Gemini 3.1 Flash Live Preview — persistent high-pitched / dial-up-like audio distortion

Gemini API
1

Hello,

I’m reporting a persistent audio-output issue with Gemini 3.1 Flash Live Preview in Google AI Studio Live.

Model:
gemini-3.1-flash-live-preview

Issue:
During Live conversations, the model’s voice output intermittently becomes heavily distorted and produces a high-pitched, glitchy sound resembling old dial-up modem noise. When this occurs, the speech becomes difficult or impossible to understand.

I have reproduced the issue under multiple conditions:

  • Multiple preset voices, including Leda
  • Arabic conversations
  • English conversations
  • Desktop/laptop
  • Mobile
  • Multiple separate Live sessions

Changing the selected voice does not resolve the issue.

The same behavior occurring across different devices, languages, voices, and sessions suggests that this may not be limited to a local audio-output configuration.

Date first observed:
31 August 2026

I have also captured a screen recording that clearly demonstrates the audio distortion and can provide the video if it would be useful for investigation.

I have already submitted the issue through the Google AI Studio “Send feedback” function.

Could you please confirm whether this is a known issue with gemini-3.1-flash-live-preview, and whether any recent backend/model updates could be related?

If there is a recommended workaround or alternative Live model to use temporarily, I would appreciate the guidance.

Thank you,
Hussain

2

I completely agree with you; the problem exists, and I thought it was the headset. It’s no longer usable, and it’s not just Arabic or English, but even German. It’s disheartening to learn that the site where I spend most of my time is now unusable.

3

Thanks for confirming. I also reproduced it across multiple devices, browsers, voices, and both Arabic and English. Interestingly, the saved/generated audio sounds clean — the distortion appears only during real-time Live playback.

4

We are also seeing the same behavior. Our testers reproduce it by saying “Ahhhh…I don’t know.” which results in the sound getting louder and louder to the point you have to hang up the call. We did not see this occur in 2.5 and I was able to narrow down that it seems to happen when you lower the temperature below about 0.2. If it is above this then it does not happen from our limited testing experience.

5

Google Native Audio 2.5 and 3.1 (Google Studio) sounds like ROADRUNNER off the cartoon through the call…

Seriously though

  1. Internal Servers
    I can report it’s happening with our internal web socket servers

Everything was working flawlessly before for weeks/months, and this was a production build. It’s now meeping/hooting.

I’ve had sales people lobbying me, a demo that happened to a customer had it in. I got it in the neck!

They experienced it, another engineer experienced it. All on different networks (home), and their own web clients. Tried two different servers (dev and production) same issue. Ruled out it was not our core server.

  1. Googles own hosted server / Gemini Studio AI

So I then went to google AI studio, clicked on the “try 3.1 Live API”. Started talking to that lovely lady…

Then I heard

MEEP…MEEP…MEEP.

  1. Conclusion

So 1) it’s not our servers, 2), its not our clients,

WORKING WITH :-

  1. Google Chrome (failure)
  2. IE (failure)
  3. Brave browser does the MEEP MEEP
  4. I tried turning off and on performance on Chrome - still the issue
  5. SHOCKINGLY : Opera has no problem - flawless

This app has been running fine without these beeps for a long time but now all of a sudden they are happening.

I am looking more into this as it never previously happened and i have several flavours of the web client, and they have never exhibited this issue.

So if you get beeps, meeps its a performance. It’s not our app, as it works even using Google’s Gemini Studio Web Client (same problem)

previous builds of chrome,
Version 152.0.7977.83 (Official Build) (64-bit)
and tested with this
Version 152.0.7977.83 (Official Build) (64-bit)

I can confirm I found the issue.
Version 151 of Chrome works without this problem, meaning Chromium engineers on 152 build have introduce the audio bug and it will effect people out there.

this has now been formally logged a chromium engine issue with the webapi so all you people who will bump into this and google engineers themselves, we’ve raised this as a bug on all your behalfs.

link below of the active issue

6

Any updates from Google?

7

Same problem, why Google don’t answer