[X Style (Pure) Android Development] flieswithhawks:
OK, so about these Nasty audio bugs...

First off I will say that I jumped ship to DU yesterday to see if these issues were present in their latest weekly build. (full wipe clean install) I made some calls and toggled speaker phone etc. to see if the bugs occurred and I can say that no echo or low volume cut happened and it seemed like I had found a solution for myself.

I literally tried every possible combination of things that I thought would relate to this audio bug nonsense. Things like toggling auto proximity sensor for in-call, enabling/disabling SELinux, installing Viper4Android etc. and a few other things I forget the moment. After changing things I would make a test call and the in-call audio was always fine no matter the combination of things I tried. Alas, as I continued to explore the customizations within the ROM I became disappointed with the lack of options/polish and feel it had to it when compared to RR. So here I have returned, determined to figure this issue out...

OK, clean slate this time. Complete wipe, fresh install of latest RR 5.7.3 boot into the ROM, ready to test it out. After literally several hours yesterday checking things out here is what I have concluded:

1- The speaker phone being used in a call no matter when or with what options/combination of things enabled/disabled results in low volume/echo and generally poor audio quality. ALWAYS.

2- THERE IS A SOLUTION FOR THIS! Using kernel audiutor in build.prop, the noise cancellation for a call must be DISABLED via changing - persist.audio.fluence.voicecall true

to

persist.audio.fluence.voicecall false

This FOR ME has fixed the speaker phone issues which I have determined result from the phone looping audio endlessly back into itself when the speaker phone is active. HOWEVER,

3- The volume level is a separate thing because after the bug occurrs in a phone call it spreads to the rest of the system. When playing music after this happens (Poweramp) at first it's very loud and distorted, then it goes to a much lower volume and stays at that level until the song is paused. The volume jumps back up again after resuming play and then cuts out again after a few seconds... VERY ANNOYING! But, if I play and then pause the music for a little while more before I start it again, it will "correct itself" to regular behavior and then works fine.

4- I tried to see if these issues were dependent on other options being enabled/disabled (same tests as listed above) and it seems like no matter what I did, the outcome was always the same in that the audio but for the speaker phone is SEPARATE from the system audio.

Conclusion - My patience has been worn thin with this but I have pressed on to champion the problems, albeit not in the ideal way. Despite my frustrations and several DAYS of testing things, I have got to where I am happy with the ROMs handling of these things now that I can fix them and am here to stay.:)

TL;DR - Audio bugs result from using speaker phone on RR with your Clark? Edit build.prop persist.audio.fluence.voicecall from true to false. Then play some music/other audio for a few seconds and see if the volume level is low. If it is, pause the source for a few seconds/close the app and then start playing audio again. This should squash these terrible audio bugs into the concrete and they shouldn't regenerate to bother you again until you reboot.

I hope someone else can profit from my pain regarding this...