Recording - June 2017 - 53

All is not rosy on this front, though. At
this year's CES, I asked every Android
device manufacturer I could pester what
they knew about Google's Pro Audio
development progress and not a single
person I spoke to, either from the technical
or marketing side, knew anything about it.
So it's possible that, like so many of Google's
projects, it's been dropped.
That said, if you already have a Samsung
Galaxy S6 class phone, you're good to go
right now. Or if you have a lower cost phone
with OTG and Android OS 5 or above, you
can try one of the low-latency extensions.
There are several DAW apps for Android
available now that are quite capable.
Samsung's recent Professional Audio work
appears to be in support of lower latency
virtual instruments, which may also be
applicable to real time audio I/O.
Today, my $35 phone, plus some homemade cables, provides me with an array of
useful tools, primarily for live sound gigs-an
SPL meter, spectrum analyzer, audio polarity
checker, function generator, tuner, and
remote controller for my TASCAM handheld
recorder. And having a PDF of the manual for
an unfamiliar console in my pocket has saved
me more than once. Multitrack recording and

mixing, however, will have to wait until I'm
ready for a hardware upgrade.

Resources

Check your phone to see if it offers OTG
with the app called OTG? or USB OTG
Checker from the Google Play Store. If
you're thinking of getting a new phone,
you can search www.gsmarena.com/
search.php3 for the text "USB Host" to find
a list of phones that support OTG. You'll
want Android 5.1 at a minimum and be
sure to include your price range to avoid
too many hits. This isn't 100% accurate,
but you can narrow down your choices
and call the manufacturer for verification.
Check your device's latency (both Android
and iOS) at superpowered.com/latency
An Android low-latency audio driver with
USB I/O support, along with an extensive
list of audio interfaces and mobile devices
that it supports (maybe even yours) is at
www.extreamsd.com/index.php/201507-22-12-01-14/usb-audio-driver
Audio Evolution Mobile and n-Track
Studio (an Android version of the venerable
and well-liked application for Windows)
are currently-available DAW apps. Look
for them on the Google Play Store.

Some interesting videos about the
evolution of Android pro audio from
Samsung and Google development conferences in 2016 are available on YouTube:
Samsung Pro Audio session: youtube.
com/watch?v=XVbZ1yBWk1Q
Google I/O Conference 2016:
youtube.com/watch?v=F2ZDp-eNrh4
Finally, bit.ly/audio-latency has a detailed technical discussion including the
Compatibility Definition Document for
phones running Android Version 6. There's
an interesting gotcha in the USB section that
reads: "It MUST allow a USB host connected
with the Android device to access the
contents of the shared storage volume using
either USB mass storage or Media Transfer
Protocol." USB mass storage is the technical
name for USB-OTG, but while virtually every
phone supports Media Transfer Protocol
(MTP) to transfer data to and from a computer
via USB, it isn't sufficient for connecting a
USB audio device. The struggle continues...
Mike Rivers (rivers@recordingmag.com)
is a recording engineer, pro audio guru,
and educator, living in the Washington,
DC area. Learn more (lots more) at
mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=XVbZ1yBWk1Q http://youtube.com/watch?v=XVbZ1yBWk1Q http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2ZDp-eNrh4 http://www.gsmarena.com/search.php3 http://www.bit.ly/audio-latency http://www.gsmarena.com/search.php3 http://www.superpowered.com/latency http://www.extreamsd.com/index.php/2015-07-22-12-01-14/usb-audio-driver http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com http://www.cloudmicrophones.com

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