What a wonderful, wonderful life students have these days! Apart from the loans, of course. With all the capabilities of their gadgets, they can do most things a lot faster than the generation before them. Yes, most universities forbid audio recording at lectures, but many apps allow for the background recording these days, so you can do it Bond-style, stealthily. Journalists, business people, artists will also find some of these apps quite handy, so check out our roundup of the audio recording apps for the Android devices.
Cogi – Notes & Voice Recorder
Developer: Cogi – Note Taking, Call Recorder, Transcription
Cogi does not impose size restrictions on your recordings other than the restrictions of your device’s storage. It’s intuitive and mostly free, with a couple of premium features like two-side call recording for U.S.-only and recording transcriptions. The latter are performed by human operators (paid feature, English-only). As for the voice recording capabilities, Cogi is pretty functional – you can add notes, tags, images and contacts of the people involved in the recording. It lets you record an audio and at the same time, add contacts or images. Moreover, it has a nifty Highlight feature, which lets you have that special informative moment recorded separately. You can tap highlight right in the middle of the ongoing recording. Thus, you have that entire lecture, but you also have that highlighted file recorded separately, so you can always find that moment easily, without fast-forwarding through the entire lecture.
Skyro – Voice Recorder
Developer: Triveous
One of the go-to apps in the niche is Skyro Voice Recorder by Triveous, and here is why. It gets the job done even if you’re a noob in all things tech. Partly it’s thanks to the intuitive and simple user interface, which is by no means outdated. On the contrary, it’s quite elegant and appealing to both advocates of the Material design and simpler minimalist style because it has several themes, some free, some paid. I find the default theme quite fitting, though. It lets you record, pause and continue, take pictures during the ongoing recording. Then, you can add images from other locations on your device or from the cloud storage. Add tags, edit names, edit save format, save location – you can save on the SD card. The nifty feature is when you set your save location, the main screen displays how many hours of recording you still have left based on your save location, file format and bitrate.
By the way, you can select from the several file formats, bitrate and even compress audio on the go to save space. It displays no ads, and works offline. It keeps recording in the background even when your device’s screen is off. You can add many images, rearrange them, and the app creates a beautiful presentation of your audio and images for you. The files are then displayed in a beautiful timeline. You can search by tags, dates, location, if you like. You can also disable location-tracking in the app’s settings. The quality of the recording is very good even if you use the default settings, while the savvy users will be able to mingle with the noise suppression, echo cancellation, automatic or manual gain control and use a wider array of bitrates (paid features). Moreover, you can sync your files to Dropbox and share them with your buddies. The app works great for students, musicians, journalists, business people. Can’t recommend it more, especially for tablets. Does not record calls.
Smart Voice Recorder
Developer: SmartMob
Smart Voice Recorder might look a bit outdated in its style, but that does not mean it’s poor functionality-wise. It’s good for quick, hassle-free recording. It lets you record high-quality audio, in large files (up to 2 GB), limited only by your storage. Best used in phones, it lets you skip silence on the go. Do note you can’t share the files via sms/mms. However, do not wonder why we even mention it – check out what it lets you do for free. You can skip silence automatically or manually and adjust the sensitivity control of this feature; use the live audio spectrum analyzer; adjust sample rate; record in the background; calibrate the microphone gain; save/cancel or pause and resume recording; use SD card to save files.
The app displays how much time you have left for your recordings while the list is easy to navigate and search. You can share the files via WhatsApp, e-mail, Dropbox and other cloud and messaging services. Moreover, you can set the recording to be your ringtone, alarm or notification, which is one nifty feature to personalize your device. As you can see, there are some unique features available here, so check this one out.
Voice Recorder
Developer: Alex Circus
AudioRec Voice Recorder is free-free, no IAPs. Its virtues are a neat and beautiful interface, audio recording and playback, adjustable microphone gain, mono and stereo modes, 8-48 kHz sample rate, save to SD card. Users can rename and share the files. Does not record phone calls. Supports wav – pcm, sgpp – amr, mp4 – aac formats and records in the background with the display off. Features start, pause, resume, abort buttons for the ongoing recording. It also lets you append, or continue, an already existing recording if they are in wav. You can choose which mic to use, if your device has several like the rear mic of your camera. You can also make a custom folder for your recordings. You can use your recordings are your ringtones. One nifty feature is you can record using your notification buttons, home screen widget and lock screen widget. The playback has a loop feature. One of the recent features lets you auto-upload your recordings to Google Drive.
Voice Recorder
Developer: Splend Apps
Voice Recorder is, in my humble opinion, of the good-looking apps on the list, and it’s optimized for phones and tablets. It’s also free and easy-to-use. It lets you record large files, limited by your storage, of course, and you can save to SD card – see the settings. The app supports wav, m4a, mp4, and 3gp file formats. It lets you adjust sample rate from 8 kHz to 44 kHz, change bitrate from 32 up to 320 kbps, use stereo or mono modes, audio spectrum analyzer, change the save folder. It also lets you record phone calls, although this functionality is device specific and may not work on some phones. You can select the source of the recording like the mic or phone call, and it records in the background when the screen is off. The software also has the playback feature with volume control, and lets you share the files, delete them, rename, set them as your ringtone, alarm or notification. You can open the files with other apps from within the app to edit them. The nifty widgets are resizable, and display your latest recordings. You can also control your recording from the status bar.
The LED devices will blink during the recording if the screen is off, optional. The app will stop recording when you answer a phone call and then auto-resume it when you’re done. The files list has a neat way of selecting multiple files for deletion or sharing, as well as sorting them by name, date, duration and size, and finally, saving them to Android media library. Overall, you can not go wrong with this app, and it has one of the highest ratings on Google Play store among the apps on this list, with over a million installs (1-5 mln).
Tape-a-Talk Voice Recorder
Developer: Markus Drösser
Tape-a-Talk is another very neat audio recorder from the German indie developers. Besides configurable audio quality, intuitive interface and several functional widgets, Tape-a-Talk features a good deal of functions – available for free. It records in the background, and attention!, lets you backwards and fast-forward during the recording as you would with a regular Dictaphone. Manage your files from within the app – rename, delete, fast share with a pre-defined group of people, upload to Dropbox. You can also cut recordings if they are in wav format, change storage folder, sort by size, name, date, length, set recordings as ringtones, and more. It’s a really powerful and intuitive app that works like magic and gets the job done.
RecForge II – Audio Recorder
Developer: Dje073 Music & Audio
RecForge II is not only an audio recorder, but also an editor and a powerful file manager that lets you rename, delete, copy, move, sort and convert your recordings. You can record, play, share and edit your audio files. You can live monitor in preview or record mode if you sport a headset. The playback has loop feature if you need to memorize something and replay it multiple times. The app also features time stretching with playing rate and pitch adjustment, as well as skip silence with threshold, schedule recordings, and archive recordings using cloud storage. Upload to soundcloud, social networks, mail. Moreover, the app lets you edit the files’ metadata, tags, use them as ringtones and add custom comments.
RecForge II supports mp3, ogg, wma, flac and opus, but mind that these have a 3 minutes limit (no limit in pro version). Wav format has no limitation. The app has a nifty convert, merge, time stretch features, adjustable pitch tone, playing rate and more. If your devices has the capability to record in stereo mode, the app will visualize the audio signal for the left and right channels. Users can also choose the desired input method, such as front or back mic, use external mic, hide notifications and record in the background – stealth mode, works when the phone is locked. Savvy users will know how to mingle with the gain control and noise.
Audio Recorder
Developer: Sony Mobile
Not my favorite shade of red, but Audio Recorder comes from Sony, and is quite a powerful audio recorder you can have on any Android device optimized for phones and tablets. Record, pause, resume, playback, edit your recordings and fine-tune the app’s performance with its extensive settings. If your device has the required hardware, you can record in stereo mode, and the resulting quality is very good. It’s compatible with the headsets for Sony Xperia, which add the 3D effect for binaural audio. It’s also compatible with a slew of external microphones, headsets, smartwatches and smartbands, so if you sport a wearable, you might want to check it out.
Easy Voice Recorder
Developer: Digipom
Easy Voice Recorder lets you record files in most of the popular formats, from PCM and AAC to AMR (wav) and save to your SD card. It has the file sharing and transfer to PC in mind, as well as recording in the background and a handy-dandy home screen widget. The supported devices will enjoy the audio filters to make the recordings clearer. The app lets users rename, delete, save as ringtone, and share their files. It also works with Tasker and Locale. The Pro version lets power users record with a Bluetooth mic, use the software gain for mic recording, skip silence, control the recorder from the status bar. Does not record phone calls.
Sound & Voice Recorder – ASR
Developer: NLL
ASR is free, no time limit audio recorder that supports wav, ogg, flac, mp4, and 3gp optimized for tablets. The users can control the sample and bitrate, pause, resume, discard recording, customize the save folder, delete and share multiple files simultaneously from the app. The app can record in the background, use echo cancellation mode. You can configure it to auto start or use the nifty widget. The app’s file manager has a search option and supports many languages. The Pro version adds voice activated recording, volume controls, cloud integration, auto-email, and some more file managing capabilities.
Audio Recorder
Developer: NikolayNachev
Let’s not forget the indies, so one extra app on the list is a new one, and may not sport an original name, but it sure is worth checking out. Designed in minimalist and clean style; it’s dark and easy on the eyes; is only 1.7M, and is optimized for phones and tablets. The app has all the features you need, especially if you are not that tech-savvy. You can choose from the four quality modes, rename, and rearrange your files by size, name, date and see the properties of your files. The app works great and does the job is audio recording is all you need. Even though you can’t add all those thingies like images and location to your recordings, this app gets the basic job done very good and is light on your device’s resources.
That’s our list for Android as of now. What is your audio recorder of choice? Share your impressions in the comments below and don’t forget to follow PocketMeta on social networks to get our hand-picked guides, roundups and reviews on all things Android, iOS and Windows Phone.
