Phone not picking up USB Mic

[Peter C]

I have a 4 year old Android phone using the "Open Camera" app, which is set to use an external mic and, after fiddling around with things in developer mode, the mic is still not getting recorded. I've read that the problem could be that it needs a little juice, which the phone is not able to provide. The mic gets picked up ok by my laptop, so I'm wondering if the solution is going to be a powered USB hub.

Anyone with experience in this?

[John A.]

I have a 4 year old Android phone using the "Open Camera" app, which is set to use an external mic and, after fiddling around with things in developer mode, the mic is still not getting recorded. I've read that the problem could be that it needs a little juice, which the phone is not able to provide. The mic gets picked up ok by my laptop, so I'm wondering if the solution is going to be a powered USB hub.

Anyone with experience in this?

Android + external mic is very tricky to get working. The phone has to host "USB to Go" (which not all phones do), and even then some mics and some phones won’t work together. I was able to get a Zoom H2 working with couple of different Samsungs. Then the H2 died, and I switched to a OnePlus phone. I tried a USB C mic with that. I tried a couple of different camera app, but could never get the mic working.

Recently switched to an iPhone, and I’ve been able to get that working fine with a Blue Snowball USB mic.

[Peter C]

The mic manufacturer specifies that it's Android compatible and the phone has type-C USB with OTG (on the go), if that's what you mean. I'll give it a go with a powered hub. If not, I suppose the laptop + external webcam will do it. Phone would be more convenient, though.

[sgosnell]

A powered hub certainly can't hurt. I have some devices that don't work through a non-powered hub, mostly disk drives, but occasionally some other stuff. A phone with USB C should provide enough power, the spec requires it, but not all phones conform to all specs. The mic itself might require external power, but I don't know that.

[John A.]

The mic manufacturer specifies that it's Android compatible and the phone has type-C USB with OTG (on the go), if that's what you mean. I'll give it a go with a powered hub. If not, I suppose the laptop + external webcam will do it. Phone would be more convenient, though.

Yes, sorry, I meant OTG.

[Peter C]

So, I got the phone to pick up the mic, but now the audio is out of synch with the video. Duh. Will need to look into that, or get a new phone... It seems plenty loud enough, so apparently no extra "juice" needed.

By the way, just in case this may help anyone else, one little thing I found is that there's no audio playback with the (usb) mic connected - it needs to be disconnected once you've made the recording... or so it seems (on my phone at least). <Edit: I don't know if having earphones connected would change things.

[RJVB]

Not to step on any toes, but it seems to me that iOS devices really stand head and shoulders above the majority of Android phones in this department, even if you take the lack of USB port into account.

I still use an iPhone 4S for recording audio (via its TRRS socket) from time to time. I do get audio out with that over headphones, too. My 1st gen iPhone SE does video recordings with external mic just fine (with the selfie camera that is, which is only 2Mp or so).

If I wanted a video recording device with the form factor of a phone I'd definitely look at refurbished iPhones.

[KirkP]

USB interfaces can have latency issues. If you have a video editing app on your phone it may have the ability to shift the audio. I don’t have an Android device, but on iOS, iMovie allows an audio track to be detached for editing and time shifting. I would expect Android to have something similar.

[Peter C]

Thanks KirkP, I'll check out any Android compatible alternatives to iMovie.