Exact same as here in the past. Used to use an old ph to quickly record while practising on an upright (capturing moments/ideas). It was horrible hearing it back like in the example - all thin, distorted etc.. but that was real piano (and a Kawai upright dpiano) - so it's thankfully definitely not Piantoeq related

Someone else with an iPhone may be able to listen also and compare.

Edit: Groovy & I cross-posted there!

Mayby you also hear it on your smarhphone?

No. Your clean wav export sounds cleanly on an old Android 6 here.

@levinite: its the same when i Use the export Funktion of pianoteq. I dont belive there is a problem with my iphone speakers, its just the pianoteq sound which does that noise and also my MacBook does it.

Mayby you also hear it on your smarhphone?

If a different iPhone didn't have that distortion or had much less, that would certainly point to a problem like one of the speaker units in this particular iPhone being bad.

No-one is recording with an iPhone. The problem is a good export of PianoteQ sounding bad when heard on an iPhone. The recording from the iPhone is just a sample to let us hear the problem happening.

I see. Its hard to believe its that bad, could the speaker be blown or there be some other physical problem?

The source audio is fine, very clean, which probably just serves to emphasize the distortion that does exist in modern small devices like phones and also laptop speakers. That distortion is usually not noticed, especially on voice, as it just helps the sound of the voice to "cut through" ambient noise and our brain is good at disregarding it. Even a lot of music doesn't cause us to be aware of such distortion, since modern music is typically already distorted, with compression, limiting, saturation effects etc. A clean single instrument sound with a wide dynamic range such as PianoteQ is demanding on audio reproduction, as you said, not every speaker is able to reproduce it well.

I can spot various distortion effects in the recording of the iPhone sound, two I have already suggested, clipping and slew rate limiting (which is an internal characteristic of amplifiers). Comparison of the two waveforms also indicates the iPhone is using an ALC (Automatic Level Control) system, which is another thing that tends to create distortion. It also looks to me like the iPhone is getting a bad result from the stereo processing it does, although I might be seeing an artifact of only having a mono recording, from one microphone. The visible high frequency distortions though do seem to coincide with the harsh, crackly sound during the quieter sections where you wouldn't expect there to be problems like clipping. If that harsh sound in the quiet portion is absent when listening on headphones or earbuds, that would indicate the tiny internal speakers themselves are creating that distortion.

In the louder portions, the ALC has initially turned the level up higher in the quieter section than in the original audio file, so the ascending motif starts out much louder than in the recording, and is clipping (maybe also just the phone volume turned up too high?), the ALC then backs off, as they do, and you can hear the two chords prior to the descending portion are quieter, although still distorted. In the source being played from, it's the reverse, the ascending run is quieter and the chords are louder.

So it seems to me that the good quality recording is simply being poorly reproduced by the iPhone, the sound being mangled by ALC, processing intended to make voice highly audible, and tiny speakers with a low powered amplifier.

Others may have further suggestions and observations. At this point my only thought would be to try creating a potentially "iPhone friendly" export in mono with a small dynamic range and an overall lower level (the current file peaks at about -0.5 dB, perhaps try about 2 dB lower), and see if it sounds any better on the iPhone.

Best regards

If "by using my iPhone" means it's a recording of the speaker sound from your iPhone, is it possible to also put up the same short section from the original audio file exported from Logic for comparison?

i have a problem with a crackle noise wich I can hear when I export a Pianoteq piece und play it on my MacBook Air or on my iPhone. My studio monitors doesn't do that noise, also my headphones works well. Im shure, that's not a problem with overdrive, because I also set the Pianoteq volume really low and use a limiter on Logic. but the noise were still there.. So I think not every speaker Is able to create all frequencies of Pianoteq, am I right? but I want to upload my peaces on the internet and I never hear that noises when I listen to music with my MacBook or my iPhone, and it would be sad if someone would also her this crackle in my music!

I don't know if im doing something wrong and what I can do.

Here is a example of that noise by using my iPhone (its loud): [link removed]

on this example the Pianoteq sound is really low, limiter and compressor helps on logic, but there is really no overdrive on logic!!

I hope my English was acceptable

Thank You