How to record via audio cable directly to a phone rec app?

[digisus]

Sorry for a very non-pro question in here.

I struggle with what I thought is a very straight-forward thing. I want to use a male/male 3.5mm audio cable to connect my phone and - using a recording app on the phone - record the playing via cable. I seems not work no matter what I try. I have monitors connected that alsoo offer 3.5mm sockets (for headset and aux). I do not understand why no signal arrives on the phone directly. Actually, it continues to use the built-in microphone as input - and of course you can hear the clacks of pressing the keys while playing. What am I missing here?

Thanks a lot!
digisus

[Schorsch]

Hi,

phones usually have an audio output connection, not a standard audio input. That means that you can connect a phone to an amplifier and speakers to play music etc. from the phone, but you cannot feed any audio signal into the phone to be recorded, recording is usually done from the build-in microphone as you also noticed.

I am not aware of any phone that provides an audio input socket - which phone do you use?

[FZiegler]

If you really use a 3.5mm-to-3.5mm connection, you also plugged the cable in the wrong plug: The only 3.5mm socket on any Nord is audio-in, not out. And any 3.5mm socket on a smartphone is audio-out (headphone connection), not audio-in.

So, probably, with your cable you can direct play-along music from the smartphone to the piano or add a click from a metronome app. But not record.

[Mr_-G-]

There must be a (mono?) audio input in mobile phones, otherwise those ear buds that come WITH a microphone and a TRRS plug would not work...

[Nordlicht]

It's possible but not that easy.

You need a suitable adapter (e.g. Lightning to USB in case of an iPhone) + any audio interface (the cheapest 20 EUR Behringer interface like UCA222 works). I am doing this often to quickly record videos while playing. Video is coming from the iPhone camera (obviously) and the sound via the interface.

[Schorsch]

There must be a (mono?) audio input in mobile phones, otherwise those ear buds that come WITH a microphone and a TRRS plug would not work...

You‘re right, I should have said „standard audio input socket“ - corrected in my previous post