Anyone Tried To Record A Concert?

[Defessus]

Hey guys, first post here on the forums.

Having had the phone a couple of months now (bought it on launch day) I must say im pretty happy with it.

However with it's impressive technical specs I was hoping to be able to record concerts I go to. After going to roughly 3 of them now I have been underwhelmed with the quality of particularly the audio. The concerts have been primarily rock and I suppose the sound artifacting comes with the lower tones of the base drum/percussion sets. All the concerts have been within 3 rows of the stage located usually dead center.

The best recordings I seem to get are of course of acoustic numbers, but once a full band kicks in there is a lot of distortion. I dont expect the same quality of a 1000$ video recorder, but my Iphone friends seem to take 'listenable' bootlegs of gigs they go to without issue, or any kind of external mic (I wish something as simple as an external mic could fix this problem)

Any ideas on improving the audio quality with the video recorder, or similar experiences you guys have had? Are my Iphone friends privy to some magical audio input limiter app that isnt available on android? I will try and upload a video tonight just to show you guys an example. Specs for my phone are in my signature.

EDIT:

Here's a video i recorded, song is Fireflies by Owl City. Quality gets really poor once the chorus kicks in.

You Tube

You Tube

[Reks]

Originally Posted by Defessus Hey guys, first post here on the forums. Having had the phone a couple of months now (bought it on launch day) I must say im pretty happy with it. However with it's impressive technical specs I was hoping to be able to record concerts I go to. After going to roughly 3 of them now I have been underwhelmed with the quality of particularly the audio. The concerts have been primarily rock and I suppose the sound artifacting comes with the lower tones of the base drum/percussion sets. All the concerts have been within 3 rows of the stage located usually dead center. The best recordings I seem to get are of course of acoustic numbers, but once a full band kicks in there is a lot of distortion. I dont expect the same quality of a 1000$ video recorder, but my Iphone friends seem to take 'listenable' bootlegs of gigs they go to without issue, or any kind of external mic (I wish something as simple as an external mic could fix this problem) Any ideas on improving the audio quality with the video recorder, or similar experiences you guys have had? Are my Iphone friends privy to some magical audio input limiter app that isnt available on android? I will try and upload a video tonight just to show you guys an example. Specs for my phone are in my signature. EDIT: Here's a video i recorded, song is Fireflies by Owl City. Quality gets really poor once the chorus kicks in. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuW1YuYQuyc

I think I found your problem.

It's the other 5k+ people singing along.

Also video of iPhone recordings for comparison?

[Reks]

Here's a concert recording I found on the iPhone, it doesn't look like it does much better?

You Tube

You Tube

I'm thinking it has a lot to do with the venue and what type of sound they're putting out. If there's heavy bass there's bound to be distortions. What you can try to do is muffle the sound like a boom mic by putting a sock over it or something.

[ZeROSiGNAL]

Most recent one I have tried to record was when I went to see Five Finger Death Punch at the House Of Blues in Anaheim...

Im actually impressed with the video quality of the DROID (except in low light situations, someone needs to fix that crap) and the audio came out... OKAY considering how close I was to the stage and speakers... here it is...

Five Finger Death Punch - Hard To See (1-21-10) Anaheim, CA House Of Blues

You Tube

You Tube

[Defessus]

Hmm I've seen better Reks, but perhaps those are ones that my friends cherry-picked from the entire concert?

I just got back from another concert so i'll be sifting through the vids to see if anything is keepable.

Mainly I was just curious if there was anything I could do to improve sound, since after all there isnt much I can do about the 5k+ fans screaming behind me.

[Reks]

Originally Posted by Defessus Hmm I've seen better, but perhaps those are ones that my friends cherry-picked from the entire concert? I just got back from another concert so i'll be sifting through the vids to see if anything is keepable. Mainly I was just curious if there was anything I could do to improve sound, since after all there isnt much I can do about the 5k+ fans screaming behind me.

Could try looking for apps that reduced mic sensitivity other than that I can't think of anything other than standing farther away from stage or reducing sensitivity externally.

[Defessus]

Originally Posted by Reks other than standing farther away from stage or reducing sensitivity externally.

Damn, who would have known there was a disadvantage to getting 2nd row tickets all the time.


I'll keep prowling the market for mic modifying apps in the meantime.

[Guchi]

the mic is just not going to do any better sorry but it is a phone mic. if you had a high grade mic you could record high quality audio

[Reks]

Originally Posted by Defessus Originally Posted by Reks other than standing farther away from stage or reducing sensitivity externally. Damn, who would have known there was a disadvantage to getting 2nd row tickets all the time. I'll keep prowling the market for mic modifying apps in the meantime.

i'm tellin you man just stick one of these on there and you are good to go

[gentlefury]

I got an app for recording uncompressed audio and it worked great except there was no vu meter or gain adjustment, so when the crowd cheered or the band got loud it clipped It would be really easy for someone to make an audio recorder that had vol control and a vu so you could get a really nice recording....honestly when it wasn't clipping it sounded phenomenal!