Poor audio recording quality @FP6: noise muting? switched channels?

Help Fairphone 6
1

With my former Samsung S8 and Poco X4, I did some simple audio recordings (musical rehearsels) and got some useful results. Trying this with my new FP6 ends in a desaster.

I tried several progs: Fossify voicerecorder, Google, “Audio recorder” and “Recording Studio lite” from F-Droid. No problem to setup a good codec, and the recordings are generally ok, but all have an issue, that looks to me like a limitation of FP6 hardware and driver:

Every ground noise (hiss) from the mics is muted. This may be fine for text spoken in short distance, but low passages in music are killed or heavy distorted. None of my recording devices ever did that, and the Samsung S8 and the Poco X4 have issues with their mikes (different noise floors on each channel), but work much better with any recording app than the FP6.

What the hell is going on there? If I do a search, poor audio quality seems to be an issue from the FP3 on. Do I really have to switch to an external mic to get acceptable results?

Next: For what reason the audio channels are swapped on my FP6? If I take the phone to make a video (turn to the left for landscape mode), the audio channels are swapped R-L. Same with the audio recording apps. So hold the phone, make a video or audio recording, and on playback the channels are wrong. Of course this is no issue with Samsung and Poco.

What are your experiences?

Together with the buggy screen brightness regulation, the FP6 disappoints me with problems that other manufacturers never had. Of course no single review ever mentioned something like that.

2

I did a quick test in the stock audio recorder app and I could hear some sort of noise reduction applied to the signal. I then tried OpenCamera (Camcorder audio source selected) and it was ok.

3

Thx for the hint, tried this. Open Camera’s sound level is so low I cannot hear any sound issues by now, and even lower if I switch to “unbearbeitet” (German). In addition, the sound is monaural, using only the upper microphone when choosing “Standard” in the Audio Channels section anbd only the lower one with “Stereo”.
Audio Source “default”? (“Standard-Audioquelle”) gives the same noise-muted cr*p sound as the stock camera app does (and, surprise! stereo).

It looks to me like the systems “default audio source” has this issues and thus all apps using it.

4

It sounds like a basic noise gate. Camcorder/Unprocessed profiles in OpenCamera seem to bypass it. All profiles rely on manufacturer’s API. So you’re right, all apps will give the same result.

1 Like
5

What are your experiences with the internal tests of the fp (my fairphone) app? Under the “Support” button at the right side at the bottom, you can test the microphones and speakers. For me, everything is a bit quiet. You have to turn the volume control way up.