Every once in a while I do a video with a pal of mine, singing and playing. Very basic: I put the phone in front of us and press play. I wonder, does anyone have a *simple* suggestion on how to improve the sound quality here (I´m using a Samsung Galaxy)? Images come out OK, I think, but the sound is crappy. (My need for simplicity is simply that I must understand it. Have very little digital insight.)
There is a built in EQ in the phone, but no matter how you change the settings it makes zero difference. I´m using an external Sony stereo microphone, but frankly it also makes no difference.
Is there an app that in a comprehensible way shows how you can improve your sound? I´ve searched but the net hasn´t given any answers this far. The only thing I´ve managed by way of improvement is to activate a sort of reverb that could be found in the "settings" section of the phone, but it´s a rather cold thing. Supposedly sounds like you´re in a "big concert hall", but I don´t know ...
Don't know of any apps. Do you have an example of a recording you could post of you playing into that phone? That might help people understand the problem better and give clearer advice.
Last Edited by Kingley on Aug 03, 2019 12:15 PM
The sound does not come from "the app" rather than the mic.
One thing that you can do is to aim away the amps from the phone. Loud sounds distort the mics sometimes.
This mics seems nice and easy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018KIJGU8/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=mic-reviews-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B018KIJGU8&linkId=74b625e91b8137b95c22e7c943d972bd ---------- Sorry for any misspell, english is not my first language.
I’ve never heard good sound recordings from a phone. I had a Rode mic for mine once, could not get anything worthwhile from it. And the output was very low. Sorry this is probably veering a bit off topic, but I cannot separate this thought from the memory of that experience; the main reason I unloaded that mic and got a dedicated recording device instead (which is another tale of disappointment for different reasons), was that I realised i could only use the phone for one thing at a time. Too often I’d be recording and find I needed to use the phone for some other purpose/s, sometimes a phone call. I know, quite unusual but it happens. The smartphone is an incredibly versatile tool but it’s still only 1 thing at a time, sometimes.
I agree about using a separate device. I use an old Zoom H1 and it does a good job. The mics are decent quality, but the important thing is that you can manually set the volume level, and low enough to avoid distortion.
Maybe some smartphones have a manual volume setting. The ones I've seen use automatic gain and it never gives a decent result.
I have a Samsung Galaxy 3 that I used to record my playing but the sound quality on playback is very poor so I stopped using it.
Last Edited by knight66 on Aug 04, 2019 5:46 AM
OK, thank you guys. It´s not that I had any hopes of a Heureka moment here, but it´s very tempting for a technophobe to just think that you could press play and get sound and image. (We have a Zoom available, but have not mastered it; also, how does one combine that one with video ...? Waay beyond us.)
@Kingley: This is one take we did, but discarded -- not only because of mistakes etc but because it sounds impossibly cold. (Also, our clever ... idea that Uncas should start singing unaccompanied falls flat when there´s no reverb at all -- a cappella singing requires reverb!) We have no higher ambition with this, evidently, but just something to put up every now and then on our Facebook page, as a sign that we´re alive and available.
I take full responsibility for the harmonica playing and sound (Joyo AS pedal straight into active speaker -- not very carefully fiddled with), as well as that the D harp on solo no 2 gets out of tune while I´m playing. Sorry.
There's not much wrong with the actual quality of the recorded sound. It's a fairly decent representation of sound. Like you say a little cold sounding, but that could be a combination of the room and maybe too much reverb on the harp amongst other things.. Also don't forget that the listener hears things differently to the player and that most of us are never really that happy with our recorded sound. We all hear our own mistakes and tend to compare the tonality with something we are trying in our minds to achieve sonically. My best advice upon hearing that recording would be to try it in different settings and with different things (reverb on the vocals and maybe less on the harp). Also maybe try to balance the sound of the instruments so they sound 'closer' (if that makes any sense). Aside from that really it's just a question of letting others hear it and taking any compliments/criticisms on the chin. Let the listeners reactions guide you and accept that a phone is never going to give you anywhere near a studio quality sound. I'd say overall it's certainly good enough sound quality for a Facebook video, or even a demo to get gigs.
Thank you för advice, Kingley. Reverb on the vocals, certainly. The annoying thing is that the phone picks up the room sound and thus dry vocals, before the processed (or whatever word). But that can probably be helped by raising the volume on tje eqipment. Less reverb on harp? Hm. Maybe I´m getting a slight case of aspect blindness (mutatis mutandis) here, but I´d sooner go for *more*. I´ll listen again w/ fresh ears. I´m not sure about "closer", but I´ll ponder it. We are both coming from one and the same speaker and I´m not sure I get how we´d get closer ...
But you are absolutely right that we tend to get a bit picky when it comes to sound, our own sounds. I´ll se if we can give this one another take in the near future.
The problem with adding more reverb to the harp or anything for that matter (at least in my experience) is that it can make it sound colder and more distant. Too much can make it sound mushy. People often think that more reverb (or any other effect for that matter) will solve their sound problem. When often it's the reverse that helps more. I'd suggest trying it both ways and then listening back to it objectively (employing a third fresh set of ears here can help a lot) to figure out which sounds best.
Recording is good considering your in a kitchen with a lot of hard flat surfaces.
Harp sound needs a little tweeking, but you got skills!
The best way to get good recordings on a smart phone is to use a seperate mic plugged into the phone with a good recording app. Small condenser mics work great and there are some great free apps for Android. Not sure about IOS?
Before I invested in a good Tascam recorder, I used an Olympus digital voice recorder that worked great. I think I paid $30 for it. It had two built in mics with an aux mic input, internal hard drive with eight folders and a flip up USB jack. The sound quality was impressive. I have several recordings using that device.
Last Edited by Harpaholic on Aug 04, 2019 11:56 AM
Good grief Martin, what's wrong with this recording!? It sounds like it was recorded in a kitchen...and it was. The recording kit is fine - I take it back about using a Zoom.
And you're always worrying about your harp kit and sound, that's fine too. As Kingley says, it may not be the exact sound you want, but that's another thing.
If you want better (and not sure what for, or what that is exactly) then you've have to use more than one mic, a multi-track recorder so you can mix it. And move out of the kitchen. Maybe you in the bathroom for some nice natural echo and you friend in the living room?
Last Edited by MindTheGap on Aug 05, 2019 3:34 AM
@Harpaholic: Thank you. Do you happen to remember one of those "good recording apps"? (I use Android.)
@MindTheGap: Well, som fuzziness on my part maybe, but I seen and heard people make simple videos like that and they have sounded just great. But I suspect they use separate voice and image recording devices.
The harp sound lacks a bit of depth, but that wasn´t any bigger worry since this was an off the cuff recording. Maybe I´ll use an amp next time, but this is a one room apartment and that puts some restraints on us -- and, yeah, maybe with me in the bathtub and Uncas out on the courtyard?
Thank you, Harpaholic. I should perhaps have emphasized more that I needed sound improvement on the *video* function on my android. If one settles for audio only it appears as if there are quite a few options.
Hey Martin, for what it's worth I thought that sounded good for a Galaxy Phone video recording. I haven't been that pleased with my efforts.
I have tried hooking up my Zoom H2n audio recorder into my Galaxy S7 phone to override the galaxy mic on the video recording but unfortunately it doesn't work. It does work on the inbuilt sound recorder app but that's no use as I might just as well use the Zoom direct for an audio only recording.
There is however something you can do to improve the sound on the video after your recording. I have been using a free download program called AoA Audio Extractor. You can drag a video into the program and convert it quickly to Wav. Next open up the Wav file in Audacity and add reverb or equalisation etc.,
Next open up a Video editing program, I use Windows live Movie Maker (came free with windows 7) and drag you video into it. Next drag your wav file into it and go to the audio editing part where you completely mute the audio from the video recording by moving the volume slider to the opposite side and you will now hear your newly improved sound wav file playing on your video. Save the video and job done.
Many thanks, Grey Owl! I knew from before that you are considerably more adept in the digital world than I, but I decided to give this a serious try. And lo and behold, after a couple of hours I sat there w/ a Movie Maker video w/ some reverb added! (Not very subtle, but as an experiment.) Then came the issue on how to upload this to Youtube, since YT, for some nefarious reason, won´t accept Movie Maker. My hair is already grey, so nothing changed there, but my conviction that there is a certain form of profound moral wickedness that walks the halls of the computer programing guys, that notion is even more solid. Somehow I made though, much to the chagrin of the Google agents. The problem now is how to recall this last step -- I did not take notes ...
But that is certainly no fault of yours, and once again, many thanks for your detailed guidance!
I'm pleased that the first part worked ok Martin. Yep, Computer idiosyncrasies are a pain and it's difficult to predict where the stumbling blocks will turn up as I found on my Audio player tutorial!
On a good day Youtube should accept Windows media player videos:)
On my version of Window Media Player you can upload vids direct to Youtube from within the program. I don't do this usually because of issues I've had in the past.
My method is as follows:-
Once you've created the finished video with your modified sound
Click on the top left icon then select 'save movie' from the drop down menu then click 'for computer'.
Give your movie a name on the drop down 'save movie window' and a location on your pc where you wish to store it. So you will have a 'yourmoviename'.wmv file.
Open up youtube and sign in and select 'upload' (my one has a little camera icon with a + on it). On the new drop down window you have a choice of finding the video file where you placed it on your pc or you can drag the file directly into the window where it will start uploading and that's it
You can ignore this next bit as it is a refinement.
Before you drag the file in, you can change the 'public view' option in the window to 'unlisted' so you can review the results privately for your test run.
It been a while since I recorded with my iPad but it does have a better mic than a cell phone. But I know what you mean. I record our band at practice with just the stock voice recorder on the phone so I can work on the new material during the week. I’ve found that if you put the phone into a beer cozy mic down it works as a windscreen. It takes out the highs from the harp and drums. Also don’t set it by your amp or the drums because that’s all you’ll hear on the recording.
Hey Martin, I'm too lazy to edit video or photos. Before smart phones took over as cameras I bought a Zoom H2 and a Kodak Zi8 pocket-sized video camera that has an external mic input. Then it's simple to shoot video with great sound and no editing. There must be such cameras still around. Mine still works great and even has a remote control for easy on/off a day a tripod mount that I use with a mic stand.
Last Edited by mr_so&so on Aug 28, 2019 8:23 PM
Success, but not efficient. Pixel 2>usb-c to trrs cable (comes with phone)>trs to trrs cable>Takstar SGC-598 Mic to a dedicated monitor for sound. Mic is about $25.00 Example below. It worked but again, not efficient. What I want is to press record and get a decent video of the whole show with my phone. I think I can simplify some of the set up. Harp rig is a couple pedals through the PA. I'll detail all the gear more if anyone is interested.
Last Edited by Littoral on Sep 02, 2019 6:25 AM
Martin, It's a cell phone with a $23 mic. That's it. It takes the right cables and the right mic placement, as in close to the monitor. Issues I solved were using a trs to trrs cable (a 3 ring to 2 ring 1/8" adapter) and finding a cheap mic with a little gain capacity, 10db. Issues I haven't solved are storage capacity, power consumption on the phone and having to deal with setting up a dedicated monitor for proper audio levels. I can fix all that except for storage capacity. Currently I can only get in a little over an hour. But that's one set more than ever before so hooray.
Last Edited by Littoral on Sep 03, 2019 7:31 AM
Thank you, Littoral. Maybe the fact that I´m a Swede comes into play a bit -- not only that we are famous for our thickness, but also that those abbreviations sound somewhat alien to my ears. But I get the general drift now, and once again, you got excellent sound there, as well as perfect video, so if I could achieve something like that I would be a happy camper.
Still, that Roland Go Mixer might be worth checking out. Not cheap, though.
Hey Martin, the Zoom is connected to the camera with a normal audio cable (male 1/8 inch connectors on each end) connecting the sound outout from the Zoom to an audio input port on the camera. The trick is finding a camera with an audio-in port. You just need to turn the Zoom on in standby mode, no need to hit record on it unless you want to, and it replaces the camera's built-in mic. No mixing or post processing required. Search this forum for a previous thread started by me called Virtual Front Porch for some example recordings using this setup.
Last Edited by mr_so&so on Sep 03, 2019 6:45 PM
