Plantronics Voyager 8200 UC - Sidetone

[Anonymous]

Hello together,

I have just received a headset Plantronics Voyager 8200 UC. In this new version (probably firmware) there is a sidetone in the headset with weird electro-sound with a little delay which is absolutely irritating me. I cannot focus on the phone call and I have a headaches after some time because of it. Unfortunately, in the app Plantronics Hub there is no possibility to turn off the sidetone. There is only low / medium / high settings. My colleagues bought the same headset e.g. 2 years ago and they do not have the sidetone active at all - they have firmware version 115. Is there any way to turn it off of downgrade the firmware? I cannot use this headset with this feature and there is more people in the company and on the internet complaining about it. I don't understand why there is no possibility to set it off for such a headset for such a money.

Thank you for your support.

[SteffenBaierUK]

Hello @Griffen 

Welcome to the Poly Community.

Can you contact headset.helpline@poly.com ?

Please ensure to provide some feedback if this reply has helped you so other users can profit from your experience.

Best Regards

Steffen Baier

[Anonymous]

Hello,

We have find out that sidetone is also in older firmware. Customer service was not able to help me so far. Unfortunately, this headset is not very useful because of no possibility to turn off sidetone, especially in some louder environment because when you call, the noise is duplicated and played in the headset during a call because of sidetone. This has negative effect because if you are in louder environment and you do not hear so well, you hear much worse just because of sidetone feature effect which is in some cases contra productive. Hopefully, if we will be lucky, Poly will hear the customers and add them possibility to make their choice depending on customer preferences and environment where they use their product.

Just an example - it is like you have a basic car which has a feature that plays in the interior by speakers sound of super sport - just for better feeling. Unfortunately, manufacturer makes only possibility to set the noise of super sport to low / medium / high without any possibility to turn it off. Does this make sense? I don't think so..

[bhupender2]

Hello @Griffen,

Welcome to Poly Community.

I have noticed that you are referring to very old fw 115 in your original message which was initial release and since then we have improved features and fixed a lots of bugs in last couple of years. And you have mentioned the issue noticed with new fw as well.

The last firmware update was rolled out in May 2021 and officially we never got to any point where such behavior was reported by users after the release of latest fw. Otherwise our engineering would have introduced a fix by now. Many times it becomes difficult to understand if issue is due to the user environment or because of the headset itself. So I am interested to know if below steps were tried under your support ticket:

- Have you tried testing it with mobile devices and did you noticed the issue there too?
- What about disabling the sidetone under your PC's sound settings?

- What about enabling or disabling sound enhancements to eliminate it is not due to the application settings which is running on the computer?
- Also it will be interesting to know if the issue was faced when ANC feature was off or on? Basically, do you notice issue with calls and multimedia both or just with calls only?

- disable exclusive mode under sound settings on Windows OS and what is the outcome?

- What about testing the headset on another PC and see if it works fine there?

- and issue was noticed while headset was paired with BT600/BT700 USB adapter to your computer?

It is always better to provide logs and video or audio recording of issue when raising support ticket with our technical support.

Please remember, if you see a post that helped you, and it answers your question, please mark it as an "Accept as Solution".

The title Admin is a community setting and does not reflect my role. I am just a simple volunteer in the community like everybody else. This forum replies or post is based upon my personal experience and does not reflect the opinion or view of my employer. Poly employee participation within this community is not mandatory and any post or FAQ article provided by myself is done either during my working hours or outside working hours, in my private time, and may be answered on weekends, bank holidays or personal holidays.

[Anonymous]

Hello @bhupender,

Thank you for your answer. Unfortunately, I have upgraded the FW to the latest version and it did not help. I find out that it is feature which cannot be turned off, which is pretty annyoing and makes this headset unusable in our testing center because of surrounding noise.

[bhupender2]

Hello @Griffen,

The issue you have presented is something we are not aware of and we always urge our customers to log a ticket and supply logs or videos or any other evidence to validate their point and if we are able to reproduce the same then it can certainly be pushed to see if this is something can be fixed or working as designed. We suggest you to re-open your Poly technical support ticket and provide more evidence as we are always interested to know what are the challenges being faced by our customers and how we can use these opportunities to assist them. If you are unable to get it fixed (assuming it is a headset side issue) then at least you will be able to know the reason why it might be happening in your setup.

Please remember, if you see a post that helped you, and it answers your question, please mark it as an "Accept as Solution".
 
The title Admin is a community setting and does not reflect my role. I am just a simple volunteer in the community like everybody else. This forum replies or post is based upon my personal experience and does not reflect the opinion or view of my employer. Poly employee participation within this community is not mandatory and any post or FAQ article provided by myself is done either during my working hours or outside working hours, in my private time, and may be answered on weekends, bank holidays or personal holidays.

[Anonymous]

Hello @bhupender,

I have already created a ticket (08244937) and discussed this issue with technical support on higher level. I have also attached an evidence (video/sound record) of this issue. It was told that sidetone is the feature which is supposed to be present and there will be no possibility to turn it off eventhough it makes the headset unusable in louder environment. Regarding to Poly support, this headset is intended to be used in office only. All in all, it is a pity that it is like that, because with sidetone turned off, this headset would be really great when used in loud environment.

You can download this sound record under the link below (unfortunately the format cannot be uploaded on youtube or different platform). In the video record you can see what sidetone does at low settings option does when calling (sound is captured as headset output which is played during the call to your headset - you don't hear the other side very well because of sidetone). You can see yourself that this headset cannot be recommended unless you work in office or some environment, where there is really quiet.

Plantronics Voyager 8200 UC sidetone in louder environment sound record

Thank you and wish you to have a nice day.

[bhupender2]

Hello @Griffen,

Whenever designing new products, every manufacturer tries to strike a balance between features vs usage and there will always be trade offs.

I have looked at the ticket and I see that you wish to find a way to completely remove the sidetone on V8200UC headset as per your convenience since it is not suiting your work purpose/environment. Sadly this is not how we had imagined the product to work when it was designed. Sidetone is useful in avoiding listening fatigue when users are on calls for long hours. It is clearly explained in our KB link here.

So your request was declined since sidetone will come handy in open area offices. So we advise you to share your feedback in our ticketing system as a feature request and may be when designing new products we may consider such feedback's. You can use below email to share feedback:

headset.helpline@poly.com

Please remember, if you see a post that helped you, and it answers your question, please mark it as an "Accept as Solution".
 
The title Admin is a community setting and does not reflect my role. I am just a simple volunteer in the community like everybody else. This forum replies or post is based upon my personal experience and does not reflect the opinion or view of my employer. Poly employee participation within this community is not mandatory and any post or FAQ article provided by myself is done either during my working hours or outside working hours, in my private time, and may be answered on weekends, bank holidays or personal holidays.