With a smartphone in your pocket, you’ll always have a video and audio recorder available. Capturing audio on your phone can help you conduct interviews, create a spontaneous podcast, record a lecture, or greatly expand your home audio library. Read more on appslikethese.
In all of these scenarios, poor audio quality can derail your efforts. You might miss words or phrases if you’re trying to transcribe an interview. If you’re sharing music with buddies, listeners will be disappointed by the low volume or annoying background noise. The same goes for filming videos – if you don’t want distorted sounds to ruin your recordings or edited clips, make quality audio.
That doesn’t mean you have to carry around a full-fledged sound studio. A few tweaks can make a big difference in your phone’s ability to capture high-quality audio. Just install a few well-chosen add-ons and buy (if necessary) a portable microphone.
Next, we’ll look at the apps and gadgets you’ll need.
The basics of a sound recording
If you can’t capture good audio, recording will be a waste of time.
Smartphones don’t have fancy built-in microphones. But even before you start downloading apps and buying external devices, there are a few steps you can take to improve the quality of your incoming audio stream.
First of all:
- Find out where your phone’s microphones are located. They are usually located on the bottom of the phone where you talk and next to the cameras;
- make sure that nothing (your fingers or other attributes) is obstructing or covering these inputs while you are shooting;
- it is important to consider your surroundings, in order to get a quality audio track;
- Pay attention to the environment in which you are recording. Careful tuning will help reduce interference, such as wind noise or cars in the background. You won’t often have the opportunity or time to choose where the recording will take place. But if you do, try to improve the acoustics – by amplifying the sounds you want to record and minimizing the ones you don’t want. Even something as simple as getting close to your recording subject can make your audio flow much better than at a distance;
- Before you start recording on your smartphone, disconnect your device from the mobile network or set it to “airplane mode.” This will avoid interrupting or “messing up” your recording with the sounds of a new message ping, vibrations from an incoming phone call, etc.
Given the hardware limitations of your device’s microphone, even a specialized recording program won’t be able to do the incredible. However, some audio apps do offer valuable settings that you can adjust to improve the quality of your recording.
Apps and settings
iOS devices
On iOS, the built-in Voice Memo app can capture excellent audio.
Install the Voice Record Pro app from Dayana Networks Ltd for more control. It provides a home screen where you can adjust various settings. A gain-controlled mixer to minimize distortion or increase the sampling rate, bit rate, and coding quality improves the accuracy of the final recording.
Voice Recorder & Audio Editor should also be noted. This utility won’t give as much control over the output format as Voice Record Pro, but it’s easy to use and does a great job of managing multiple recordings. The app will also translate audio into text… if you’re willing to pay some money.
Android devices
Titanium Recorder is one of the most comprehensive audio capture solutions available. Here you can adjust the sample rate, bit rate, and gain to capture as much detail as possible for audio recording.
Another great option is Recforge II which integrates user controls and automatic settings. With this app, you can adjust the final file format, bit rate. The app also lets you decide whether audio should be recorded through all of your device’s microphones or just one of them. The software itself can automatically control the gain settings.
Customize your device and enjoy high-quality audio tracks recorded on your phone!
