problem with bass in sound of videos recorded on Note 8

[Note 8 User]

I am a musician, and I regularly used my S5 to record videos of band gigs/rehearsals - rock solid, no problems, surprisingly good quality sound.

But I recently upgraded to a Note 8, and I find the sound recorded with a video fluctuates in quality. Specifically, the bass frequencies will repeatedly fade out for several seconds and then come back for several seconds. For the periods of time that it's working nicely, the result is entirely adequate for my needs. But my videos have fade-patches interspersed throughout them where the bass frequencies are severely diminished. I notice this especially, as I play bass The result is that I can't use my Note 8 to produce decent music videos and band demo material, whereas my old S5 was (and still is) quite good at this (for my purposes).

Am I doing something wrong? Is there some video sound quality setting that I need to find and tweak? Or have I got a problem with my phone hardware/software?

Any suggestions welcome, thanks.

 

[Note 8 User]

Here's a demo of the problem. For example, the bass is somewhat absent from 0:07-0:20 and again 0:24-0:32, but sounds good 0:20-0:24. Problem repeats at other places too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3mAVylPwD0

 

[j_hansen]

maybe try a different app for recording music to confirm/rule out a fault on the phone.
I think the phone have different recording modes as well, as in you can use it to record at a meeting at it will detect where sound/voice is coming from when you sit around a table, I could see that interfering with recording music

 

[Note 8 User]

maybe try a different app for recording music to confirm/rule out a fault on the phone.

Good suggestion, thankyou. Here's a sample recorded with Facebook Live .... https://www.facebook.com/timon.bass.1/videos/242043376612754/

I'm not detecting the bass-fade problem there. This suggests to me that it's possibly a software issue with the built-in camera app (if my small sample-space is accurately representative). I guess that's nice because it means it might get fixed, or I might be able yo bypass it by using a different camera app.

 

[Chromium 4]

Try porting the Google Pixel camera software. The version I have has good video/sound quality. That way you can narrow it down to software vs hardware.

 

[Dooki]

have you tried clearing the app data?

you might try a small boom mic. I have a
cheap one from bestbuy, insignia, and it greatly increased the sound quality. it might tell you if it's mic or software.

 

[cattledogit]

Same problem here. First noticed it last night. It doesn't always occur, so the FB Live recording of a different song above may not prove that FB Live fixes this. Perhaps it's caused by Automatic Gain Control that many complain about hurting audio recording quality.

On the same song it appears with the built-in mic, but not with a Rode VideoMic Me I've used but didn't like because recordings have less depth. That could be a coincidence of the music's volume though.

Hope someone can test with one of these:
- Voice Recorder, which has a Manual Gain setting in the Core Audio settings
- RecForge II, which disables AGC on some Android phones per http://dje.073.free.fr/html/faq.html#disableagc
- Open Camera's latest test build at https://sourceforge.net/projects/opencamera/files/test_20180612/, which supports the "Unprocessed" audio source mentioned at https://sourceforge.net/p/opencamera/discussion/general/thread/501c7571/#7cc2/8b56
- Perhaps Camera FV-5, which may disable AGC for some phones per https://sourceforge.net/p/opencamera/discussion/general/thread/501c7571/#7cc2

I'd prefer to use the built-in mic for convenience, but I don't see any audio settings in the built-in camera app.

 

[Drummergirlok]

I am a musician, and I regularly used my S5 to record videos of band gigs/rehearsals - rock solid, no problems, surprisingly good quality sound.

But I recently upgraded to a Note 8, and I find the sound recorded with a video fluctuates in quality. Specifically, the bass frequencies will repeatedly fade out for several seconds and then come back for several seconds. For the periods of time that it's working nicely, the result is entirely adequate for my needs. But my videos have fade-patches interspersed throughout them where the bass frequencies are severely diminished. I notice this especially, as I play bass The result is that I can't use my Note 8 to produce decent music videos and band demo material, whereas my old S5 was (and still is) quite good at this (for my purposes).

Am I doing something wrong? Is there some video sound quality setting that I need to find and tweak? Or have I got a problem with my phone hardware/software?

Any suggestions welcome, thanks.

I am having the EXACT problem...i am a drummer and use my phone to record rehearsals and shows /videos for social media...the bass fading in and out makes a lot of the video unusable...what is the fix? Tonight i am having another issue...my video sounds very tinny ...its truly horrible...$1000 phone and my old $200 phone made better videos

 

[Hilahem]

Hello Note 8 user, I have exactly the same problem with my galaxy s 5 recently! It used to work Perfectly before but now from time to time and totally unpredictable does this to me which is quite annoying & makes my recording useless.My daughter is a singer and wants me to record her performances to post on her social media channel but we have had so many disappointing results when my phone acts out from time to time exactly the way you described it. Could you find a solution for your your problem ? please share it with me if you did. Thank you!

 

[Fudzwollop]

I have the exact same problem. Previous Samsungs recorded such great sound, now the bass frequencies keep getting clipped throughout my videos of live music. Is this gonna be fixed Samsung???