Recording with my Phone

[marnold***]

Hey kids! I've been messing around with my new HTC Desire. I've been trying to use it to record my guitar playing. It comes with a voice recording app, but the app only records at 8000Hz and uses the AMR file format. There is a program called Tape Machine that will record up to 44.1KHz and can save in WAV, FLAC, or Ogg Vorbis. The free version limits the clips to 1 minute and can't save in Ogg. So for this test I had it save in WAV and I used Audacity to trim it and convert it to an MP3. Let me know what you think!

In My Dreams (oh no, not again!) phone test

I think it does a better job of capturing the true sound of my amph than my camera does. Unfortunately, it's also picking up all the string noise. I can probably work around that. The phone was set up about 3.5' away, somewhat off axis. The noise making chain was as follows:

Rev. Rawk->DK2M->Thesis 96 OD->DD-6->JCA20H

[Eric***]

Cool! Sounded pretty life-like, though, as you say, there was a lot of strumming that came through too. I personally find that kind of annoying with electric guitar recordings, but I know you don't like it either.

Good start on recording and nice playing!

[marnold***]

I've got a little table in my office that I put the phone on. I was sitting to the left of it. My amph was to the right. I've got enough cord that I can get behind the phone and less likely to be picked up by the mic. The only good thing about that plinking is that you can tell that I'm actually playing it

[bcdon***]

Sounds very good, and nice song selection!

[Jimi75]

I am surprised by the quality. It sounds very dynamic and one can really feel the touch you give it while playing. Süper cool and definitely a great tool to capture ideas on the fly!

[Ch0jin]

Sounded cool for a phone recording! I've been doing the same thing since I got my iPhone a while back. I'm just using the built in voice recorder app. Great for "taking notes" musically speaking when jamming.

[Algonquin]

That sounded really good Rev!
What an awesome way to do quick and dirty recordings, and have decent sound quality.

Puts my little phone to shame

[jpfeifer]

Cool idea! I haven't tried to record any audio on my phone yet. I have the HTC MyTouch 4G. It makes sense that your Android phone records in the AMR audio format since this is the codec that's used for alot of mobile voice recording, and telephony, etc. The company that I work for created the mutlimedia software for Android that is used for audio/video playback and recording. We didn't make this recording app but that app is using our multimedia subsystem. I'm not certain if there are other audio codec formats it might support since AMR is the most common one for recording voice.
--Jim

[SuperSwede]

Hey Rev thats a great sounding guitar tone! Your phone seems to have a really good mic.