Very strange problem - seems to be the room! Help!

[rjrbn]

I've been fighting with a very weird problem. I'm trying to record myself playing acoustic piano at home. For quite some time, I was doing this using my iphone. It worked well, until it didn't. The recorded sound began to fade in and out and was distorted. It occurred to me that I could use my microsoft pc to record and I switched to using the camera app there and it worked fine, until it didn't. I tried recording this morning and the same thing happened. The recordings were completely unusable. I spent the morning with microsoft help and they weren't able to fix it. They suggested getting an external mic. I've done that and it makes no difference.

So I went over to the local Big Buy and asked a Geek Squad consultant. I had my laptop and phone with me and explained the situation. He didn't have any great ideas, but he tried cleaning the mic on the phone. I played a video on my laptop and took a video of that with my phone and the sound was fine. And then I came home and tried it again in my living room and it failed completely. I tried both recording the piano and recording a video from my computer with my phone. Both failed. So I went to another room. Couldn't bring the piano with me, but I did try recording the same thing - played a video on the laptop and recorded it with my phone. And the sound was fine.

So what could be going on in my living room that's affecting the recordings? Help?

 

[Slouching Raymond]

Was everything running off batteries or mains? It sounds like a power problem to me.
Try recording on the phone, with the charging cord fitted.
My GoPro cameras start going wonky on sound, when the batteries are getting low.
You coud go the whole hog, and get a good mic and dedicated hardware recorder.

 

[rjrbn]

laptop was plugged in when I was using it. Phone was on battery. I'll try your suggestion. Thanks.

It occurred to me that I have an old digital camera somewhere. That shouldn't have the same kinds of issues, so I think I'll try that as well.
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[TalismanRich]

Things don't just go wonky for no reason.

One thing that comes to mind immediately is that you are probably using autolevel. If there is any loud sound, it will cause the level to pump. This could include very low frequencies that the phone and laptop are picking up, but you are tuning out. Using a camera app (and probably the laptop's mic) isn't going to be much different.

Hopefully the camera will be better. Record some room sound (no piano) and then post an MP3 of the audio so that we can look at the wave forms to see if there is something going on that you aren't hearing (wind noise, a fan blowing on the mic, rumble from trucks or appliances, etc).

 

[rjrbn]

Thanks so much. I'm wondering if there's some sort of setting that's causing the problem. I just tried my wife's iphone 12 (mine is an iphone 11) and hers works fine. We have similar pc laptops and the recordings fail with both of them.

Not sure about an outside sound hypothesis. It first happened at different times with my phone and with my laptop, but it's been consistently failing one each one ever since the first occurrence. Moreover, it fails at different times of day. The only constant is that the location is relatively constant. I've used two spots to record from, on either side of the piano, so maybe eight or nine feet apart.

I'm not sure what you mean by room sounds. Just walk around the room and record ambient sound? Should I speak (other than to narrate where I am)?

Thanks again for the help!

 

[rob aylestone]

Room sound is the 'silence' of a room - which of course is never silent. What would help us is if you record 30s of piano, then 30s of silence, same location, no extra buttons. The silence also lets us judge how noisy the phone's audio is, and if there is auto gain, this usually is obvious too. I think we're struggling with 'failed completely' - you recorded your laptop audio in one location and that was OK, but at home - what happened to the sound? Failed?? No idea what that means. Sounded rotten, hummed, hissy, thin, weedy, distorted, who knows?
Realistically - the iphone has always had pretty decent audio, so it's pretty capable - so what is going on. Some clips of the ok and failed would let us hone in a bit.

 

[grimtraveller]

 

[rjrbn]

I've taken two sets of videos and converted them to mp3. In both sets, I looked for a set that moves over the range of the piano, although I don't know whether that makes a difference. The distortion is a tinny sound, almost like a harpsichord, and the fading in and out just seems to happen in any range.

The first set is three that were taken all within a few minutes of each other, all recordings of live piano. The two taken with iphones are from one side of the piano, while the one on the laptop is from the other side, but all three are from just a few feet away. For the second set, I pulled up an old video that had been taken almost a year ago with the iphone 11 and took new videos of it with the same iphone 11 today from varioius spots in the house. What's really surprising (because I've run this experiment before and did not get this result) is that the video taken from right next to the piano seems to be more or less ok - not great sound quality, but not with the distortion and drop outs that the recording (taken maybe ten minutes earlier) from the same spot of live piano showed. So now I'm thinking this is a device problem? I remain very confused and grateful for any help that might be offered.

 

[TalismanRich]

The laptop sounds like it's an auto gain control, so it's pumping from the volume, trying to keep things from overloading. I assume you are using the laptop microphone. Try lowering the microphone recording volume.

The Iphone 11 sounds like it's also got some weird phasing going on as well. like you are moving the microphone slightly, so the sound moves in and out of phase. It may be an artifact of the Apple's gain control. Was the phone sitting stationary or were you holding it?

I'm a bit confused about the sound source. Is this a player piano you are trying to record, because the level varied widely over the samples. If you are a distance from the piano, the sound level won't reach a maximum so any auto gain will likely not trigger. Up close, it can really kick in.

Here's an example of what a pumping compressor/limiter can sound like.

 

[rjrbn]

No, it's not a player piano. It's just me playing a snippet from the Maple Leaf Rag. But I think I stumbled onto the problem with the laptop. I checked the settings and the recording volume was at 92%. I lowered that to 50% and it made no difference at all, except that the playback volume was lower. It was still distorted and fading in and out. But I noticed a setting called "Audio enhancements" that was set to "Device Default Effects". I tried turning it off and, lo and behold, the recording quality is back to where it was. I'm guessing it's something similar with my iphone and maybe I contact Apple for help.

Thank you so much for your help getting this resolved. I really appreciate it. And I do have to say, as someone who used to fly on pterodactyls and walked to school - uphill - both ways!, I love your signature.

 

[Slouching Raymond]

It is unfortunate that both the laptop and iphone produce bad recordings.
I've already said it, but a cheap audio interface should work better.
A usb microphone is the easiest route.

 

[rjrbn]

I've tried using an external mic. It made no difference with the iphone and I couldn't figure out how to get the laptop to see it. I'm going to try to find some time this afternoon to try that. But, as I mentioned above, the laptop mic is now working adequately. Either way, I'd like to see how much of an improvement I hear with the external mic.

As to the iphone, it's still not working. I found a video that suggests a solution that I will also try this afternoon:



What does not give me confidence is that it suggests turning a setting to off (isn't it wonderful how many times we're given "enhancements" that simply break things?) but when I looked at the settings on my wife's iphone 12, it's set to on and her phone is working fine. Either way, I'll turn it off on my iphone 11 and see if that helps.

And yes, I'm going to switch to using an external mic once I get this sorted out.

Thanks again, very much, for your suggestions.

 

[rob aylestone]

Silly question - but the iphone 11 recording sounds like very low sampling rate recordings - 22,000Hz at 8 bit - that kind of resolution. the settings haven't been messed with have they - my phone is much better quality than that - something is wrong.

 

[rjrbn]

I agree something is wrong. I can tell you that the settings have never intentionally been messed with. Also - the problem occurred fairly suddenly and I don't have the same issue using my wife's iphone 11. The video I found suggested changing a setting to turn off settings-accessibility-motion-video previews. I tried that and it didn't help. I've also tried plugging in an external mic and it doesn't help. However, when I went into my windows 11 settings and turned off "audio enhancements", that solved the problem. So I can at least record with the laptop. I haven't yet figured out how to get the laptop to recognize the external mic, so I haven't tried that yet. But even without it, the sound quality is tolerable.

 

[TalismanRich]

For a basic USB mic, you should be able to go into the settings menu and under sound, choose the USB microphone for the recording device.. Dedending on your recording software, you may have to change the device there as well.

I always turn off the "enhancements". They could have been triggered by an updated driver or a Windows update. As for the I-phone, well I use Android. The last Apple device I bought was a used Apple ][+ with a single floppy and 48 massive kilobytes of RAM!