External Mic Works on the Fire! - Page 3

asb2164 · 11-27-2011, 11:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jswinden

Like I said, I'm still skeptical. I'm using the proper plugs but my results are way different from yours. I'm no slouch when it comes to electronics, especially radio communications, so I wonder if your results are typical or whether you are hearing what you want to hear. Have you actually tried listening to music on this headset with mic (3 striped plug) and compared the same music listening to a headset with speakers only (2 striped plug)? If so, are these experiences actually that similar or is there quite a bit of attenuation on the headset with mic compared to the headset with speakers only?

I have a pair of good headphones I listen to music with of course they sound better than the cheap headset/mic but if I need to use the mic I really wont be listening to music I will be voice chatting the volume is about the same on both.

grvthang · 11-27-2011, 12:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by asb2164

I have a pair of good headphones I listen to music with of course they sound better than the cheap headset/mic but if I need to use the mic I really wont be listening to music I will be voice chatting thet volume is about the same on both.

thanks, asb. I don't really get jswinden's point (outside of the attenuation he said he was experiencing) - he keeps saying that he is " skeptical " but doesnt say what is skeptical of. That the mic works at all? That it can be used as a viable method to record on the Fire?

I didn't expect a ticker tape parade for evidently being the first person to discover this on 4 different Fire forums, but this is the only forum where I felt that my veracity was being questioned.

I'm glad that you verified my experience. have you tried Google Voice or Skype yet?

Tanzaku · 11-27-2011, 12:23 PM

Just tested recording and it works — with a caveat. I used a Rocketfish headset (4 gold bands, three black ones) that is my standard Android headset (for my phone and Transformer). I installed (sideloaded) the Netmemo+ audio recording app on my Fire. It works on the LP settings, but not on the HQ settings*. Speculating, I think this means the Fire will accept and process mic input in 8kHz signals but not 16kHz. At least that's my guess.

So, audio notes live! I was able to email them, send to Evernote, and play them back using the Amazon MP3 player. What a nice "undocumented" feature to discover!

*
MP3 (60 minutes) works
MP3-Hi-Q (20 minutes) does not (mic not found error)
OGG (60 minutes) works
OGG-Hi-Q (20 minutes) does not (mic not found error)
WAV (8 minutes) works
WAV-Hi-Q (3 minutes) does not (mic not found error)

ectoplasm · 11-27-2011, 12:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by grvthang

...
I didn't expect a ticker tape parade for evidently being the first person to discover this on 4 different Fire forums, but this is the only forum where I felt that my veracity was being questioned.

I think he was/is trying to get to the truth of what can or can not be done with it. Nothing to take personally. It's what we do here

grvthang · 11-27-2011, 12:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ectoplasm

I think he was/is trying to get to the truth of what can or can not be done with it. Nothing to take personally. It's what we do here

I hear you, but what Tanzaku did with my news was much more constructive.

grvthang · 11-27-2011, 12:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tanzaku

Just tested recording and it works — with a caveat. I used a Rocketfish headset (4 gold bands, three black ones) that is my standard Android headset (for my phone and Transformer). I installed (sideloaded) the Netmemo+ audio recording app on my Fire. It works on the LP settings, but not on the HQ settings*. Speculating, I think this means the Fire will accept and process mic input in 8kHz signals but not 16kHz. At least that's my guess.

So, audio notes live! I was able to email them, send to Evernote, and play them back using the Amazon MP3 player. What a nice "undocumented" feature to discover!

*
MP3 (60 minutes) works
MP3-Hi-Q (20 minutes) does not (mic not found error)
OGG (60 minutes) works
OGG-Hi-Q (20 minutes) does not (mic not found error)
WAV (8 minutes) works
WAV-Hi-Q (3 minutes) does not (mic not found error)

Great news! So now we know that it can record in low quality only. Now if someone with a Skype or Google Voice account can check if those can be made to work, then we're really getting somewhere.

jswinden · 11-27-2011, 01:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ectoplasm

I think he was/is trying to get to the truth of what can or can not be done with it. Nothing to take personally. It's what we do here

Yes!

It is not my fault if some don't have the ability to look at things from an engineering/electronics perspective. It is never wise to simply start plugging things into a port without thinking it through. Experimentation could cause the frying of the device. Always best to err on the side of caution.

asb2164 · 11-27-2011, 02:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jswinden

Yes!

It is not my fault if some don't have the ability to look at things from an engineering/electronics perspective. It is never wise to simply start plugging things into a port without thinking it through. Experimentation could cause the frying of the device. Always best to err on the side of caution.

Bingo, I have a friend who is an Engineer, I don't let him visit when I have a project going on it ends up taking twice as long to get something accomplished when he "Helps"

SCION · 11-27-2011, 02:15 PM

I can vouch for Jack. He's one of the good guys around here. Gruff and to the point always.

grvthang · 11-27-2011, 02:40 PM

Fine. I'm an engineer as well. Not electrical, but civil. Now we've gotten past the discussion of whether or not the device has the capability of accepting audio input via an external mic, let's test to see what we can gain with this functionality. So far we know:

1. It will record audio in low quality; audio recording apps work
2. G-Strings, a guitar tuner app requiring a mic, works
3. Vlingo and Speech To Text, two speech-to-text apps, will not work. I suspect that both use the Google voice search function to convert speech into text. From what I've read so far, you need to root to install it (I may be wrong). Until someone with the full complement of Google apps tests it, we won't know.

Can anyone else add to this?

grvthang · 11-28-2011, 01:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SCION

I can vouch for Jack. He's one of the good guys around here. Gruff and to the point always.

Glad to hear that he's one of the good guys. He says he approaches things from an engineering perspective. That's great; I'm an engineer, too. Besides discovering this apparently unknown functionality, i tested a few apps and shared my experiences. I'm anxious to hear his contribution to this discussion besides his skepticism.

grvthang · 11-28-2011, 11:06 PM

The sound of crickets after my last posting, above, was deafening, so I got back to testing; here are my latest experiences using a cheap headphone/mic combo):

-It records fine on Tape-a-Talk, a free audio recording app in the Android Market (I believe you need to have the headphone plugged in while installing it, or it will not sense the mic and fail to install). It was able to record at the default format (16 bit), but not at 8 bit. And it will record up the highest sample rate offered by the app (44.1 kHz). Actually the quality of the recording was pretty good considering the cheap mic.

-I installed a 4-track recording app, J4T, and it will only record 1 track per project. I tried changing the sample rate and turning off stereo, but that wouldn't work.

Oldpilot · 11-30-2011, 11:15 AM

To get back to basics, how do I put Skype on my Fire? It's not available on the Amazon app store.

grvthang · 11-30-2011, 09:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oldpilot

To get back to basics, how do I put Skype on my Fire? It's not available on the Amazon app store.

You'll have to 'sideload' it. There are several ways to do it; basically, you have to acquire the app by either downloading it from a site directly onto the Fire, or downloading it from a PC or Android phone and transferring it to the Fire, and then installing it.
Read the "Tips and Tricks" thread; several posts there go into detail on the methods.

volwrath · 11-30-2011, 09:41 PM

I got a voice recorder app working fine with my pair of Chinese apple headset rip offs but everytime I tried to dial the echo on skype and/or a number it said call failed pretty quick.

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11-27-2011, 12:23 PM	#33
Tanzaku Enthusiast Posts: 34 Karma: 225 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Anacortes, WA Device: Kindle Fire, Kindle 3	Just tested recording and it works — with a caveat. I used a Rocketfish headset (4 gold bands, three black ones) that is my standard Android headset (for my phone and Transformer). I installed (sideloaded) the Netmemo+ audio recording app on my Fire. It works on the LP settings, but not on the HQ settings. Speculating, I think this means the Fire will accept and process mic input in 8kHz signals but not 16kHz. At least that's my guess. So, audio notes live! I was able to email them, send to Evernote, and play them back using the Amazon MP3 player. What a nice "undocumented" feature to discover! MP3 (60 minutes) works MP3-Hi-Q (20 minutes) does not (mic not found error) OGG (60 minutes) works OGG-Hi-Q (20 minutes) does not (mic not found error) WAV (8 minutes) works WAV-Hi-Q (3 minutes) does not (mic not found error)

11-27-2011, 02:15 PM	#39
SCION Séduisant Posts: 4,706 Karma: 2107018 Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Texas, USA Device: Boox Note Air2+; Kobo Libra2; Kindle Scribe, Oasis3; iPad Mini6	I can vouch for Jack. He's one of the good guys around here. Gruff and to the point always.

11-27-2011, 02:40 PM	#40
grvthang Connoisseur Posts: 92 Karma: 53472 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Brooklyn NY Device: Kindle Fire, Droid Incredible2, Kindle Touch	Fine. I'm an engineer as well. Not electrical, but civil. Now we've gotten past the discussion of whether or not the device has the capability of accepting audio input via an external mic, let's test to see what we can gain with this functionality. So far we know: 1. It will record audio in low quality; audio recording apps work 2. G-Strings, a guitar tuner app requiring a mic, works 3. Vlingo and Speech To Text, two speech-to-text apps, will not work. I suspect that both use the Google voice search function to convert speech into text. From what I've read so far, you need to root to install it (I may be wrong). Until someone with the full complement of Google apps tests it, we won't know. Can anyone else add to this?

11-28-2011, 11:06 PM	#42
grvthang Connoisseur Posts: 92 Karma: 53472 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Brooklyn NY Device: Kindle Fire, Droid Incredible2, Kindle Touch	The sound of crickets after my last posting, above, was deafening, so I got back to testing; here are my latest experiences using a cheap headphone/mic combo): -It records fine on Tape-a-Talk, a free audio recording app in the Android Market (I believe you need to have the headphone plugged in while installing it, or it will not sense the mic and fail to install). It was able to record at the default format (16 bit), but not at 8 bit. And it will record up the highest sample rate offered by the app (44.1 kHz). Actually the quality of the recording was pretty good considering the cheap mic. -I installed a 4-track recording app, J4T, and it will only record 1 track per project. I tried changing the sample rate and turning off stereo, but that wouldn't work.

11-30-2011, 11:15 AM	#43
Oldpilot Groupie Posts: 184 Karma: 2572 Join Date: Aug 2010 Device: Kindle	To get back to basics, how do I put Skype on my Fire? It's not available on the Amazon app store.

11-30-2011, 09:41 PM	#45
volwrath Guru Posts: 713 Karma: 1001739 Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Nashville, TN Device: SGS3/PW2/Nexus72	I got a voice recorder app working fine with my pair of Chinese apple headset rip offs but everytime I tried to dial the echo on skype and/or a number it said call failed pretty quick.

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