recording using Samsung S5 smartphone ?

[kkmm]

I have been recording (acoustically) using a microBR 4 track recorder. the sound is pretty good, especially when sitting in a car with close door (a mini studio
I just get myself a S5 smartphone and for instant and convenient recording, the sound is not that bad.
Any opinion on recording with cell phones ?

[Dave LaBoone]

Depends on your purpose for recording and your audience. If you just want to hear how you sound and analyze your playing, a cell phone recording will probably be just fine. Can't beat the convenience! If you're hoping to share files with the online world, you might consider another recorder.

My $0.02.

[bigskygirl]

Agree with Dave, I use my iPhone to send quick recordings to my instructor and friends. It works well and it's easy to edit and email the file.

[Dave Martin]

I sometimes put my iPhone in my shirt pocket when we are on stage. The mando is pretty loud....but the recording quality is surprisingly good.

[Toni Schula]

Depends on your purpose for recording and your audience. If you just want to hear how you sound and analyze your playing, a cell phone recording will probably be just fine. Can't beat the convenience! If you're hoping to share files with the online world, you might consider another recorder.

My $0.02.

Once I hit the record button on my smartphone when we had a spontaneous jam session. At a gig in a coffee house there was a blackout but we kept playing in the dark which lead to that jam with some musicians in the audiance. What shall I say, technically that recording is grap. But it catches some of the atmosphere and I am very happy to have it.
So a big +1 for "depends on your purpose".

[Astro]

I wish there was a way to plug in a better microphone. I guess it would require a better preamp too?

I have the Galaxy S. Not sure if its S3 or S4. The camera and video quality is pretty darn good. The sound quality is good for speaking but really stinks for music.

[Toni Schula]

I wish there was a way to plug in a better microphone...

It is possible to connect an external dynamic mic via the 3,5 mm headphone jack. Just needs some circruity. The Galaxy likes to see 1500 Ohm at the microphone pins to detect that external mic. A colleague did this for some tests we had to do. (He used a laptop's headphone output and a DI box to play music over a phone call to judge various CODEC's musical audio quality. Given that the DI boxes output electrically looks like a microphone, this should work with a real mic as well.)

But we did not find a way to disable the automatic gain control. So it is still not possible to do high quality music recording.

[Astro]

OK I feel compelled to up date my last comment above. I now know I had the S3. I didnt think the sound quality was good enough for our live events. Well, I just went swimming with the phone in my pocket. Long story.

So, I just got the upgrade to the S4. I think its functionally the same as the s5 as far as audio/video quality.

Anyway, I agree the audio quality is a big improvement. Surprisingly good for a cell phone. I'm amazed they can do that.

I'm sure its nowhere near what a real mic could do, but at least now it is useful enough for most of my purposes. I mostly wanted to record our bands live events for self feedback and to post snippits of our performance for promo on the bands FB page.

Sure its not demo quality, but its generally accepted community standard. I'll just state the qualifier "here is some cell phone video". Most people now are learning how to extrapolate that out to what you really might sound like (ie less sucky than the cell phone video clip).

Its good enough for now. I cant wait for the next generation. Its getting like Doc's tricorder on Star Trek.

[kkmm]

Besides using my smartphone to do quick recording, I also have a microBR recorder (4 track) that has very good recording quality, effects are also selectable if desired.
Recently, I found that the smartphone (S5) appears to "normalize" the volume of the recorded sound. When I record a mandolin tune acoustically and the same tune playing plug-in to an amp to show the plug-in capability. Of course the plug-in sounds much much louder (3X). However, S5 recordings show no big difference in volume !!! I tried with my acoustic / electric bass and got the same result. Kind of strange. The microBR does show the volume difference though.