topic Re: Z1 Compact microphone records unbalanced stereo in Z Series

Z1 Compact microphone records unbalanced stereo

bonycur — Sun, 21 Sep 2014 15:09:43 GMT

Voice/music recordings on my Z1 Compact have a much stronger signal in the right channel than the left channel when I download the files and view them in an audio editor. This happens with Sony's Audio Recorder as well as with other audio recording apps. Is this a software issue, or am I going to have to send my phone in for service?

Re: Z1 Compact microphone records unbalanced stereo

SergioPL1 — Sun, 21 Sep 2014 21:22:56 GMT

Z1/Z1C uses secondary, so called noise cancellation microphone to make stereo recordings. It's audio level & quality is a bit different from the main unit, mainly because it's for different purpouses. But you can always normalize audio outputs using freeware Audacity. Just set normalization level to -3dB or 0dB.

Re: Z1 Compact microphone records unbalanced stereo

bonycur — Tue, 23 Sep 2014 01:20:49 GMT

Thanks for the prompt response, SergioPL.

It turns out that I was using Audacity to check the stereo levels (because they sounded off-center through the phone earbuds), but I was not aware that I could "fix it in the mix" using Normalize. It's kind of too bad that one can't just forward a Z1 Compact audio recording to someone without having to go through this extra step, but it's not that big of a deal for me, since I rarely forward things unedited anyway.

Thanks for the tip.

Re: Z1 Compact microphone records unbalanced stereo

SergioPL1 — Tue, 23 Sep 2014 18:25:59 GMT

I think that if you find a program that records mono you will get single audio level but I would prefer corrected stereo rather than single channel.