Why don’t the Android call recorder apps I have installed record calls properly?

Rajaa Chowdhury October 17, 2012

I use a Samsungs Galaxy Chat GT-B5330 with ICS 4.0.4. I have installed quite a few call recorder apps from Google Play and though they are recording all the calls, whenever I play back the recordings it sounds like everything has been recorded in fast forward mode (or is playing as such).

It is happening with all the call recorder apps I have installed. What could be the problem and how can I resolve it as everything sounds jumbled and indecipherable. Thanks for any helpful suggestions!

  1. ivy.dsouza
    January 15, 2013 at 5:07 pm

    I use a Samsungs Galaxy Chat GT-B5330 . I have installed quite a few call recorder apps from Google Play and though they are recording all the calls, whenever I play back the recordings it sounds like everything has been recorded in fast forward mode (or is playing as such).
    It is happening with all the call recorder apps I have installed. What could be the problem and how can I resolve it as everything sounds jumbled and indecipherable. Thanks for any helpful suggestions!

  2. Cyra Calkhoven
    November 14, 2012 at 4:16 pm

    This is a great free call recorder:
    http://nathanielkh.blogspot.nl/2011/05/record-my-call.html

  3. Rajaa Chowdhury
    November 5, 2012 at 5:25 am

    Still no resolution and I guess am stuck on this one :( So, closing the question as resolved.

  4. Rajaa Chowdhury
    October 19, 2012 at 12:52 pm

    I tried another apps today and the problem still remains the same. It's persistent. :(

    • Kannon Y
      October 19, 2012 at 5:54 pm

      This gives us an excellent chance to narrow the potential problem down. Right now there are four main potential sources for this issue: (1) bad encoder; (2) bad hardware; (3) bad DSP driver; (4) bad recording software.

      Try EasyRecorder" and you have the option of changing the encoder from MP4 (AAC), to WAV (a raw format) to a few others. It also records from the mic. Try recording using all the available formats from MP4 to WAV. If one or more gives you problems then it is likely an encoder issue. Let me know which encoder is giving you the trouble. We can then make a bug report to the manufacturer and/or pursue workarounds, such as changing your default audio encoder.

      • Rajaa Chowdhury
        October 20, 2012 at 1:16 am

        i have already tried EasyRecorder previously with all the formats supported and it was the same problem so I uninstalled it.

        I negates option 2 and 4, as if it was a bad hardware, the pre-installed voice recorder should have faced the same problem and also negate out option four as it is happening with all the call recording apps I am installing. I have also tried different audio formats too, so cannot also be a encoder problem. So boiling down to bad DSP driver issue then. Hmmm. Lemme contact Sammy Customer care (but am not too impressed with them).

        • Kannon Y
          October 23, 2012 at 7:18 am

          Good job.

          Anyway, if this were a widespread firmware or driver bug, then we'd find a lot more cases of this through a Google search, but as things are, this appears to be a nearly isolated incident, which is quite astonishing.

          Have you recently upgraded your phone's firmware? Or have you perhaps installed Samsung Kies and used this to upgrade? It might be that the update process went wrong and there's some corruption. Periodically checking for updates could prove helpful.

        • Hemant vig
          October 27, 2012 at 6:51 am

          Same proble with same mobile ( sumsung galaxy chat)
          pls helo

        • hemant vig
          October 30, 2012 at 10:24 am

          Till now nobody is there who can resolve this

        • Kannon Y
          October 31, 2012 at 7:59 pm

          Hermant, unfortunately, I cannot directly reply to your question, so you may not get notice of this, but it would seem that the recent upgrade to ICS (Android 4) somehow damaged the call recorder capability of your phone.

          You will need to submit a bug report - I've read that the best place to do so can be located here:

          https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list

          Google will forward the bugs to Samsung, although whether or not Samsung takes action is unknown. My last Samsung device had a great number of bugs that were never fixed. :-(

  5. Drew Butler
    October 18, 2012 at 3:11 am

    Glad to see people working on this. A family member is in the hospital so I won't be on here for the night at least.. good luck

    • Rajaa Chowdhury
      October 18, 2012 at 3:48 am

      Oh, sorry to hear about your relative's condition. Wish her/him a speedy recovery. All will be be OK by God's grace. Don't worry. :)

      • Drew Butler
        October 18, 2012 at 5:35 pm

        Much appreciated :)

    • Rajaa Chowdhury
      October 18, 2012 at 3:48 am

      Oh, sorry to hear about your relative's condition. Wish her/him a speedy recovery. All will be be OK by God's grace. Don't worry. :)

    • Anonymous
      October 18, 2012 at 11:05 am

      That's why you could not answer the question. Best wishes for your relative!

  6. Nathan Labbe
    October 17, 2012 at 4:26 pm

    Have you heard or tried an app called Tasker? Its designed to create profiles that automate all kinds of things in the phone and I've read about a few profiles that automate call recording. I have never tried any of these profiles but they might be just what you're looking for.

    • Rajaa Chowdhury
      October 18, 2012 at 12:54 am

      Yes I did hear about Tasker and other similar software and did install a few of them and then uninstalled them. I think it is just a bit of a overkill to install them for call recording.

  7. Jay.0
    October 17, 2012 at 12:40 pm

    Haven't tested any apps but, Ghar pe nokia ka purana s40 series ka Mobile pada hai ?
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_40
    It can record calls without any problem or extra apps which will ask for access to your smart phone.

  8. Ahmed Khalil
    October 17, 2012 at 9:51 am

    I think it is some option setting of these programs, but the strange thing is that it is repeated in all the programs.

  9. Kannon Y
    October 17, 2012 at 5:00 am

    Rajaa, I haven't heard of any problem even remotely like this before. It's also one of the strangest glitches on these forums in recent memory.

    I imagine that there is a shared audio codec used to compress the voice recording that's gotten fouled up. My understanding of the Android OS is that audio encoding is a core service, so how to repair it? Wiping the cache/Dalvik? Flashing the stock image perhaps?

    As a stop-gap measure, have you (or is it available?) tried Google Voice's call recording feature? It's free. And the encoding/recording is performed on Google's servers, so there's no possibility of your phone's hardware getting in the way.

    Please forgive me if you aren't American (it is available only in the US and several other countries).

    But if you want to play the sped up messages, I would try using VLCplayer. It has a feature that permits slow playback. Tina answered this question on the Answers forum earlier.

    • Rajaa Chowdhury
      October 17, 2012 at 6:57 am

      Kannon,

      I am based out of India and unfortunately Google Voice is not available in India yet I guess. I did try to play it with VLC Android and the sound was the same. :(

      • Kannon Y
        October 17, 2012 at 7:14 am

        My apologies, Rajaa. :-(

        If slowing the audio down didn't fix the issue, then it's more than likely related to the corruption of a core Android service. I would try reflashing whatever custom ROM you have installed (you have a custom ROM, am I right?). Or perhaps returning to stock, just to test out whether the issue persists. Remember to wipe both caches.

        I believe it is possible for you to get a Google Voice number, but it will unfortunately have a US number. It is confirmed here.

        • Rajaa Chowdhury
          October 17, 2012 at 7:34 am

          Kannon,

          Am not using a custom ROM and using the stock ROM as this phone is just a month old and I do not want to screw up the warranty. :) I have updated it to the latest firmware. Also the pre-installed voice recorder, records everything just fine. It is just none of the call recorder apps I am installing, seems to be delivering. :(

        • Rajaa Chowdhury
          October 17, 2012 at 7:37 am
        • Rajaa Chowdhury
          October 17, 2012 at 7:38 am

          I also would like to highlight that I am not yet very used to Android as have been using it just for a month now. So I do not wanna experiment too much with the internals lest I may brick my phone trying to root and stuff. :)

        • Kannon Y
          October 17, 2012 at 5:17 pm

          This is a super tough problem, Rajaa!

          I'm not an expert on ARM architecture, but I know a little of the basics. And any problem relating to the ability to record audio would originate within the digital signal processor. Or some component (be it software or hardware) between the recording of the audio and the playback of the audio.

          If the baked in audio recorder works properly, and it's NOT capturing audio in a raw, unencoded format, then it would seem that the problem is in the software/drivers and LIKELY related to the MP3 codec being used.

          Android captures audio in AAC by default. And I believe a third party app would record in MP3, which uses a different codec (most frequently LAME). You might consider installing a new codec pack, but I can't think of any that are specific to encoding - most are designed for playback, not recording.

          Here's a quick break down on what's going on sinde your phone (and bear in mind I'm no expert): Using the built in recorder the recorded audio data travels from the physical microphone to the DSP chip and then from there it's possibly encoded into some kind of audio file, using >a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding">AAC. AAC is the default audio recording format used in Android. I believe AAC is probably what's working fine and MP3 (or whatever codec is being used, LAME perhaps?) is what's having troubles.

          Another solution: Try installing the DSP Manager (which is normally integrated on Cyanogen mod) and turn off encoding/compression, or anything having to do with compressing audio (or turn it on, if it's already off). This probably won't help at all, because it may only effect the default Android app, but there's a chance it might effect 3rd party apps.

  10. Drew Butler
    October 17, 2012 at 12:36 am

    Which apps has this happened with?

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