Sound deadening mat kills phone audio?

[EcoBeastCA]

I added full sound deadening to my truck's doors and back wall. It's 200 mil butyl/aluminum/foam mat and does a great job at deadening noise and improving stereo sound quality.

However, I've noticed lately that my phone seems to be suffering from very poor audio quality both in cellular AND data (i.e. FB messenger) calls, where it will very frequently break up and sound digitized. The fact it does it both on cellular and data is very perplexing to me, and the phone (Pixel 7 Pro) showing full LTE signal. If I get out of the vehicle, call quality is fine.

I thought maybe it's Bluetooth having problems but streaming audio has no issues at all. I tried moving my phone from the charge pad up to the dash to get it out of the possible influence of the sound mat, but it didn't make an improvement.

Just checking to see if anyone else has had a similar issue before I start thinking about having to replace the phone.

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[Buyer2021]

I thought maybe it's Bluetooth having problems but streaming audio has no issues at all.

That suggests to me the mat has nothing to do with your issue and the phone's selective signal quality problem appearing after the mat install is just coincidence.

Having said that, the telematics module, which bears on all these communications, is located on the back wall of the cab. I suppose it's possible that the mat (the AL layer in particular) might introduce issues if it was place near or over that module or any of the cables relating to its signal circuits. But my WAG is that's not the case.

Perhaps try pairing a borrowed / friend's phone to see if it suffers the problem, too?

 

[discothan]

Maybe a neighbor or a friend as a F150 similar to yours that you can sit in with your phone to see if there is a difference? Or worse case, go test this in a dealer's F150?

 

[Flash69]

I sound deadened my entire interior and have no issues with cellular or WiFi reception. I used Blackhole Mat and Blackhole Tile in all doors. I used Second Skin on the floors and back wall. My build thread on DIYMA shows everything if you want to compare.

https://www.diymobileaudio.com/threads/2022-f-150-platinum-rapid-red-5-0-sq-build.457939/

 

[amschind]

One option is to bypass the issue with a cell phone range booster with the antenna mounted outside the cab. Not the cheapest option, but you get a decent added benefit in addition to completely bypassing this problem.

 

[HammaMan]

Issue is unrelated to what you installed on walls, doors, etc... There's likely an aluminum foil layer in it for holding it all together and the truck is also aluminum. Now if they covered up / encapsulated the TCU, that could be an issue. Unclear where exactly the phone-to-APIM wireless connection takes place / wifi hotspot signal. I believe it's in the APIM itself so unless you've foiled over all of the dash/console parts, it shouldn't be related.

Running a signal meter on the phone may be able to help you diagnose a little bit as the wireless carplay / AA has a beacon and the wifi hotspot has another. Make sure they're not sitting on top of each other (frequency wise, you can change hotspot to 2.4ghz if they are -- wireless AA/caplay is one wifi radio, the hotspot another). While data comes via wifi, the phone to truck music / calls comes over bluetooth. If nothing was done in the dash, make sure the TCU on the back wall hasn't been covered over.

This is the TCU

 

[fordtruckman2003]

Try another phone
Put phone on speaker see if quality is bad
Sit in truck connected to another headset/ear buds and test quality

Pixel 8 Pro no issues.
Developer options enabled to set AVRCP to 1.6 but that shouldn't matter. Phone will switch around codec between calls and regular Bluetooth audio but every phone does this.

Do you have the broken 6-8 speaker system?
Lots of audio issues reported on that might not be your phone.

 

[EcoBeastCA]

Do you have the broken 6-8 speaker system?
Lots of audio issues reported on that might not be your phone.

Haha, yes.

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