[cisco-voip] Here's a weird IPCC Calabrio Supervisor Desktop issue for you - with Solution!

[Tim Reimers]

Platform - IPCC 7.01 , UCM 7.15

 

 

So we recently replaced some of our IPCC users PCs with new ones.

The new PCs use USB speakers, and only have a headset jack (not the
usual "line out" as well)

 

We found that the Supervisor Desktop application would -not- play audio
from monitored agents.

It'd act like a duck, look like a duck.... just no quack sounds
whatever...

 

Internet Explorer (Youtube, Pandora Radio, Mp3 files)  worked OK.

Media Player worked OK.

There are not CD players in these new PCs, so we couldn't do the ancient
old "CD audio" from the little stereo wiring from the CD player to the
motherboard test.

 

So we went down the usual roads -

-uninstall/reinstall Supervisor Desktop

-uninstall/reinstall the audio drivers.

- verify that the correct NIC was configured in Supervisor Desktop

- NICQ tests on the Supervisor Desktop 

- Wireshark showed the packets arriving from the agent's phone to the
supervisor's PC.

 

Obviously, the RTP audio stream was making it to the PC, and Supervisor
Desktop was not whimpering about not getting audio from the remote
agent.

(we've all seen that before, the SD client has a dialog box that pops up
if it doesn't hear audio)

 

So in a last minute moment of utter inspiration, I thought maybe the
audio was just way too low in the USB speakers for some reason.

 

I plugged in a headset.

Wham! audio  -- nice and loud.

 

I went and got a set of traditional good old known-to-always-work PC
speakers, complete with 1/8" stereo plug and AC power cord.

Problem solved!

USB speakers do not work with Supervisor Desktop! 

 

It turns out that Cisco's (or Calabrio's) Supervisor Desktop evidently
violates some API programming standard with respect to how to interact
with the soundcard driver.

 

Most software obediently simply passes it's audio to the front-end of
the sound card driver, and thus, you get audio out of whatever output
device is attached, whether that's a USB speaker set or a set of regular
headphones or 1/8" jack traditional PC speakers.

IE and Media Player and VLC evidently do this quite well, because their
audio worked every time.

 

The Supervisor Desktop application evidently BYPASSES the Windows audio
driver, and talks directly to the audio hardware, and looks for the
usual "line out" or "headphone out" jack.

So if you have a set of USB speakers connected, all other applications
_correctly_  talk only to the Windows audio driver and subsystem, and
then the Windows driver and sound configuration uses the USB speakers as
the output device

And thusly any application (Internet Explorer, Media Player, various
CD/DVD audio playing software like VLC, etc) - which all send their
stream to the Windows audio subsystem

end up with their audio coming out the USB speakers...

 

But, the Supervisor Desktop application however, since it's trying to
talk directly to the audio chip, sees the headphone/Line output buss and
is talking to a 1/8" jack with nothing attached to it.

You can guess what the result is then.....

 

The minute I unplugged the USB speakers and plugged in a regular set of
traditional 1/8" speakers, the Windows audio subsystem switched the
output to them, and YouTube, CDs, etc 

all played through the speakers... and so did Supervisor Desktop....

 

If Supervisor Desktop application had just sent it's audio stream to the
Windows audio driver, we never would have had this problem.....  ;-)

 

Maybe Cisco will make this one an official bug.

 

 

I'm curious if anyone out there has IPCC 8.X and wants to try this and
see if the Supervisor Desktop shipping from Calabrio 

for IPCC version 8 has this same bug...

 

 

 

 

Thanks,  Tim

 

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