Ethanol-fueled writes:
"After many years of lambasting smartphone users during my tenure at "The Other Site," I finally broke down and got a recent-model Android phone, and I'm appealing to the musicians in the audience for help: Which apps for music recording on Android would you recommend? Any stories, bugs, or gotchas of which we should be made aware? Features provided, number of tracks, backing tracks, effects, etc.? I'd prefer Android-specific information but discussion of music recording on iOS or other mobile platforms, heck any digital recording, would be welcome. Cost is not a factor, but stability is very important.
I've done a good amount of recording using Cubase on PCs so I'm no stranger to digital recording over all, one of the reasons why I'm asking you all is because most 'reviews' online seem untrustworthy, the two I'd think I'd like best are full of bad reviews and I need the straight dope from a technical crowd.
Thanks in advance for your stories and suggestions!"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by d on Sunday March 09 2014, @05:02PM
This idea sounds ridiculous to me. Why would anyone want to do this kind of stuff using Android instead of a PC?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Worchaa on Sunday March 09 2014, @05:11PM
Why ? Field recording would be reason #1. Laptops aren't well suited for field recording unless you're dealing with something like a mixing console at an outdoor venue.
Can't recommend any decent recording packages for Android. I would suggest taking a peek at digital field recorders though. You might not want to carry two devices, but I'm sure you'll enjoy the quality of a compact dedicated field recorder.
- Marching Band: It's not just for breakfast anymore.
(Score: 1) by rochrist on Monday March 10 2014, @06:48PM
You can buy actual made for purpose field recorders that do an outstanding job for not very much money. An android phone would be a disaster.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09 2014, @05:22PM
Dunno, but it's obvious that it's the same kind of thing that people use to justify trying to replace PCs with tablets.
(Score: 2) by cornholed on Sunday March 09 2014, @05:27PM
People are doing it with iPads [apple.com], why not with Android?
In 2008 Obama was not in favor of gay marriage and look what they did to him.
(Score: 2) by elgrantrolo on Sunday March 09 2014, @05:55PM
Android is an alternative to Windows as much as Linux and OS X are. For some even more of an alternative because:
a) It works with mobile devices rather than just conventional PCs
b) There's already so many users that it's likely to attract a supportive community and/or companies providing useful services
c) more likely to work out of the box than Linux based software
d) iPad users do have a lot of music related apps, it's fair to expect the same to happen with Android.
The last time I checked, in the context of getting a guitar to interface with a PC, it turned out that iOS was at an advantage in terms of getting low latency connections.
With more quad core CPUs and other performance improvements from the hardware side of things, it felt likely to see this software advantage go away. However, there was a headstart from the iOS camp, in my opinion because iOS inherited from OS X developer expertise. The people at Apple probably saw this happen and worked on it before Google did.
(Score: 4, Informative) by ccanucs on Sunday March 09 2014, @11:02PM
Not so much Android, but definitely on iPad.
Reasons? Mobility and the availability of low-cost synthesizer applications on iOS - such as iSEM (Oberheim SEM emulation), iMini (Minimoog emulation), iMS-20 from Korg (Korg MS-20 emulation), iPolysix (from Korg - Polysix emulation), iVCS3 (a new emulation just released of the Putney VCS3 - used by Pink Floyd, Hawkwind and others), Z3TA+2 from Cakewalk (same as the PC version) and dozens of others - all at a *fraction* of the cost of the PC/Mac equivalents - and the availablility of quality recording applications such as Cubasis (from the makers of Cubase) and Auria - fully functional DAW. The facility of a touch screen interface also provide new innovative interaction and musically expressive creation mechanisms, such as with Animoog from Moog.
Audiobus connects these applications together with FX applications for adding reverb, delay and so on, as well as in-iPad mastering. All on a hand-carry-able mobile platform. Many of the applications also share patches, MIDI sequences, resulting wave files and so on with desktop counterparts if need be.
Lots of good reasons.
There's a whole industry geared towards this. Android has suffered from a MIDI latency problem which has held it back in terms of music production - but iOS devices are fast becoming part of music studios around the world. It's a new era - just as desktop DAW software was new 20 years ago but accepted now as the norm alongside traditional studios using tape and large board mixers and outboard devices.
Jordan Rudess and Wolfgang Palm (a pioneer in hardware synthesis), both work with iOS devices. In fact, Palm recently wrote a new application *first* on iOS before porting to other platforms.
There's lots going on with this already. Whole albums being produced this way. Check it out! Google what's out there. :-)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday March 09 2014, @05:32PM
I'm interested in what the Android audio interface looks like for "Cost is not a factor".
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Worchaa on Sunday March 09 2014, @05:32PM
The two apps mentioned are multi-track pocket DAWs. That's cool but for recording you're going to be pretty limited on record quality and mic choices. If you find an external interface for your phone things will get better.
Unless you have a compelling reason to compromise by running a mini DAW on your phone for recording, you should look into a decent handheld field recorder like these:
Zoom H4n, Tascam DR-40.
Both have fairly decent onboard stereo mics, accept external XLR inputs, can do stereo or 4-track recordings. I think they'll also accept line level inputs (at least I know the DR-40 will). They're drop dead easy to use and will give you great recordings out of the box. Of course, there are loads of other models/brands to look at as well.
My $0.02... If quality and practical use are remotely important to you, get a field recorder with the features you want for recording, then dump the audio files into whatever DAW you want to play with: Android app on your phone, Cubase on the PC, or otherwise.
Good luck !
- Marching Band: It's not just for breakfast anymore.
(Score: 1) by zeigerpuppy on Monday March 10 2014, @03:17AM
I agree, I have been very happy with the Zoom H4N.
Getting good quality recordings is about the whole signal path, I don't see how using an android device would help with this (although I did use a custom CF card and A/D converter with pocketPC years ago!). The lesson, it never worked reliably due to the bandwidth issues of pushing 96k 24 bit audio.
Go with a device designed for purpose, while it may be possible to use an android device, the end result is likely to be inferior. The H4N is very affordable too.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09 2014, @05:42PM
If you want to do recording as such and have no interest in creation, there are a number of possibilities but they all pale beside the requirement for a really good microphone.
If you want to create music, consider sunvox. Cheap, cross-platform, astonishingly powerful. The same programmer also created a number of other tools, including Virtual ANS, which are very helpful.
(Score: 5, Informative) by M. Baranczak on Sunday March 09 2014, @06:38PM
Last I checked, Android was useless for music creation due to the high latency in the audio system. A delay of 200 ms is acceptable if you're just playing back an audio file, but not if you're playing a software instrument, or overdubbing music. Just to give you an idea: an eighth note at 120 beats per minute is 250 ms.
Admittedly, this was a while ago, and the devices may be better now, but I'd still be cautious.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09 2014, @11:39PM
They are better (though not perfect) but if you're dealing with any kind of music creation, the acid test is the ability to create a mixdown to wav or mp3 or whatever. So no, Android isn't useless - it just has certain disadvantages in certain respects, which disadvantages are rapidly mitigated by advances.
Sunvox does quite a nice job of playing back realtime synthesis, as long as you're not swamping the CPU.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @07:50AM
Yep, that's still a problem. Actually, I think jitter in latency is an even bigger problem.
I've installed a bunch of audio apps on my note 3 (arguably one of the faster android devices out there), and ALL of them sucked. Typically people can compensate for latency fairly okay, but jitter, well, what can you do?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Appalbarry on Sunday March 09 2014, @06:18PM
Highly recommend that you start here for advice from radio professionals. Though they, and the industry seem to be heavily Mac/iPhone oriented, and there's no sign of Android.
http://transom.org/features/tools/ [transom.org]
http://transom.org/features/tools/gear-guides/reco rders/ [transom.org]
I'm with you though on the utter uselessness of Android app reviews. My favorite was "The app hasn't finished downloading to my phone yet, but I'm sure that I'll LOVE it!"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Khyber on Sunday March 09 2014, @06:22PM
Tablets would be a different story, but a phone is lacking even a basic line level input. You've got a microphone input, but it's not stereo, and it ties you to a sub-optimal speaker in your ear (not like a phone's speakers are worth much for audio in the bassy ranges, anyways.)
There are some things you're just not going to do on a phone. Not until they put in tons of extra ports. This is one of them. Get a tablet instead, or use a netbook with a decent RealTek chipset onboard, where you can use the auto-sensing jacks and tell them what sort of device is on that jack, and it acts accordingly.
Destroying Semiconductors With Style Since 2008, and scaring you ill-educated fools since 2013.
(Score: 1) by adolf on Sunday March 09 2014, @11:10PM
Tablets aren't a different story: The difference between a "tablet" and a "phone" is the size of the screen, and the radios equipped (and sometimes, not even that). The software is the same. Connectivity also tends to be equal between tablets and phones: Both types of devices have various wired outputs (stereo analog, HDMI), 802.11, Bluetooth, hit-or-miss USB OTG, and a microphone input for a headset.
Any solution that works on a tablet is adaptable to work on a similar phone.
I'm wasting my days as I've wasted my nights and I've wasted my youth
(Score: 2) by Khyber on Monday March 10 2014, @04:30AM
"Tablets aren't a different story: The difference between a "tablet" and a "phone" is the size of the screen"
Plenty of add-on base options for the iPad to give you input ports, with apps to work with said add-ons.
Destroying Semiconductors With Style Since 2008, and scaring you ill-educated fools since 2013.
(Score: 1) by adolf on Wednesday March 19 2014, @09:46PM
Look up at the top of the page. See the line that says "Android"?
I'm wasting my days as I've wasted my nights and I've wasted my youth
(Score: 1) by guises on Monday March 10 2014, @01:55AM
Just what sort of tablet are you thinking of here? The typical android or iOS based tablet doesn't have any inputs that a phone doesn't have. They're pretty much the same thing, after all.
(Score: 1) by Mr. Slippery on Tuesday March 11 2014, @02:05AM
A tablet can be a USB host. With the right software, you could hook a USB audio interface (like this [rolandus.com]) up to one.
(Score: 1) by ccanucs on Monday March 10 2014, @03:01AM
On an iPhone, using the Camera Connection Kit (which takes a digital USB signal and sends it into the 30-pin adapter as a digital signal) you can send digital USB stereo output from say a Digitech guitar pedal (which fully supports recording into an iPhone as well as an iPad in stereo natively without any other audio I/O interface needed, and with stereo FX in the pedal e.g. ping pong being passed through into the phone) then record that stereo signal into an iPhone studio DAW-like app without any further D->A and A->D conversion required. Or you could attach a dedicated stereo mic like the Tascam or Rode series of stereo mics made for iPhone / iPad directly and likewise record into a recording program or via Audiobus into a stereo FX chain into a recording program. Works very well. You can save the recording and export it to a desktop DAW later if you need to do any post-processing.
(Score: 2) by Khyber on Monday March 10 2014, @04:44AM
And the story mentions very specifically Android.
Which pretty much has zero options like that.
Destroying Semiconductors With Style Since 2008, and scaring you ill-educated fools since 2013.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by gishzida on Sunday March 09 2014, @06:54PM
IK Multimedia has some serious mic interface hardware available for Android but IK [like most of the music hardware companies] they mostly focuses on iOS devices / software.
For field recording I personally use a separate, dedicated [and ancient] M-Audio recorder which can use a T-stereo Mic or it has TRS inputs for XLRs. With an 8 Gb CF card it can record ~10 hours of stereo at 44.1 Khz Wav or even longer when it is set to record MP3 files.
If you're interested some of my music is HERE [blogspot.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by ResistTHIS on Sunday March 09 2014, @09:42PM
Latency is horrible on android, it's the reason you see tons of prosumer level apps and gear aimed at DJs and musicians for iOS but none to speak of for android. Latency is an order of magnitude worse, ios has latency in the range of 2-3 ms, android is in the 10s-100s ms range. They keep saying they're going to fix it, at least I've been hearing it since ice cream sandwich, but I guess they've never got around to it.
(Score: 1) by brujo on Monday March 10 2014, @01:24AM
If you're thinking of using your phone then I am assuming you want portability. Otherwise you would be using a computer and not really asking this question.
If you want to record good quality then you will need a good microphone, and I have not found a good one for a mobile phone.
I recommend you buy a dedicated machine. I really recommend the Boss BR 80. Is multitrac, portable, guitar modeling machine, drum machine, and even has an autotune in case you sing bad.
quick demo of one in action http://youtu.be/8W-9Iq7fEr8/ [youtu.be]