I have an amateur theater group and next month we’ll be launching a new small production that has seven phones in it. It’s a mix of various iPhones and Androids and I actually managed to get them running reliably, which I consider a small miracle. Big thanks to the app developers and the various tips here on the forums. However, I have some issues with volume.
As long as the phones are only ringing and beeping, it’s fine. However, I’d also like to play faked calls directly from the phones rather than from stage speakers - just for the illusion of it. I can afford it since we have a small place for only about 60 audience members so the phones should be loud enough. “Should” but aren’t.
The Volume Multiplier on iPhone has been a huge help. Without it, the iPhones were too silent. With it, they’re loud and clear.
However, the feature is missing in the Android version and I was wondering if it’s possible to implement it. It would help tremendously. Without it, the faked calls on Android are too silent and pretty much unusable. As I’ve mentioned in another thread, I believe this is a case of the app only using partial volume to which apps are normally limited, and not using the actual volume range the phone is able to produce (which seems to be reserved for loud phone calls). It this feature even possible on Android?
TLDR: Volume Multiplier on Android, pretty please?
first - please tell me what android devices & os version you’re using
second:
“volume multiplier” is not really a feature - it’s a bizarre mistake from apple - so, apple states that volume played through AVAudioPlayer can have a volume of 0 to 1 (1 being full volume) however, you can set the volume to values greater than 1…
so - lets back up a bit and talk about ios audio sessions
when setting up an audio session on ios you need to specify various info about what you’re going to be playing and how it should play with other apps that are playing audio
I default all audio played through stagecaller to use category:playback and mode:measurement - these settings should cause whatever pre-processing iOS does to audio to be fairly minimal (meaning the sound should play with minimal processing and interference from the os)
now, that being said, here’s the important part - iOS and android are completely different
iOS does far more pre-processing of audio before a sound hits the speakers than android (as far as I know) - however, due to fragmentation on android, there are an severe number of differences between a stock android install and a whatever the end user receives
the end result is if you can tell me what you have I can try to find out why it’s not as loud as you think it should be… my samsung gt-I8190 and nexus-5x both sound quite loud, but I’ve never tried them in an actual theater
Thanks for the quick reply and a detailed explanation. I’m not that tech savvy so it helps a lot. I had no idea that the feature can only be iOS specific and can’t work that way on Android.
It’s possible I’m making some false assumptions about how loud the phones should be - maybe they just have poor speakers and nothing can be done. I’ll get the chance to work with them this weekend so i’ll check if they actually can be louder. By calling them and comparing the volume of the call with the volume of the StageCaller app.
As a sidenote, working with this app really made me appreciate iOS. Even the old ageing iPhone 5s was quick to setup, works great and is loud. I had trouble getting the app working on all of the Androids, including the new ones, as they were dropping the connection, killing the app, not allowing it to run on the background, and now the volume issue. The newest Android was actually the worst since it has a bazillion of settings hidden throughout the system that were blocking the app (it is the only Android that’s loud enough, though). Our devices are a mess of random phones, some of them running the ancient Android 4, and I’m probably just expecting impossible from phones that really aren’t up the task.
So upon further testing, it seems the old phones really are so silent. Sorry, I thought there would be a magic button like in iOS that would make them miraculously louder. You can consider this topic moot then. Thanks again!