Smartphones are thusly named because they do so much more than serve as telephones. One of the more exciting functions they include is the ability to conveniently record audio anytime and anywhere. There are numerous sound recording apps on Android. Here are the five best of them.

1. Poweramp v3

Poweramp has been steadily updated since last year. The amazing sound quality from the previous version carries over here. This app can play audio files that are up to 24bit/192khz if your smartphone’s internal DAC can actually support that sampling rate, or you happen to also have an external DAC. 

It features a clean UI and smooth animations and a 10-band equalizer with custom presets. It also has additional DSP effects like reverb and stereo enhancement and plays all audio file formats. Finally, it includes several display options, like an album/folder display complete with cover albums.

2. Onkyo HF

The Onkyo HF Player has sound quality that is amazing. The company states it features what’s known as a “16,384 discrete band, linear-phase FIR filter equalizer.” The paid version plays most audio file formats including WAV and 192khz/24bit FLAC. The free version of the Onkyo HF player will reportedly downsample any audio within a range of 88kHz to 48kHz.

Since the Onkyo company manufactures hi-res audio equipment, like amplifiers, headphones, and receivers, Onkyo HF can connect to all that equipment and “enhance” it too. For instance, Onkyo HF has equalizer presets that are actually tailored for their special hi-res headphones. Therefore, Onkyo HF is like a companion app for their products too.

3. Neutron Music Player

The Neutron Music Player has a complicated UI but it’s just because it’s got a lot of audio tweaks and noteworthy DSP effects such as crossfeed/crossfade, parametric and graphic EQs, pitch, surround sound enabler, tempo, and more. The equalizer supports roughly 30 bands and has a 32/64-bit audio rendering engine. The NMP supports hi-resolution audio hardware, numerous DAPs like the HiBy R6 Pro, the Fiio X5 / X7, and more. It will play just about any audio file format and also comes with DSD decoding. As you can see, these apps might not all include the finest audio to text capabilities but they have pretty much everything else. 

4. USB Audio Player Pro

The USB Audio Player Pro 2qw specifically built for USB DAC output. It has a special USB audio driver that will actually bypass the Android sampling limitations. Thus, any 32-bit/384kHz files you have will play at that bitrate/frequency (providing your USB DAC supports it), and won’t be downsampled to 16/48kHz, as a lot of other audio players do. The USB Audio Player PRO can also work with a lot of the newest hi-res DACs included in newer Android phones, like the Fiio X5/X7, the LG V20, V30, OnePlus 3, Samsung S6/S7, and others.

5. Foobar2000

This is a good, simple music player. It doesn’t include some of the tweaks and configurations on the desktop player version of Foobar2000, but it’s still in development. It plays most audio files including WAV and hi-res FLAC. The UI is quite easy to navigate as well.

It includes a DSP manager that comes complete with all the standard DSP plug-ins one might expect such as advanced limiting, dB limiting, crossfading, resampling, and downmixing channels. It also will support streaming or downloading music from different UPnP media servers.

So there you have it, audiophiles. These are the five best audio apps for Android. Think we missed your favorites? Let us know!