Android AudioRecord initialization fails every time

I spent some hours solving this problem, and found out that moving

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.RECORD_AUDIO" />

outside the application block actually solved it!

...    </application>    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.RECORD_AUDIO" /> </manifest>

Another possible issue:

I had the RECORD_AUDIO permission enabled in my manifest, but for API level 23 I had to also request the permission at runtime.

Try 16bit. This is what works for me:

try {        // Create a new AudioRecord object to record the audio.        bufferSize = AudioRecord.getMinBufferSize(frequency,channelConfiguration,audioEncoding);        audioRecord = new AudioRecord(MediaRecorder.AudioSource.MIC,                                                   frequency, channelConfiguration,                                                   audioEncoding, bufferSize);    } catch (Throwable t) {        Log.e("AudioRecord","Recording Failed");    }

And I have the following variables set:

int frequency = 8000;int channelConfiguration = AudioFormat.CHANNEL_CONFIGURATION_MONO;int audioEncoding = AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT;