We've covered various forms of audio recording before on Pointers -- including
an entire series on podcasting -- but we've rarely and only lightly mentioned recording "in the field," and so this Pointers is about the specifics of recording with iOS devices. Thanks to some recent changes by Apple and some existing third-party products, the need to bring a Mac with you to wherever you are in order to facilitate a quality recording has been greatly reduced, and recording either your voice or an instrument using just iOS devices has finally arrived.
Students often want to record a lecture; podcasters would like to capture an interview
in situ; a musician has an idea for a song while killing time before a show; a storyteller wants to record the sound of frogs in the swamp for a presentation; a group of friends want to turn their conversation into a podcast -- there are lots of situations where one might be away from home and yet want to make some audio, edit it, and share it. Until recently, using only an iOS device for this could prove challenging.
It's not that the built-in mic on an iPhone or iPad can't record sound; it certainly does, and in some cases that's all you need for something like a voice memo. The problem is that the sound quality is just "serviceable" rather than good, and if you're recording audio that you want to share with someone other than yourself, better-quality audio would be better to have in nearly every case. The built-in mic is more than good enough for a FaceTime chat, a dictated reminder, or just bossing Siri around -- but if you use it to record your university professor's lecture for later transcription, you are really going to struggle to understand what's been said.
Can you hear me now?
The big change from Apple that prompted this fresh look at on-the-go recording is Apple's release of a Lightning-to-USB 3.0 adapter, which also provides sufficient power for many USB microphones. Some pre-existing solutions for recording instruments or voice are still around and recommended, such as the
Mikey Digital ($100) by Blue (which we use for interviews all the time) and the latest goodies from IK Multimedia, the
iRig Acoustic ($50) for recording acoustic guitars, and the
iRig Pro Duo ($200) for electric guitar and voice (or other instrument), both designed specifically for iOS or Android device use (and can work with larger devices using a USB port as well).
The $200 iRig Pro Duo for instruments and voice
Blue Microphones reports that the Apple cable -- which works with the iPad line as well as the iPhone 6s and later, and
costs $39 -- carries sufficient power to work with any of its USB desktop microphones. Yeti Pro owners will need an iPad Pro and the power pass-through, but the Snowball, Nessie, and Yeti models will work with the cable on all supported iPad models. Most other USB-only mics, like those from Apogee or Rode, should work with this cable (USB/XLR mics or XLR-only mics adapted to use USB probably draw too much power to work with this cable).
This is big news for podcasters, and we'll be testing this on
The MacNN Podcast where
I use a Yeti, but I'm still currently using the Mikey Digital, a direct Lightning mini-mic that works with all Lightning models of iPad and iPhone (and iPod touch, no cable needed. You'll get even better sound from a full-size mic like the Yeti, but the Mikey is unobtrusive and has handy settings for the three most common uses: one-on-one conversations (like an interview), room recording (for a lecture, for example), and a setting specifically for loud venue recording (like a concert); the latter setting has automatic distortion protection as well.
I've recorded dozens of my own and others' presentations with and interviews with it, and been very happy with the results. I've also used the Mikey to collect sound effects or natural environment noises for some foley artist friends, from bullfrogs chorusing in the swamps of Florida to the sounds of the New York subway to augment an audiobook. Knowing I can now use the Yeti with my iPhone or iPad gives me options that are even more versatile than the Mikey offers, but I love how easy it is to slip on the Mikey to my iPhone and capture an interview at far better quality than the built-in microphone.
Blue's Digital Mikey
On top of the ability to use a greater variety of hardware than before for recording with iOS devices, we also have an ever-expanding range of software to use, and at least for the actual recording part, pretty much anything you wish to use will work with the mics you've attached, from Voice Memos on the iPhone on up. At present, our preferred iOS software for capturing recordings is
Recordings Pro ($5). If you think you know of a better option, please leave a comment.
I have tried quite a few others (many sadly discontinued), but Recordings Pro gives me the option to save the recordings in just about any format I want, which can be very important (we'll come back to that in a moment), and it offers an Apple Watch app. Yes, that's right -- you can skip the cords and mics and even the iPad, and record a chat with your friend using your Apple Watch. For one-on-one recordings, the microphone built into the Watch is surprisingly good.
Recordings Pro on iPhone ...
... and on Apple Watch
The recordings can even be made HIPAA-compliant through the option to encrypt and password-protect them, and the app runs independently of the iPhone (though this brings up the issue of the length of your recordings, and users should be aware that the Watch recordings are always in a compressed format, of course). Once the recording is done, you can send the file back to the iPhone for editing or storage. It's a great and unobtrusive way to do an interview or record a conversation.
What's more, the iPhone/iPad app has other options, such as recording system audio (for games or streaming music), recording at a scheduled time, recording only when speaking is detected, and limited editing ability (trimming and merging recordings, mainly). There are other audio editors and utilities for iOS devices, but it should be noted that audio editing beyond the most basic level is pretty limited at present (Rogue Amoeba, HairerSoft -- get on this).
I've used the iOS version of
Garageband ($5),
Hokusai Audio Editor (free, but with a $10 in-app purchase to really use it fully), and
TwistedWave ($10) to do more sophisticated editing than simple trimming, such as mixing multiple tracks or applying fades, but its still very basic compared to what you can do with a Mac desktop. That said, most people will not want to do much more than trim the start and end of a recording, so even Recordings Pro's basic ability may be sufficient.
Coming into its own as an audio platform
Once you're happy with the recording, you can save it and share it to social media and other applications. Indeed, there is a handy utility for iOS called
AudioCopy (free), that supercharges your sharing ability by making your audio file transferable to lots more places on the web or hundreds of compatible audio applications. It's essentially a souped-up clipboard and audio file cataloger, but I've used it for filing live reports from a show floor direct to Soundcloud, for example, and now it can be used directly as the recording and editing app (and, with in-app purchases, even for music creation), so it might become my one-stop shop -- but I haven't yet had an opportunity to test those recent changes.
AudioCopy's sharing and new editing abilities
The bottom line here, however, is that it is both easy and possible to make a recording, edit a recording, and share or save a recording -- even doing things like normalizing, trimming, and fading on multiple tracks -- on iOS devices. You can use your Apple Watch as a microphone (don't be a creep -- get audible permission from the person you're recording, for legal reasons), you can add-on a Lightning-native or (with the help of Apple's Lightning-to-USB-3.0 adapter) USB microphone for hugely better audio quality, and you can zap it up to the web or over to another audio application using AudioCopy.
If you're of a more musical bent than voice-oriented, there are iOS microphones and line-in adapters for instruments, and even instrument and voice together (check out the iRig Pro Duo for this), and editors that can let you put together multiple tracks, and music-generation programs for iOS that will help you create a song or a killer beat. Of course, there's also the built-in mic and Voice Memos app on the iPhone for simply capturing your thoughts quickly and easily. One more job that was formerly the exclusive domain of computers is now available in the palms of our hands for all but the most complicated of productions.
-- Charles Martin
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