When your Android Phone doesn't "hear" your guitar

Discuss the JustinGuitar Lessons & Songs App
1

Hey all,

I posted this in a couple other places and have submitted it as a “fix” for a recurring problem for my Android Guitar app. But since I have seen a couple other posts for the similar issue, I am posting this as a separate thread.

For me, the problem is with the “1-Minute Chord Changes” and “Perfect Chord” exercises and the problem is that you are playing but the app doesn’t appear to “hear” the string/chord you are playing. No matter how loud you play or how close your phone is to the guitar it sees nothing.

This isn’t a fix, but is at best a kind of painful work around. I don’t have an iPhone so I don’t know if this is any help for the Apple team (not even sure this is a problem for the Apple team)

What I found was that when doing either exercise my Galaxy S21 had a green light turn on, indicating the microphone was on, but again, nothing was registering with the app. Everything I tried with the phone failed until I installed the “Mic Test - Instant Audio Check” app from the play store.

I used the Mic-Test app to troubleshoot the microphone but what I found was as soon as I opened the Mic Test app, my guitar was instantly heard by my phone. Since I knew the phone was hearing the guitar, I immediately went back to my Justin Guitar app and to my surprise the Justin Guitar app was now hearing my guitar with no issues. I was able to repeat this work around for both exercises, multiple times.

The “but” in all this is that unfortunately, once you are done with either the 1-Minute Chord Change or the Perfect Chord exercise, the microphone turns off and to get it to work again, you must start the exercise, then jump into the Mic Test app and verify things are heard again, then just back to the Justin Guitar app and complete the exercise.

So again, kind of painful, but at least a work around if you want to use these exercises. Also, as noted, I have reported this to the Musopia team and have received a reply that the developers are looking into it. I can hope this helps them resolve this issue quickly enough.

Good luck everyone!

2 Likes
2

There may be many reasons, but first of all, check whether the application has access rights to the microphone - this would explain why the testing program can use the microphone but the Justin app does not.

3

Justin app works fine in tuner mode, so its not app mic permissions. This one minute changes issue has been going on for years.

4

Thanks for bringing this up, Waferboy. My problem is similar but not exact. First, I’m not familiar with the Mike Test App. Is that part of Justin Guitar app? My problem is that Justin Guitar app hears my guitar, but poorly. Doing Perfect Chord, some strings are heard well yet others are not heard or barely heard. (My guitar is tuned). I can put the phone right next to the strings but that doesn’t help. Doing chord changes, it will pick up, maybe, 10 chord changes when I’m actually doing 80ish. I would be fine using your workaround. Can you explain the Mike Test?

5

Nor1: The “Mic Test - Instant Audio Check” is an app from that can be download from the Google Play store. There may be others that will work, but this one was the one I found first and did what I needed it to do without paying some fee. In Google Play, if you search for what is in quotes above, you will find the app that I am referring to.

The Mic Test app you simply open and you can get it to show a bar on your phone screen that shows how “loud” the sound being picked up is. You strum, talk, or type on your keyboard and you can see the level of the sound on the screen. That’s all I used it for in this case, it simply showed me that the microphone on my phone was registering/hearing something.

It may be a real stretch but long ago my kid’s phone microphone hole got some dirt in it and in that debacle we found that when talking to people they could only partially hear what was being said. It was like some weird frequency filter. But once found and cleaned out things started working fine again. Again, a stretch, but maybe something to look at.

1 Like
6

LesPaulMoreRay: Agreed that the tuner portion of the app works just fine. This is an odd one. I didn’t know about the history of this problem as I’ve only been using the app for about 6 months.

7

JackPK: I did a lot of checks including the mic permission which the app does have. That’s why out of frustration I finally decided to test the microphone. But I get it, there could be other reasons, I just didn’t find any and still haven’t.

8

Thanks Michael. Oh I think that app will be helpful. Whether it temporarily fixes the Justin Guitar app issue or not, at least I will know how much audio Justin app is hearing. I didn’t mention that I have an electric and I’m playing without an amp so my guitar’s sound level is lower than an acoustic. So this will help!
Thank you!

9

Your phone might be using ambient noise canceling software to improve the voice quality of the microphone and the test app, once started, disables any software between itself and the microphone hardware proper thus allowing the app to work.

Samsung calls their version of this noise reduction software “Voice Focus” and you should find it under Settings>Accessibility>

10

Richard_N, thanks for the tip, but no luck for me.

I went an looked on my Galaxy S21 under Setting>Availability and there is no “voice focus” to be found. I looked on my work provided Galaxy S23 and again, no voice focus. I did a search of the full settings menu and nothing was found on either phone. Is your Galaxy newer than the S23? I know the S21 and S23 are considered old.

11

Sorry, the pitfalls of using AI to get answers.

Apparently you need an active call to access this feature. This video shows you where to find the setting for Voice Focus. This works on my S23.

EDIT: For an active call I just used my voice mail, feel free to annoy one of your friends though. :grinning_face: