In search of best audio editor for Android

With my iPhone I have been able to record audio really well using an application called Twisted Wave, which is still my preferred audio editor for use on my iPad. I like to be able to record audio while I am walking with my dog and it is even better still if I can use that audio to post an Audioboo. Unfortunately, the Audioboo application for Android isn’t up to the same standard as the Audioboo application for iOS. It is only a beta version, so we can hope that it will get better in time. Therefore I had the need to look for an application to use to record audio and hopefully get something as good as Twisted Wave. It is fairly easy to search through the Google Play Store and find a few candidates for the job. There is even a voice recorder included in the software on the Samsung Galaxy S3 as standard.

Voice Recorder

This is the standard audio voice recorder application that comes with the phone and it has a visual representation of your audio wave as you are talking to the phone. There is a level meter which looks quite analog and also gives you good feedback regarding the level of your voice as you’re speaking. The recording from this when using the standard microphone in the phone is very clear and seems to be very little hiss or hum.

When you’re ready to get your recording off the phone it is very easy using the share menu. There are a huge number of shares available with SoundCloud, Evernote, email, Google Drive and of course Dropbox. There are other possibilities for sharing out of the voice recording application, in fact you are spoilt for choice. Sending it out through dropbox was very easy and I soon had it on my Mac, the only problem is that it was in a strange .3GA format. I haven’t yet worked out which application I can use, either to convert it or to open it.

Easy Voice Recorder Free

This is a simple application which is just a recorder and player, although it does give you a number of options of the technical settings for the recording such as sample rate, output format and you can use the PCM which is the highest quality. If you choose AAC then you lose the ability to pause your recording, but you do still get a good quality format to use. In the free version you don’t get access to the choice of sound input source for recording, or stereo. You also don’t get the ability to alter the gain, the noise gate or the noise cut off. I don’t think that the price of the application is too high so worth trying out for size.

Pocket WavePad

Initially when I chose this application to give a try as a Android audio editor, I quite liked it. There is something about him though that didn’t suit me, which is why I looked elsewhere to look for something that worked better. I think I wasn’t too impressed with the audio editing capabilities and for the price it didn’t seem as good as I initially thought.

Audio Evolution Mobile

Out of all of the applications that I tried on my Samsung Galaxy S3 phone for recording audio and editing the audio that I had recorded, I found that Audio Evolution Mobile is the best of the bunch. It gives me a good quality recording, although I do have to do a little bit of twiddling to get the gain set right, depending on which microphone I’m using. If I am using the microphone that is part of the phone then I have to turn the gain down because otherwise it comes in too hot and I get some clipping of the audio wave. When I use the microphone that is part of the headset, then I need to turn up the gain otherwise the sound is too low.

This application gives me a good view of the audio wave so that I can see what it is I have recorded. It is a multitrack DAW type of application and it is also suitable for musicians as well as someone like myself who just wants to do a podcast. There is a view mode which lets you scroll through the project and also to zoom in and out. With the edit mode you can move samples and also you can trim them by moving the beginning or end edges of the sound. Then there is a split mode which allows you to tap anywhere within your sample to split it into multiple parts. This mode is quite useful as it allows you to select a part of the sound in the middle and to delete it. There is also a delete button. Then one of the buttons I haven’t yet worked out is the automation mode, for this I think I need to read the manual to find out exactly what I can do with it. Obviously I haven’t really needed it so far, whatever it does.

There is also a channel mixer screen and I can use that with a long Tap to add tracks. This is another part of the application that I haven’t really used much yet. Within this part it is possible to tap on the button to ‘arm’ and that makes it ready to be recorded into. If you’re working with multiple tracks then you can also choose to solo the track you’re working with or to mute one or more of the tracks. There are also controls in this Android audio editor there to pan the track left or right.

Recording audio with the Android Audio Evolution Mobile Application

It is very easy to start recording audio by pressing the usual red button that you find in audio applications and when you have finished recording just press the white stop button. When you press the recording button a second time the next bit of recording goes on to the next track. Most times I only want to record onto one track, but if I do start again then I can easily see the separate recordings that I have made. Using the editing available within the application I can move a recording on one track onto another. I could otherwise just leave the tracks where they are because when I do the mixdown to get it ready to export out of the application, all of the track information is taken care of.

Exporting out of Audio Evolution Mobile For Android

Projects can be saved and reloaded later if you want to and you can also choose the sample rate that you want to use for your project in the project settings. Tapping on the menu button brings up the options for loading, saving or deleting the project. It is necessary to scroll down to get to some of the options and the one at the bottom of the list is the one that I use to mixdown the project. It is here that I can give the file name to the exported audio. I can choose the resolution 16-bit, 24-bit, 32-bit or 32-bit float. For what I am doing using 16-bit is good enough and then I can choose which file type I want to use. All of the file types are uncompressed high quality audio file types with WAV, AIFF, FLAC or OGG. I can then export out to the project folder or to the music folder. I prefer to send the exported AIFF files that I make, to the music folder as I know where to find them when I want to get those files onto my iMac. All in all it is working out well going from iPhone to Galaxy S3