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Higher quality voice notes


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I've noticed that when I record voice notes with Evernote that the quality is pretty poor - I get lots of static in the files, despite the fact that the files end up being fairly large.

Is it possible to set the quality level for audio files so that they come out at higher quality, and perhaps use a compressed audio format like AAC?

Thanks

Vanessa

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Not currently. We're trying to balance the memory limits of the device and the size and duration of audio recordings. Currently, the audio is relatively compressed WAV files.

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I've noticed that when I record voice notes with Evernote that the quality is pretty poor - I get lots of static in the files, despite the fact that the files end up being fairly large.

Is it possible to set the quality level for audio files so that they come out at higher quality, and perhaps use a compressed audio format like AAC?

Thanks

Vanessa

If you have a jailbroken iPhone, you can use the iPhone voice memo to record. Then ftp the file to your desktop computer & add that to Evernote. I've done this a few times.

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  • 1 month later...

HI, I am experiencing the same thing. The audio notes are of such a low quality I actually struggle to understand what I was telllng myself. Completely sup par quality to the independent audio note iphone apps out there. What to do? (I'm on a mac, and iphone). I hope this issues gets a decent shot of being fixed, makes a big difference to be able to speak notes and ideas to myself on the fly.

OR have the iphone memo recorder sync into Evernote.

Thanks! JT

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  • 5 months later...

I looked at the bitrates for audio recordings in various apps. Evernote is an extremely low 13 kbits/second, compared with the native Voice Memos app which records at 63.98 kbits per second. The difference in sound quality is night and day. As others have said on this thread, the audio quality of Evernote voice notes is practically unusable.

Is there any chance Evernote could make the quality of voice notes a user-defined feature in future releases of the iOS app? This would make it a much more usable feature. Currently, I don't use it in the app. I just e-mail my voice memos created with the Apple built in app to my Evernote account.

Also, wouldn't you get some reduction in file size by using a compressed format rather than .wav?

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  • 2 weeks later...

There are a number of iPhone applications that allow adjustable recording quality. I would just use one of those to record and then email the resulting file to Evernote. Its quite simple to do. I just tested it with the VR+, which is the recording app I've used the last couple of years. I chose to record a high quality mp3 from a lecture I attended. It showed up in Evernote properly and looks and sounds great.

If you really wanted super high quality, you could use an external microphone connected to the iPhone's earphone\microphone jack to bring in seriously high quality audio by adding an external microphone or connecting directly to an audio source.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 6 months later...

Have the developers actually used this feature, i.e. eaten their own dog food? If they did, they would know it is *****, and the reason why it is ***** is because they have purposefully limited the functionality with poorer quality audio.

Do you have something USEFUL to say about this subject?

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  • 1 month later...

This hasn't been a high prioirity so far because you actually can use any voice recorder on your iPhone (or any device) you would like - and then email the file recording to your Evernote email address. It is not off the table for a revisit, though.

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  • 2 weeks later...

This hasn't been a high prioirity so far because you actually can use any voice recorder on your iPhone (or any device) you would like - and then email the file recording to your Evernote email address. It is not off the table for a revisit, though.

Thank you for your response, I really do hope this does get revisited. From a developing perspective, I can't imagine it being too difficult of a change. On one hand, I understand your reason for it not being high priority, but I can't imagine why you would want your customers using other apps for something your product is supposed to do? I only say this because I love Evernote and the only reason I use another memo app is for this reason. Wouldn't you want to change that? My vote is for it to be a higher priority! :) The iPhone microphone is pretty impressive (their native app records very nice memos) and it is a shame for Evernote to not make use of that quality! I agree with a previous post that at the current quality level this feature is practically unusable. I really hope for Evernote's syncing and simplicity to carry through all of it's features and cut out these unnecessary steps.

My request: Higher bitrate (like 64 kbits) with a size-friendly format. (Or give us options!)

Please Consider!

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  • 7 months later...

This hasn't been a high prioirity so far because you actually can use any voice recorder on your iPhone (or any device) you would like - and then email the file recording to your Evernote email address. It is not off the table for a revisit, though.

Hi - I've posted in other threads on this, but I thought maybe I'd put in another vote here too for a user definable option that just has 2 choices in the settings on iOS/Android for either standard (13kbps) or high-quality (64 kbps). This would be so helpful for me. Being able to email file is ok, but not great. If I'm writing a song and want to be able to link melodic ideas with my lyrics it can be a bit of a laborious process that involves writing the lyrics in EN, recording in another app, emailing that audio to EN, waiting for it process, then getting on my Mac to either copy/paste a note link or merge the 2 notes. If the audio quality was better, I could do all of this in one note from the start, all in one step, and all from my phone. I wouldn't need to look to other apps. As much as I dig EN, I'm occasionally left wondering if there's a better platform I should be using. Thanks for hearing us out!

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  • 1 month later...

as a music teacher, I would LOVE to use EVERNOTE as a way of recording my students quickly. They quality currently is too poor to use this as a tool. It would be great to have the ability to vary the quality of the recordings. Please continue to improve this feature.

Thanks

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  • 4 weeks later...

I'm a university lecturer and a Premium account holder.

This semester I've trialled using Evernote to produce a short recording containing oral feedback for my students. I create a note for each of my students, paste the marking rubric into the note, record the feedback and email them the note. I find this a much better way to give personalised feedback to students, as I tend to give less feedback when I write. I'm VERY disappointed with the quality of the audio. I agree with others that it's not worth having this feature as it stands. I have tried using other apps to create the recording, and dragging the file into Evernote, but this requires more steps in the process and makes the process much less efficient.

I would gladly pay more for better quality audio.

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I´m a song writer and I need to be able to work fast and send stuff directly from evernote to my colleagues and friends. The app is great for viewing sound directly on the area where lyrics is annotated, but with the current .amr quality it is next to impossible to hear anything, especially if someone is speaking low.

So I made a little A-B test. I first recorded a bit of music directly through itunes out on my macbook, then just through the computer-microphone into the computer again. I did this first through Evernote Mac Application, the desktop, then through my android phone running evernote, latest version. At last I re-recorded the same audio through an audio app with the AAC codec in .m4a files.

Settings used in the audio app:

AAC / .m4a

Bitrate: 24kbps & 48kbps

Samplerate: 32khz & 44.1khz (32000hz, slightly under CD-quality for the 24kbps file, 44100hz for the one with 48kbps samplerate)

Mono

Here are all the files for everyone to judge for themselves:

Evernote Desktop - MAC:

http://cl.ly/210m1c2a2B1V

Evernote Android - HTC Phone:

http://cl.ly/0b3s12222v1g

M4A / AAC - 24 kbps:

http://cl.ly/3J3s3A003n3W

M4A / AAC - 48 kbps:

http://cl.ly/36250V0I0J3k

Here you can clearly hear the same sound source for all the sound, although the sound source, the microphone, on the audio recording app on the Mac and the Evernote Mac App is better than the one on the phone. So I included a file recorded through the Easy Voice Recorder app for Android. This app is super simple and uses M4A/AAC to capture sound, with 48 kbps.

Download here:

Easy Voice Recorder - free version - AAC/M4A - 48 kbps:

http://cl.ly/420L36112c08

My personal view is that the Easy Voice Recorder is the best of these. But the microphone position was a bit more angled directly towards the sound source, so this is a bit unfair. For completely normalized versions (to clearly hear everything loudly, not direct originals) ...

... click here to download (ZIP):

(these sound files are the same recordings, but normalized in new versions through a music conversion application, for the ease of listening to them at the same volume)

http://cl.ly/0C443e3o2e1g

Here you will clearly hear the difference.

Hope you get something out of this and what could be, easily, if the evernote team would consider changing the app a bit, or just give the user an option to adjust the setting.¨¨

I really hope you do, cause I´m hooked on your app and love sound next to text - and would gladly not have my recordings in 10 places if I dont have to...

/Anders

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  • 2 weeks later...

Ya, I just starting using Evernote. Seems really cool and I'm thinking about transferring my "digital life" to it. So convenient and easy to use. Being a producer and songwriter I'd like to use it to organize songs, ideas, charts, etc. The poor quality of the audio, though, is really putting a limit to this. I understand that using Voice Memos and then emailing is an option but that's a number of extra steps that kinda ruins the Evernote experience. What's cool about Evernote to me is how quick, easy, and organized it makes everything. Having to go through a bunch of steps to keep up with audio files kind of defeats this.

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  • 1 month later...

Hi - I've posted in other threads on this, but I thought maybe I'd put in another vote here too for a user definable option that just has 2 choices in the settings on iOS/Android for either standard (13kbps) or high-quality (64 kbps).

Yes!

If I'm writing a song and want to be able to link melodic ideas with my lyrics it can be a bit of a laborious process that involves writing the lyrics in EN, recording in another app, emailing that audio to EN, waiting for it process, then getting on my Mac to either copy/paste a note link or merge the 2 notes. If the audio quality was better, I could do all of this in one note from the start, all in one step, and all from my phone.

This is my story! (Crossing my fingers)

Not currently. We're trying to balance the memory limits of the device and the size and duration of audio recordings. Currently, the audio is relatively compressed WAV files.

I guess what most of us are asking is for you to let us decide that for ourselves. Could you give two options and set the default to low quality. Then only those who want it can use their memory limits how they choose? And this is may be a hair on the side of rude - I'll admit - but lets be honest, it is EXTREMELY compressed WAV files. "Relatively compressed" is a little generous. ;0)

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This is my story! (Crossing my fingers)

It's good to know I'm not alone in this and/or crazy. I recently posted a (currently unanswered) question as to whether the reason this consistently gets passed over has to do with the limited codec that seems to be currently in use.

I get that EN wants to stay lean rather than getting bloated with features, but for this to be an ideal app for creative folks I think better quality audio (either across the board or as a separate / premium option) is really important. Given the number of EN blog posts that have spotlighted musicians and songwriters, I believe that EN wants to be the go-to app / platform for these types of creatives. At a conference in Nashville a while back I spoke to several other songwriters who initially found EN useful up to the point of the poor audio quality. Most of these guys quickly gave up on EN and instead have opted to use a hodgepodge of services like DropBox and Google Apps. The scattered nature of this is a drain for them, especially those that do much co-writing, but they just don't see EN as a viable option due to this audio issue.

Incidentally, there are many ways to send data into EN (email, Clearly, attachements, etc.), but there are essentially 3 types of data that can be captured or created directly in EN: text, snapshots, and audio. Some of these types of data have helpful options in how best to capture or stylize content, and one of these does not:

Text: EN provides quite a few options of how to stylize text on every platform.

Snapshots: On mobile platforms we now have the great option of either capturing a standard snapshot or using the page camera feature. This feature has been a great addition.

Audio: Only one option: low quality.

It seems like the next step to making EN even better is staring us in the face :)

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  • 3 months later...

yes EN guys - PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE (nth)- allow users to adjust the quality of the audio recordings - even with the option of low quality Mp3s -  I'm a musician also and can hardly hear the nuances of what I'm working on it's so garbled.

I need this option so bad I would even upgrade to Premium for it (hinty, hint, hint, hint) - I'm using EN to consolidate the amount of apps I have to use and toggle between; love EN it for that - making us use a thrid party app is completely obtuse.

TONS of musicians and studio engineers use this APP- don't make the mistake or ignoring the people who love your product becasue someone else WILL come along and develop a better one and you'll be left in the dust - evolve please.

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  • 1 month later...

This a "feature" of EN that keeps on puzzling me. Why? OK, you save some space, but you could do the same lettings users choose shorter higher quality notes instead of longer lo-fi. And the thing is that the current lo-fi audio notes are unusuable anyway, so why to offer that option at all then?

 

Sorry guys, but I think somebody is not thinking clearly on this. Learn from Apple and either offer a feature that works or not offer it at all. Otherwise result is pissed off users.

 

In my case I am waiting in the sidelines at who will be quicker, Notability with the iPhone app or Evernote with the decent audio. Whoever implements first will win for me.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 3 months later...

It doesnt sound like anything is being done with this. But can I add my voice to the request to sort out the currently unusable audio. Pleasse please please! 

 

I've been one of these voices in the past, but this is odd that you're not still seeing any difference in quality. There have been several folks recently who have pointed out (albeit from a understandably negative viewpoint) that EN in iOS has recently upgraded the recorded audio quality in iOS (examples: 1, 2). I've given a viewpoint (here and also here) which had the same findings of those who've noticed an increase in quality, yet I'm completely supportive of this as a change for the better!

 

What's odd to me is that it seems you're not the only one who is still experiencing the lower quality. Over the last few days I've noticed that audio record to EN on my Mac still uses lower bitrate wav, while audio recorded to EN via my iPhone 4 uses the much better bitrate m4a. Have you upgraded to iOS 7 and the most recent version of EN? It seems odd that folks using the same software version on the same OS would be getting different results. My only theory is that this is somehow device-specific (that iPhones and iPads are, for some odd reason, using different audio formats)... While I don't have an iPad available to test this idea, I can confirm that EN now records with m4a on my "antiquated" iPhone 4.

 

???

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I didn't know until today that there was an improvement, because I had stopped using it. I saw this post however and tested it out on my iPhone. I could audibly decipher what was recorded! I also A/B tested it with the iPhone's native Voice Memo and they are very comparable! Thank so much evernote! I have eagerly awaited this day! I can streamline my notes process now.

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

I am excited to share this info with many of my songwriting peers who had previous bookmarked this app until this feature was addressed.

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Over the last few days I've noticed that audio record to EN on my Mac still uses lower bitrate wav, while audio recorded to EN via my iPhone 4 uses the much better bitrate m4a.

 

 

I can also report that audio recorded on the desktop software is still the low bitrate wav for me as well (Also on a Mac). I sure hope that the desktop quality catches up soon, but to be honest, I'm still rejoicing over the iPhone improvement! Plus, I can't imagine the change not being a global one, so I'm sure it's coming!

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  • 7 months later...

+1 more for better quality recording on Mac, particularly for Premium members, if not everyone. 

 

I have meetings over Skype that I record with the permission of who I am speaking with, and then make notes for follow up. The quality on the Mac is literally unusable and would not add it in the feature list. 

 

I can understand there may be an issue with copyright for high bit rate recordings AND file sizes in Evernote, but the current level is far too poor to be useful. 

 

Aside from this regular niggle, I love Evernote. 

 

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+1 more for better quality recording on Mac, particularly for Premium members, if not everyone. 

 

I have meetings over Skype that I record with the permission of who I am speaking with, and then make notes for follow up. The quality on the Mac is literally unusable and would not add it in the feature list. 

 

I can understand there may be an issue with copyright for high bit rate recordings AND file sizes in Evernote, but the current level is far too poor to be useful. 

 

Aside from this regular niggle, I love Evernote. 

 

While it's not a perfect solution, I can suggest a work-around (assuming you have a smartphone with EN that records at the higher bit-rate):

 

Set your phone to record during the call. If you don't need to type into EN during the meeting, then once the meeting is over simply sync your phone to EN, sync your Mac to EN, and then you can add info to the note with your audio. If you need to type a note during the meeting, do so in a separate note from the one recording the audio. Once the meeting is over you can merge the notes together.

 

I totally concede that my suggestion is not ideal. Ideal would be using as few steps as possible rather than having to use 2 devices to accomplish what should be possible with just 1. This is still better than it used to be :)

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Hi, thanks for the reply. 

 

Yes, what I currently do is have a note with the same title as my meeting note with 'AUDIO' after it and it's on my iPad recording the meeting. 

 

Ideally - and because it's what would happen if the audio recording quality was any good on the Mac - I would like the questions I am asking on Skype to be followed by the recording and notes I am making. So it's all neat and tidy. Everything in its place :)

 

I do merge the notes afterwards.  

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  • 1 year later...

MAC OS X - SOLUTION TIME!  :D 

 

I also was upset by the dreadful audio quality. I'd record a song and not even be able to hear my chords or lyrics!

 

So I found some solutions online to automatically record and save audio with a single hotkey, and now I simply drag it into the note I'm working on. Mind you, this script records using Quicktime Pro's "New Audio Recording" feature. But there are alternate solutions for people with other software. Try this post for instance.

 

I did a lot of tweaking to make it better for evernote. Simply open up the Automator app, click the Services icon and press Choose. From the "Service receives" dropdown at the top, choose "No input" in "any application" -- then in the search bar to the left write "run applescript", then double click Run AppleScript and replace the code in it to the following:

tell application "QuickTime Player"	activate	set x to new audio recording	tell x to start	delay 1	set lastLength to duration of x	delay 1	set newLength to duration of x	try		repeat while lastLength is not equal to newLength			delay 1			set lastLength to newLength			set newLength to duration of x		end repeat	end try	--  display alert name of document 1	set v to file of front document	set audioNotePath to "<YOUR CUSTOM PATH HERE>"	set thePath to POSIX path of audioNotePath	set dateVariable to do shell script "date '+%m.%d.%y'"	set timeVariable to do shell script "date +'%l.%M %p'"	tell x to activate	delay 1	tell application "System Events"		keystroke "w" using {command down}		delay 1		keystroke thePath		delay 1		keystroke return		delay 1		keystroke "AudioNote "		keystroke dateVariable		keystroke " "		keystroke timeVariable		keystroke return		delay 1		open thePath	end tellend tell

So, the first thing you need to do is create a folder somewhere to keep your audio notes organized. I made a folder in documents called Audio Notes-- so for example instead of <YOUR CUSTOM PATH HERE> I wrote /Users/danscott/Documents/Audio Notes/

 

You can also customize how the file is named by changing the keystrokes at the end. I made mine save the file as "AudioNote 07.03.15 10.58 AM" - but you can make yours anything. If you want to change how the date is displayed: check out this post and replace parameters in the timeVariable and dateVariable.

 

I then made it "open thePath" at the end so you can easily drag the file into evernote.

 

The only other step, after saving the Service you created in Automator (the file can be found in Users/YourName/Library/Services if you ever want to re-open it or edit the code) - is to add a hotkey to automatically run the script. Open System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts -- choose Services from the sidebar and scroll down till you find your service. Just double click the right side of it and add a unique hotkey that's not likely used by other applications. That way you can record any time!

 

Good luck to all you evernoters! And I hope they fix this basic feature very soon.

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I made one minor but important change to the script-- now it changes the output setting from a .mov to "Audio Only" so a .m4a -- this way when you drag it into Evernote you can actually press play. Cheers!

tell application "QuickTime Player"	activate	set x to new audio recording	start x	delay 1	set lastLength to duration of x	delay 1	set newLength to duration of x	try		repeat while lastLength is not equal to newLength			delay 1			set lastLength to newLength			set newLength to duration of x		end repeat	end try	--  display alert name of document 1	set v to file of front document	set audioNotePath to "<INSERT PATH HERE>"	set thePath to POSIX path of audioNotePath	set dateVariable to do shell script "date '+%m.%d.%y'"	set timeVariable to do shell script "date +'%l.%M %p'"	tell x to activate	delay 1	tell application "System Events"		keystroke "w" using {command down}		delay 1		keystroke thePath		delay 1		keystroke return		delay 1		keystroke "AudioNote "		keystroke dateVariable		keystroke " "		keystroke timeVariable		delay 1		click pop up button "Format:" of group 1 of sheet 1 of window "Untitled" of application process "QuickTime Player" of application "System Events"		delay 1		key code 125		delay 1		keystroke return		delay 1		keystroke return		delay 1		open thePath	end tellend tell
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  • 5 months later...

@wideangledan Thanks for your script! It looks like it will be very useful with Soundflower which can reroute computer output audio to input audio, enabling one to capture audio snippets of video/audio files.

However, when trying to run your script I get this error on the first line (it quits after the word "activate"): 

Syntax Error
QuickTime Player got an error: AppleEvent handler failed.

I copied your AppleScript code, but had to manually re-indent the code. I'm not sure if I broke something in doing so.
I'm not sure, but it seems like the Automator debug stops at the line which says "set lastLength to duration of x"

on run {input, parameters}
	
	tell application "QuickTime Player"
		activate
		set x to new audio recording
		start x
		delay 1
		set lastLength to duration of x
		delay 1
		set newLength to duration of x
		try
			repeat while lastLength is not equal to newLength
				delay 1
				set lastLength to newLength
				set newLength to duration of x
			end repeat
		end try --  display alert name of document 1
		set v to file of front document
		set audioNotePath to "/Users/me/Dropbox/Inbox/- Voice Memos"
		set thePath to POSIX path of audioNotePath
		set dateVariable to do shell script "date '+%m.%d.%y'"
		set timeVariable to do shell script "date +'%l.%M %p'"
		tell x to activate
		delay 1
		tell application "System Events"
			keystroke "w" using {command down}
			delay 1
			keystroke thePath
			delay 1
			keystroke return
			delay 1
			keystroke "AudioNote "
			keystroke dateVariable
			keystroke " "
			keystroke timeVariable
			delay 1
			click pop up button "Format:" of group 1 of sheet 1 of window "Untitled" of application process "QuickTime Player" of application "System Events"
			delay 1
			key code 125
			delay 1
			keystroke return
			delay 1
			keystroke return
			delay 1
			open thePath
		end tell
		
		return input
	end tell
end run

 

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  • Level 5*
6 hours ago, winterflags said:

I copied your AppleScript code, but had to manually re-indent the code. I'm not sure if I broke something in doing so.
I'm not sure, but it seems like the Automator debug stops at the line which says "set lastLength to duration of x"

It is not necessary (and in fact futile) to manually indent AppleScript code, since the Script Editor automatically reformats all code.

Open Script Editor (or prior to Yosemite, AppleScript Editor), and paste in the code.  Then compile (CMD-K).  If there are any syntax errors, you will be notified.  Then, as a test, you might try running the script from the Script Editor, where you can debug.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 months later...
  • 2 months later...

Ok this thread is now over 6 years old and nothing has been done. 

Can someone at Evernote address this and give a reason as to why even Premium customers aren't even privy to high-quality note recording in Evernote on a Mac. Audio notes are still notes and part of your product.

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  • Ex Employees

Hi y'all, I know this has been a long-standing topic and has since morphed into a Mac request, but I just wanted to drop in to let everyone know that this issue is on our radar, and our development team is currently investigating the best way to improve audio recording quality on the Mac app. I'd be happy to update this thread as they continue to make progress.

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2 hours ago, annah said:

Hi y'all, I know this has been a long-standing topic and has since morphed into a Mac request, but I just wanted to drop in to let everyone know that this issue is on our radar, and our development team is currently investigating the best way to improve audio recording quality on the Mac app. I'd be happy to update this thread as they continue to make progress.

Thanks for the update Annah. I know it was a major plus for me when the option was added to EN for iOS to choose between higher or lower quality audio. If there's a clean way to implement this feature for Mac, I feel I can safely say this would be a huge win for many users.

Evernote Camera Roll 20160803 155436.png

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  • 1 month later...
  • 4 months later...

Ok, so everyone is looking for Evernote to provide a solution. It's clear they are not going to do that and it's clear they don't really give a stuff about their customers, which see their latest price/device reorganisation (this thread is six (6) years (yes years) old. If OneNote wasn't so convoluted and you could easily email content I'd switch in a heartbeat, but Evernote isn't bad when it comes to note organisation.

I don't have an integrated solution. We simply need a way to increase the quality (bitrate) of recorded audio in event, how hard could that be?

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On 25/10/2012 at 4:35 AM, swgerow said:

What's cool about Evernote to me is how quick, easy, and organized it makes everything. Having to go through a bunch of steps to keep up with audio files kind of defeats this.

Oops, didn't realise, I'd already commented. Yes, it gets up my nose that there isn't a simple solution to this. Anyway, exactly @swgerow, all those , I need to be polite here, 'people' that suggest using an iPhone and/or an iPad REALLY REALLY REALLY miss the point of applications like evernote when you are say recording a lecture, meeting or anything for that matter. It's that it's all contained in the application, simple and intuitive and (almost) impossible to ***** up. Now you are suggesting using one app for audio, one app for note taking, perhaps there's another app for camera video. Please, get real.

Look, I'd use OneNote if there were a simple way to email the OneNote page as in Evernote->More Sharing-> Email. Evernote are singularly bad at listening to their customers and doing the 'obviously' correct thing. How hard could it be to allow users to select a default bitrate (that is better than the currently VERY VERY low bitrate).

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  • 2 months later...

I have been teetering between EN and switching to Onenote. I had decided to stick w/ EN when I had the idea to keep a personal songbook in EN with little audio snippets to remind me of the right note to begin on. Then I discovered, oh, audio quality is so bad I can hardly make out my voice. Sound quality in Onenote incomparably better. Why, EN? 

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On 28.1.2017 at 10:25 AM, KevinX3 said:

Ok, so everyone is looking for Evernote to provide a solution. It's clear they are not going to do that and it's clear they don't really give a stuff about their customers, which see their latest price/device reorganisation (this thread is six (6) years (yes years) old. If OneNote wasn't so convoluted and you could easily email content I'd switch in a heartbeat, but Evernote isn't bad when it comes to note organisation.

I don't have an integrated solution. We simply need a way to increase the quality (bitrate) of recorded audio in event, how hard could that be?

Emailing content is pretty easy, what kind of problem are you experiencing?

Ah sorry, I know what you mean, I was in my thoughts at emailing content TO onenote. Yeah that is sth that should be changed,  but working in macOS environment I dont have my hopes up on this one :/

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I purchased Just Press Record and drag & drop audio files into Evernote on macOS when needed instead.
I believe it's possible to share recordings to Evernote on iOS too.
It supports aiff and m4a recordings.

Don't know why Evernote insists on crappy audio. If I'm paying for several Gigabytes worth of Evernote sync each month, they should allow me to use what I'm paying for.

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  • Level 5*
12 minutes ago, winterflags said:

Don't know why Evernote insists on crappy audio. If I'm paying for several Gigabytes worth of Evernote sync each month, they should allow me to use what I'm paying for.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that you can only attach crappy audio files to notes.  I use Evernote to store high quality audio and have no issues as long as I stay within the limits for my account plan

You might want to look at your choice of recording hardware/software

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On 8/3/2016 at 1:03 PM, annah said:

Hi y'all, I know this has been a long-standing topic and has since morphed into a Mac request, but I just wanted to drop in to let everyone know that this issue is on our radar, and our development team is currently investigating the best way to improve audio recording quality on the Mac app. I'd be happy to update this thread as they continue to make progress.

Any update on this since Annah? (It's been 8 months :))

In peeking under the hood, it appears that the framework being utilized may be the weak link. I recall finding something similar in EN's iOS app a few years ago prior to the option change audio quality, though in searching package contents I no longer find it, let alone the secondary codec being employed now to allow for m4a to be utilized. For me, the option to record audio in higher quality was the best thing to ever happen to EN on iOS. If there's a way that the developer who implemented that on iOS could spend a day with team members who code for Mac and get this going, there would be much rejoicing spread throughout the land!

34FA4336-9DB1-4C68-935E-CDB6688559F6.png

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 04/04/2017 at 9:36 PM, DTLow said:

I'm not sure where you got the idea that you can only attach crappy audio files to notes.  I use Evernote to store high quality audio and have no issues as long as I stay within the limits for my account plan

You might want to look at your choice of recording hardware/software

It seems you haven't been following the thread properly, which makes your comment here quite useless.

The issue has been that Evernote's built-in audio recording functionality only keeps recordings in crappy quality.

As I wrote in the post you quoted, I'm using another recording application, and then attach those files to my notes.

I was pointing out that Evernote should provide the ability to record high-quality audio (aka perfectly normal, adequate audio that doesn't sound like it's recorded from inside a toaster). We're paying for Gigabytes of syncronization, so let us be able to use it.

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  • 1 month later...

just recorded some interviews with users into my evernote and stunned at how bad the audio really is!?... i've wearing the biggest headphones in the land and still struggling to pick out useful phrases to compile my report. I love evernote but in this age, there isn't really an excuse for this type of issue especially when you consider the age of this thread. 

How about you throw some development time on it and make it available to paying users... could be the next 'great feature' for Premium ;)

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  • 8 months later...

I'll add my voice to the number of requests: I used to think my iMac had an incredibly crappy built-in microphone, but I'd never used it for anything other than Evernote voice recordings. It sounded so bad (semi-garbled, a complete lack of sensitivity) I thought the microphone had debris in it, obscuring the recording. It wasn't until I downloaded another recording app and did a test that I realized it's simply Evernote setting a bit rate so low (16kbps? 8 kbps?) that the audio sounds like it's being recorded on a faulty microphone. Why exactly am I paying for a a Plus membership again? :huh:

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  • 1 month later...

Hi Evernote, I got an email from you this morning about how to record audio in Evernote and on all the platforms. You neglected to mention how rubbish the sound quality still is on the Mac and how, after over 8 years (of people complaining) you still haven't addressed this issue. 

Just like Apple, releasing software that's just "good enough" just isn't anymore. 

After almost 10 years, I'm sick of waiting for things to get sorted (formatting, syncing, blank notes lists, etc) so I am looking and migrating elsewhere. 

 

Screenshot 2018-03-01 11.18.53.png

 

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  • Level 5*
23 minutes ago, sail said:

after over 8 years (of people complaining)

What a great relationship; 8 years of complaining.

It sounds (pun) like you have a requirement for quality audio recording.  It's not being addressed by your equipment and generic filing-cabinet app. 

Not a requirement for me, but I would simply upgrade to dedicated audio equipment and a dedicated recording app.

 

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DTLow, I'm sure you're helpful at troubleshooting problems being that you've posted over 11K times, but it really irks me to see people such as yourself snarkily dismiss the requests of users just because you don't understand or agree with them. Your point is meaningless: there are individual stand-alone apps that do EVERYTHING better than Evernote does, but the point of Evernote is it's an amazingly powerful all in one tool. No one wants to jump through extra hoops to record audio in a different app and import the file into Evernote - that's a hassle.

Evernote for macOS has audio recording functionality - it's a core feature in note taking software - yet the quality just sucks. And only on the macOS software from what I can tell. I did a quick test of the iMac software vs. the iOS app, both with me about 1 foot away from the microphone, speaking at a similar volume level:

Here's the iMac recording:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/j92366nikn7d6c1/Evernote-iMac.mp3?dl=0

Here's the iPad recording:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/94vwnc7p41b9dse/Evernote-iPad.mp3?dl=0

Now can you sit there with a straight face and tell me that somehow Evernote thinks iOS users need better quality audio than macOS users? Come on, that's ridiculous. This is some sort of oversight that Evernote hasn't fixed yet and no one is paying attention to the users like us that are complaining about it.

I'm quite certain this is just about one single setting in the code: the bit rate. At some point years ago, an Evernote product manager was probably looking at the file size of an hour long recording and said "Yikes, this thing is huge - our business model and server storage infrastructure can't support a million people uploading a million hours of audio at this quality per day". So they made a decision to put in low quality audio; maybe that made some sense 5+ years ago, but I doubt it does today. Especially since Evernote's business model is based on upload limits for paid accounts; uploading higher quality audio actually becomes a driver for users to upgrade.

Lastly, OneNote is Evernote's main competitor, right? Attached below is how they approach this: they let the user decide what kind of quality the recordings should be. Imagine that!

onenoteoptions-100699458-orig.jpg

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  • Level 5*
21 minutes ago, jasondunn said:

Now can you sit there with a straight face and tell me that somehow Evernote thinks iOS users need better quality audio than macOS users?

I've no comment on Mac vs IOS quality.  I'll compare it if I get a microphone for my Mac (Mini)

>>rks me to see people such as yourself snarkily dismiss the requests of users

I actually do support users posting requests.  There are forums set up for this purpose
For example, this request https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/111433-please-improve-audio-recording-quality/
Please use the link and indicate your support using the voting buttons in the top left corner of the discussion

This forum we're posting in is Possible Bugs/Technical Issues > Evernote for iOS 
@vanessalaw asked a question started this dicussion with a simple technical question

What irks me is posts of the form   Boohoo, Evernote's so bad, I'm switching elsewhere 

 

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1 hour ago, DTLow said:

I've no comment on Mac vs IOS quality.  I'll compare it if I get a microphone for my Mac (Mini)

I actually do support users posting requests.  There are forums set up for this purpose
For example, this request https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/111433-please-improve-audio-recording-quality/
Please use the link and indicate your support using the voting buttons in the top left corner of the discussion

This forum we're posting in is Possible Bugs/Technical Issues > Evernote for iOS 
@vanessalaw asked a question started this dicussion with a simple technical question

Once you see how bad the audio quality is compared to iOS, and imagine yourself as a user trying to use this feature frequently, I hope you'll understand the frustration many of us are feeling. What Evernote really needs is to leverage UserVoice or a similar platform for soliciting user feedback; these forums are utterly ill-suited for that purpose.

I understand the frustration about things happening in the wrong forum, but I came here - like many others I'm sure - via a Google search for "evernote poor audio quality".

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22 hours ago, DTLow said:

What a great relationship; 8 years of complaining.

 

Whose relationship? I was talking about the people on this thread. Our collective relationship with Evernote? I'm confused.

22 hours ago, DTLow said:

It sounds (pun) like you have a requirement for quality audio recording.

No, read what the @jasondunn has said. I want things to be consistent and work as you would expect them to across platforms. 

11 hours ago, DTLow said:

What irks me is posts of the form   Boohoo, Evernote's so bad, I'm switching elsewhere 

 

It would be useful if you read that in context about all the other issues I mentioned - I wouldn't switch because of one issue with Mac audio recording -  but you go ahead and cherry pick what suits you.

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Not going to lie - I totally support DTLow's comments.

My personal experience with the audio notes is that the feature is not only adequate, that the quality of audio from meetings I hold/attend are sufficient that I can hear the comments from people speaking in a low tone from the other side of the room. I have even had my iPhone in my pocket during "sketchy' meetings where I was concerned that the result of the meeting might be an "I never said that" argument, so I needed to protect myself.

I use the audio function for notes, not to record high-quality audio such as concerts or anything else. It's a note, how perfect do you need it to be? What are you using it for?

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13 minutes ago, macneilpi said:

My personal experience with the audio notes is that the feature is not only adequate, that the quality of audio from meetings I hold/attend are sufficient that I can hear the comments from people speaking in a low tone from the other side of the room. I have even had my iPhone...

What's gotten super confusing in this thread is that there are multiple people talking about different things. The iOS note recording quality is just fine now, but back in 2012 when this thread was started apparently it was really bad. Today, the macOS evernote audio quality is awful. Please look at my post above and listen to the audio samples for proof.

Evernote support responded back in August 2016 that they were aware of the audio quality issue with the macOS client and they were investigating improving it. Nothing has happened since then, so this thread has been recently given new life.

But this macOS conversation really should be happening in a different forum...

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  • Level 5*
7 hours ago, jasondunn said:

What's gotten super confusing in this thread is that there are multiple people talking about different things.

It happens a lot; I check the forum name and the post that started the process
In this case: Possible Bugs/Technical Issues > Evernote for iOS and Higher quality voice notes by @Vanessallaw asking about settings for quality level and format

To add my support (vote) to feature requests, I work in the Feature Request forums; again organized by platform

7 hours ago, macneilpi said:

My personal experience with the audio notes is that the feature is not only adequate...

I would only agree that the audio quality is adequate for very basic use on IOS
I accept the opinions expressed by others that this is not high quality audio

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