Database Users

[Q] Video Camera Mic Sensitivity?

Hi everyone,
I've had my Vibrant with me at a local music festival this weekend, and thought it would be a fantastic time to exercise the HD video capture. Unfortunately, every single video I've taken has had such terrible audio that it's unwatchable. I kept digging around in camera settings but found that there's no way to adjust the mic sensitivity. Anyone else have a similar experience or any idea of a workaround?

In my experience the Vibrant's got excellent mic sensitivity and the sound quality is even quite good. Unfortunately, this means that things like concerts are going to be distorted. I've actually seen very few video cameras that can properly record a live concert, much less ANY cell phone.

I absolutely understand that recording a live concert through a microphone designed around voice for telephony is not going to be in any way, shape or form, ideal. I feel like the Vibrant could do better. I just wonder if it's something that could be corrected for in software, if it's a hardware limitation, or if it's just my particular unit. My dad was also with me at the festival, and recorded the same shows using my old Blackberry 9700. The Blackberry did a markedly better job.. It's not what I would call good by any means, but the video isn't intolerable to watch for memory's sake. I just find it frustrating since the phone takes such incredible video. I agree that it does very well in low volume situations, and I absolutely love the phone overall.
I have a couple of comparison example videos on Youtube from the festival but due to my new user status I can't post a link to them. PM me if you're interested.

I also took my phone to a trance festival, the image is amazing but the sound is rubbish. I was also standing very close to the speakers so I don't really blame the mic since it's not really built to handle such a strong volume input.
If there is a possible way to fix it software wise that would be great, but I'm no that optimistic about the chance it's fixable that way.

I agree, the sound just pops... Same song recorded by the og droid was MUCH BETTER... of course my video LOOKED amazing.

I agree my wife and I recently went to the Honda Civic Tour. I used my Vibrant while a friend used one of those little flip HD cameras. We both got the same picture quality however, her sound was amazing. The thing I find funny is those cameras only cost like $249.
Sent from my Samsung Vibrant using the XDA app.

TGA_Gunnman talks about the same thing here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=734515
Though doesn't say exactly which one of the settings is what adjusts the mic gain.
I too would be very greatful to know how to turn the thing down.
-Greg

Audio recording sounds awful

Haven't got the G2 yet, but after browsing through youtube for some video test samples, I found that the audio is terrible. I currently have a Nexus 4 and it too has terrible audio recording. You know what? I think they are the same since both 1) sound starts okay, but, after one second, sound starts getting distorted and 2) distortion sounds like your in a fish bowl.
Obvious sample of G2 mic distortion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRM3DJ4tLMQ
Nexus 4 sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f0b2hQZ9Yk
I might have been able to forgive the N4 because of its price, but its quite disappointing for premium priced phone as a G2.

Was that even using up to date software or pre-release? We dont know.
I think the video sound is fine.
Also, considering you do not have the device I would hold opinions until you have your own hands on and can then give your opinion.

Too many variables in this video. Maybe settings were or weren't ticked. Seemed very loud etc.

Is the audio when recording and shooting video fixed?

The S4 and Note 3 have this issue, random and quite annoying popping when recording audio. I was really disappointed when I heard it on the Note 3! Hopefully it has been fixed on the S5!
Can anyone confirm whether or not it's there?

popping? my s4 never had any pops. it recorded amazing audio.
Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk

cpufrost said:
The S4 and Note 3 have this issue, random and quite annoying popping when recording audio. I was really disappointed when I heard it on the Note 3! Hopefully it has been fixed on the S5!
Can anyone confirm whether or not it's there?
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We'll see when I get mine. I'll let you know. But I think, it'll not be there for some S4 and Note 3, there's no popping when they record.

I've had numerous S4 and Note III samples through my hands and they have this issue. It's not an isolated issue. My Note II, HTC One, G2, iPhone 3/4/5s etc. have no such issues whatsoever. Normally I record video and audio separately but the argument (the best camera is the one you have with you) applies to a cell phone to capture things as they happen, unplanned. It's annoying to have these sounds in the audio.

cpufrost said:
The S4 and Note 3 have this issue, random and quite annoying popping when recording audio. I was really disappointed when I heard it on the Note 3! Hopefully it has been fixed on the S5!
Can anyone confirm whether or not it's there?
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Click to collapse
Do you have an example of the issue?

weird i never experienced such thing on s3, n2, s4..

like I said, I've recorded plenty of guitar videos with my s4, through a Marshall dsl100 stack, which is loud and bassy, and it never ever ever had a problem with audio. it was always so clear and detailed, albeit only 128kbps. my g2 has that horrible underwater wishy-washy sound that makes the video camera unusable. I've never once seen audio artifacting on the s4. I had the snapdragon version, maybe you had the exynos?
Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk

my audio was terrible on my S3 when recording video at festivals/concerts...hope this is fixed on the S5...everyone i know that has iPhones has no issue recording loud audio.

jayochs said:
like I said, I've recorded plenty of guitar videos with my s4, through a Marshall dsl100 stack, which is loud and bassy, and it never ever ever had a problem with audio. it was always so clear and detailed, albeit only 128kbps. my g2 has that horrible underwater wishy-washy sound that makes the video camera unusable. I've never once seen audio artifacting on the s4. I had the snapdragon version, maybe you had the exynos?
Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk
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Yes the problem is not with loud music like other devices which hard clip especially on kick drum hits...
This popping noise is most common when it's very quiet like recording at night with just the crickets outside...
And yes the audio was completely unusable on the G2 for me as well, if you recorded video in a loud cafe, no problem. But as soon as you went into a quiet area the gain levelers started getting really confused and there was all kinds of problems with sound. Ashame too since its camera (G2) was so nice...
Back to the S5, I have one in hand and while I have not put it through the gears my preliminary findings reveal a completely changed recording from the S4/Note3 hardware. The AGC does tend to bring up the levels higher when ambient sound changes but at least there's no nasty pops. The pops on the S4/Note3 can be removed with a click/decrackle plugin on most DAW software but they shouldn't be in there in the first place. This looks promising.
The video low light performance looks very good, I was shining a focused down aspheric torch (flashlight) around the pasture at long range and the screen was 100% black except where the beam was hitting objects at hundreds of yards away (barn, trees, etc.) and the detail looked shockingly good! I viewed the video on my Macbook Pro w/ retina display so it's a valid test.
Have not tried to see if it's IR filtered. Tonight we'll have the burn barrels going, that's the best IR test I know of without taking it to the lab.
These processors are so powerful it would be nice if they gave us the option of lossless audio recording and even a RAW photo option, although these tiny sensors would need a LOT of post processing to make the images useable. Still, however I always find that RAW+ Photoshop CS6 post processing looks better than the camera's aggressive post processing tuned for speed and convenience. With a 128GB microSD card, RAW+JPG would be fine.
BoneXDA said:
Do you have an example of the issue?
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This is not me/my video, but this is exactly how it sounds. Both the S4 and Note3 do the same exact thing!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngwTBJ5ew08
pizzlewizzle said:
my audio was terrible on my S3 when recording video at festivals/concerts...hope this is fixed on the S5...everyone i know that has iPhones has no issue recording loud audio.
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Yep, I have several concerts recorded in 2012 and the audio clips worse than these kids with their pyramid amp powered systems playing hip hop with the bass turned to 11!
That's why I always record audio and video on separate devices. They won't allow a real camera (no cams with removable lenses that is!) in most venues...

I was at a gig on Friday night and sadly all my videos have distorted sound quality. Issue stll exists..
Sent from my SM-G900I using xda app-developers app

I'm just back from a gig, i took a vid it seems fine on the phone a little blown out, but then again i was pretty near the speakers.

prot- said:
I was at a gig on Friday night and sadly all my videos have distorted sound quality. Issue stll exists..
Sent from my SM-G900I using xda app-developers app
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Yep, common issue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka0Oa4HYr6Y

I can confirm the popping is present in my unit too. Had it on S4 as well. It tends to occur less when the sound is turned to minimum while recording.
Sent from my SM-G900F using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Audio quality when recording video (especially very loud environments)?

I'm just comparing this to the One M8 which is my current phone, and to be honest this is almost as good, if not better than the M8 is almost all aspects. One thing which I'm curious about though, which is very under-reported in all media and all reviews, is how the audio quality is when recording very loud things during video recording. To me, there are only 3 phones which are capable of recording things like concerts, street music performances or other really loud things and not have the audio quality make you cringe - The Nokia 808, Nokia 1020 and the One/One M8. Those phones have special microphones which make recording things like music concerts absolutely possible without the sound distorting to a horrible degree.
So how is the Z3 in this respect? The Z2 was just as bad as any other phone other than the 3 I listed above, so I expect the Z3 is just as bad, but I'd like to find a definitive answer before passing judgement.

I GOT A Z2 AND WHEN I RECORD VIDEOS IN THE CLUB ( VERY LOUD BOOM) i use http://www.sonymobile.com/global-en/products/accessories/stereo-microphone-stm10/ and sound is better than any phone out there now if u try without it forget it bad hopefully it would work on the z3

Is the audio quality only bad with loud music /loud noise?? I wouldnt expect a camera phone to record a video at a concert with high quality audio to be fair but would be awesome if it could

To be honest man, with z2 forget about recording at really loud concerts, they somehow ****ed up software-wise recording mic gain...

I would love an answer to this as well...I'm excited for this device to be available stateside. I'm coming from owning galaxy phones since the SII and I would like a change. All the galaxy phones I've had were terrible at recording in very loud environments. My girlfriend's Iphone would do great.

[kEkA] said:
To be honest man, with z2 forget about recording at really loud concerts, they somehow ****ed up software-wise recording mic gain...
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almost any android sounds bad in loud environments( htc one m8 sounds decent) thats why sony came out the smp10 or whatever the name is for it using that microphone connect it to ur z2 sounds is amazing i show u i recorded this at a erasure concert http://youtu.be/Jj14G_-F24k and this one is in a club LOUD 4K btw http://youtu.be/4YRAmzn-APo all of those video were recorded using a z2 this one with a lumia 1520 http://youtu.be/5KVPxgIMwQU

Wondering about this one as well, read that the Z3 actually has different recording modes for audio including a concert one so it might actually finally be addressed! Usually the sensitivity is way too high for concerts with phones... But I haven't actually been able to find any results. Had the Lumia930 (and 920) which were also excellent for concerts...
And getting additional mics for me isn't really an option unfortunately...
Looked up the link: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=55458948&postcount=41

Yes, three audio recording modes now and auto. Not yet tried video in a loud environment, but have to assume it's better than the Z2 (not hard).

Smeghead_ said:
I'm just comparing this to the One M8 which is my current phone, and to be honest this is almost as good, if not better than the M8 is almost all aspects. One thing which I'm curious about though, which is very under-reported in all media and all reviews, is how the audio quality is when recording very loud things during video recording. To me, there are only 3 phones which are capable of recording things like concerts, street music performances or other really loud things and not have the audio quality make you cringe - The Nokia 808, Nokia 1020 and the One/One M8. Those phones have special microphones which make recording things like music concerts absolutely possible without the sound distorting to a horrible degree.
So how is the Z3 in this respect? The Z2 was just as bad as any other phone other than the 3 I listed above, so I expect the Z3 is just as bad, but I'd like to find a definitive answer before passing judgement.
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Lol. Didn't you know htc had to change there audio capture setup as they copied a patent by nokia so only early htc one phones were good at capturing loud music. Htc had to revise mics and capture of audio got worst with newer models.
http://www.dailytech.com/Nokia+Wins...+to+Sink+Struggling+Handsets/article30403.htm

ipmanwck said:
Lol. Didn't you know htc had to change there audio capture setup as they copied a patent by nokia so only early htc one phones were good at capturing loud music. Htc had to revise mics and capture of audio got worst with newer models.
http://www.dailytech.com/Nokia+Wins...+to+Sink+Struggling+Handsets/article30403.htm
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I thought HTC eventually came to some sort of agreement with Nokia and it's all been sorted now?
I know the LG G3 made a big deal of recording in loud environments, and when I tested video recording on that earlier in the year, I noticed it's extremely directional too,
I can only hope Sony has improved things massively, to have even added a menu option to let you choose.

ajftl said:
almost any android sounds bad in loud environments( htc one m8 sounds decent) thats why sony came out the smp10 or whatever the name is for it using that microphone connect it to ur z2 sounds is amazing i show u i recorded this at a erasure concert http://youtu.be/Jj14G_-F24k and this one is in a club LOUD 4K btw http://youtu.be/4YRAmzn-APo all of those video were recorded using a z2 this one with a lumia 1520 http://youtu.be/5KVPxgIMwQU
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I am sure that there is a way to fix that,
Few days ago I've been in a very very loud place, in a club. I wanted to send some recordings and since that person didn't have viber I did it via facebook messenger, I was more then surprised how good it recorded, and it made think that theres something wrong with software they are making, with the mic gain, but not with the OS or hardware itself.
I can't wait for someone to post their impressions of z3 in loud place.
I'm only gonna be sad that I won't be changing my z2 in next one or two years, which is perfect for me in any way, if z3 proves to be better and audio recording.

I would this weekend. I got a z3 in my hands I would try with and without the smp10

Don't forget to inform us please, if its gonna be positive im gonna think of selling z2 and getting z3 compact then.

Blaalad12 said:
Is the audio quality only bad with loud music /loud noise?? I wouldnt expect a camera phone to record a video at a concert with high quality audio to be fair but would be awesome if it could
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The M8 records concert sound absolutely great, and the M7 before it did it even better. I do not hold up too much hope of the Z3 doing the same as it is not quite the beast the M8 is.
As for Nokia patents, pretty sure that was sorted as M8 concert recordings sure sound like they use HDR mics.

After that I had a problem with distorted sound
Video shooting on my xperia z1
I solved it through PIMP MY XPERIA Z1
I reduced the microphone volume in five levels
And now he Recorder
Great
Before
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9rTrkEnvjo
Listen to the recording quality in youtube
After
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4Tf29RQXQE

pimp my z1...doest it work on...z3? (mic level volume control..?)

guybrush2099 said:
pimp my z1...doest it work on...z3? (mic level volume control..?)
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Click to collapse
No need to use any "pimping". Simply play only the sound from the right microphone (VLC player has this option for example). Sony did a **** job with mics. Left is much worse than right. So when you mix it to stereo the result is pure crap. But if you play the sound only from the right mic, it's pretty good, it's mono of course, but at least it sounds a little bit like real world

guybrush2099 said:
pimp my z1...doest it work on...z3? (mic level volume control..?)
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Click to collapse
yes new the mic is perfect

So..anyone tried to record in a loud environment with the Z3? How is it??

I record this video with Xperia Z3 , with low Sensitivity mic setting, and cinema fv-5 for touch focus, the audio output is low because i set mono recording (64kbps, 22khz), but if you put in stereo and aac-he, the output is (157kbps, 48khz), i think is very good in loud environments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqGVmbwmXqQ

Nexus 6 Microphones Audio Quality

Hi,
As Google moved into top notch phones category, it would be interesting how Nexus 6 performs in recording audio department during video capture in loud area. As known, Galaxy Nexus , Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 are useless recording audio during video capture in loud area.
HTC M7/M8 are the only ones from Android league which can record audio during video capture without distortion in loud area up to 150db sound pressure.
It is really interesting how good is Nexus 6 in this department?
I haven't received mine Nexus 6 yet, so would really appreciate samples.

Interesting thread. Would.be good to know. Wonder how others flagships do also

This is the test video I've done with HTC M7: one with HDR Mics and another one with alternative Mics in 130db sound area: HTC ONE M7 HDR Mic vs Non-HDR Mic: http://youtu.be/k0CIoouBM24

If it records sound I'm good. I don't have time in life to discern decibels and HDR mics and whatnot. It's motorola built. I would be looking into what the latest Moto X 2Gen device is doing for the closest indicator thus far if you want info that might be the closest thing to the N6 mic. Comparing to HTC or Samsung devices is relatively meaningless.

alangrig said:
This is the test video I've done with HTC M7: one with HDR Mics and another one with alternative Mics in 130db sound area: HTC ONE M7 HDR Mic vs Non-HDR Mic: http://youtu.be/k0CIoouBM24
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Nice vid. When you get the nexus please also do a comparison. When I had my htc one with the membrane I was banging on and on about when the had to change the mics and audio got worst but no one listened now it's clear)

I'm glad samsung paid attention to there mics with the note 4, has some of the best audio recording I have experienced on a phone and the 3 mics work perfectly and can even separate voices individually if you wanted to do that.

jamesrick80 said:
I'm glad samsung paid attention to there mics with the note 4, has some of the best audio recording I have experienced on a phone and the 3 mics work perfectly and can even separate voices individually if you wanted to do that.
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Have you tried to record audio in loud area?

alangrig said:
Have you tried to record audio in loud area?
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Usually I record things like class lectures, it has gotten quite noisy in class especially when people participate and I was able to hear the professor loud and clear over some of their voices and if not, samsung software allows me to tinker with the recorded audio.

jamesrick80 said:
Usually I record things like class lectures, it has gotten quite noisy in class especially when people participate and I was able to hear the professor loud and clear over some of their voices and if not, samsung software allows me to tinker with the recorded audio.
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Excellent to hear the N4 has great audio recording

jamesrick80 said:
Usually I record things like class lectures, it has gotten quite noisy in class especially when people participate and I was able to hear the professor loud and clear over some of their voices and if not, samsung software allows me to tinker with the recorded audio.
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Click to collapse
Have you tried recording a concert or a band? A class lecture at its peak won't be as loud as one of the above, a live band is a great test of the mics recording quality.
Sent from my SM-G900W8 using Tapatalk

Seems Nexus 6 shoot video with mono audio. Sad!

alangrig said:
Seems Nexus 6 shoot video with mono audio. Sad!
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Yea, and with 4 mics on board, really stupid, i'm, sure there will be mod for this, but come on.

I was at a concert yesterday and really appreciated the audio recording quality of my M8. No distortion at all! I was really hoping the Nexus would be decent in this area.
Sent from my HTC One_M8 using XDA Free mobile app

youtube.com/watch?v=sNbrWz7hZO4 nexus 6
youtube.com/watch?v=UDT-8HmbCGs nexus 6
youtube.com/watch?v=8CvbMUAMZH0 lumia recording good sound, this what I expect for a "premium" phone.
Two youtube videos that shows that nexus has not a HDR mic. Very bad quality for a very expensive device.
Still HTC one m8, iphone or lumia are the only phones in the market that can record good sound in this kind of loud sound conditions

kodenho said:
Two youtube videos that shows that nexus has not a HDR mic. Very bad quality for a very expensive device.
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Quality is FAR from bad, but......mono recording with 4 mics is indeed terrible CHOICE!