more of these cameras, and would return the ones we have if that were possible.  I am really disappointed in the performance of these high cost cameras.  I can only hope they can fix this in other software updates. 

I will be reporting this to support and trying to figure out if something is wrong with the cameras I have, hopefully they can help some way.  I may try to post a comparison of what we are seeing if that may be possible soon.  Thanks for all your help!

[NolanHerring]

Thanks for the feedback @MCITDept 

It's for sure not just you. I have an MV72 and its audio is terrible. I have a $100 Arlo camera that works better, like way better.    >.<

[jetaylor]

Just curious,

Do you have the MV12 or the MV12WE? I think i've actually figure out what the cause might be. Ill work on getting pictures of my camera to explain. 

[MCITDept]

We have MV32, MV12W, and MV22HW cameras, all of them seem to have issues with audio.  So I think a big part of this problem, must be software, or programming somehow.  the audio sounds so muffled, it is very hard to understand what anyone is saying. 

If I had an EQ to adjust in the audio, it's like you could make it sound better, just add some high end, and pull out a little mid frequencies, and it would be much better.  However, no way to adjust it.  Please let me know what you have found, would love to fix this issue.  Thanks

[Banfield75]

Why don´t ju just take down one of the "bad" camera and put in on the desk. Uppgrade to 4.7 and reset? Try again. the issue still there? Create a case and demand them to fix it with a software update or send replacement unit. If replacment helps. Demand to change all of them.

[BlakeRichardson]

@Banfield75  The camera has been replaced as he mentioned and fault still persists.