Archives for November 2014

Wireless Microphone For iPhone: How to Use Any Wireless Mic With Your Phone (Video)

November 20, 2014 by Ken 37 Comments

Looking for a wireless microphone for iPhone? Here is how to make any wireless mic work with an iPhone.
Recently, a friend asked me how he could use an external microphone on his iPhone to shoot video.

Why Would I Want To Use a Wireless Microphone With An iPhone?

The basic reason for using an external/3rd-party mic is pretty easy, since any number of companies now have good mics available specifically for iPhone/iPad use (like the Zoom iQ6, the Rode iXY, and the Blue Mikey Digital, to name a few).
All those companies, however, assume you will be close to the mic, using it as a mobile field recorder or in the studio to record music.

Why Does The Mic Need To Be Close?

Shooting video when your subject is many feet away from the mic usually yields pretty poor audio. See my article, along with a video, which shows you how to solve this problem, here: How To Get Good Audio On Your Videos.
My friend wanted to do just that: use his iPhone to record video of himself from several feet away. And to make things just a little bit more difficult, he wanted to be able to move around. So he needed a wireless microphone for his iPhone.

How Do You Make That Happen?

Now, if he were using a regular video camera / camcorder, I would refer him to the advice in the above article.
If it has an external mic jack, I would say to use that camcorder with a wireless lapel mic Azden WMS Pro).
If that camcorder does NOT have an external mic jack, I would say to simply record onto either a good handheld digital field recorder (like the Zoom H6) or directly into a computer through a decent audio interface (like a Focusrite Scarlett).
In all those scenarios, you’d want the microphone as close to your mouth as possible.

The Challenge For My Friend’s Video Needs

But he wasn’t using a camcorder, he was using an iPhone. At first, I thought it might be possible to plug the 1/8th-inch pin on my Azden wireless receiver directly into the iPhone’s dual headphone/mic jack – it certainly fits in there. But nope, that doesn’t work as a wireless microphone for iPhone, primarily because Apple built their jack to accept very specific types of plugs which carry just the right kind of signal.
So though it might fit in the hole, an external mic will not work like that with iPhones – it needs a little help.

The Solution For Using a Wireless Microphone for iPhone

That help comes in the form of a humble-looking little cable about 12 inches long. Technically it is a 4-pole male connector (they have 3 strips on the pin) on one end and a female adapter on the other. There are a few out there. The one I tested in the video below is the KVConnection KM iPhone Microphone Adapter. But that doesn’t appear to be available any longer. So here is one by Rode: Rode SC4 3 inches Microphone Cable.
This little puppy (which costs $14.28) converts a normal microphone plug into the type that an iPhone wants in order to recognize the mic – a 4-pole “TRRS” (tip-ring-ring-sleeve).
You simply insert your mic’s plug into the female end of the Rode adapter, and THEN plug the Rode’s 1/8th-inch pin into the iPhone jack, and “hey presto,” “Bob’s your uncle,” etc.
You can stand across the room with the Azden lapel mic stuck to your shirt and walk around to your heart’s content. The lapel mic will beam its wireless audio signal to the Azden receiver, which is plugged into the KM adapter.

Is There A Video Demonstrating This?

Why yes there is:). I didn’t have a special “wireless mic for iphone.” But I did have an Azden WMS wireless lavalier. In the video below, I compare the audio with video shot with my iPhone 5S, first using just the built-in mic, then with the audio that came through the wireless mic attached as described above.
If you have headphones, I recommend using them to get the full effect of how different the two audio samples sound.
[jwplayer mediaid=”18146″]

By the way, there are other products that allow you to plug external microphones into iDevices. One that is a fantastic all-in-one solution is the Samson Go Mic Mobile Smartphone Wireless Microphone.
Another one that looks really useful is the Tascam iXZ Instrument/Mic, which you can plug XLR and 1/4-inch microphones – basically, most standard mic cables – into.
I’m glad my friend asked that question. Now I know how to plug a wireless mic into an iPhone, and so do you!

Audio Compression Basics

November 12, 2014 by Ken Leave a Comment

“Compression” is an audio treatment or “effect” that is often hard to explain to someone new to audio recording. Actually, the basic idea of compression isn’t very hard at all; it’s just too often poorly explained, like a LOT of audio recording concepts. I’ve given it a shot a couple of times here on Home Brew Audio – see Improve Or Ruin Your Audio With an Effect Called Compression, Should You Use Compression In Audio Recording? and Vocal Compression Using Reaper’s ReaComp Effect Plugin. Those last two have videos to help explain compression.
One important thing that I think gets left out of a lot of explanations is that compression turns the audio volume down, but only PARTS of an audio file. Only the audio that is loud enough that the volume crosses a line (determined by you) will get turned down; all the rest of the audio remains as it is.
Then, once only the loudest sections of the audio have been turned down, you can (but only if you want to!) turn ALL of the audio up a bit louder than you could have before compression. I think this concept is much better shown than explained in words, and I do just that in the video at the Should You Use Compression In Audio Recording? article, which I mentioned above.
Anyway, the reason I started this post was to tell you about a series of posts and videos explaining compression that is being done by the folks at Sonic Sense. The first post is here: www.sonicsense.com/blog/reviews-and-tutorials/how-to-use-a-compressor-audio-compression-explained, and the video that accompanies it is below. Enjoy!

Check Out MusicTech's Bluffer's Guide To Music Technology

November 6, 2014 by Ken Leave a Comment

For the musicians out there: MusicTech.net has started an article series that might interest you. It’s called The Bluffer’s Guide to Music Technology. I am a believer in looking at the same basic concepts from multiple points of view, and the Bluffer’s Guide presents much of the same material as we do in our 6-part series, “How To Build A Home Recording Studio.” It assumes from the start, however, that the reader is going to be interested primarily in recording, mixing, and mastering music (hence the word “music” in the title). As with most of our content, our series is a bit more broad and is written for both musicians AND folks doing voiceover recording (including video narration, podcasts, VOIP audio, etc.). Also, I am pretty sure the MusicTech author is British (or possibly Australian) because he debates the pronunciation of the word “DAW” (digital audio workstation) by suggesting that it could be “door.”
To start with part one of The bluffer’s Guide To Music Technology, see www.musictech.net/2014/10/bluff-1/.
Cheers!

Simple But Awesome Reaper Snap Setting

November 3, 2014 by Ken 8 Comments

The Reaper blog just published a post about a setting I didn’t know about, and it really helps me a lot! It’s called the “Snap Relative to Grid” setting. In a lot of my tutorials, I warn people to pay attention to whether the Snap tool (looks like a magnet – see the pic on the left) is enabled or disabled. It’s incredibly useful when you want to snap the edges of your item to a gridline (which can be bars/beats, or minutes/seconds, etc.). But if you are trying to nudge something just a bit to the left or right on a track, having the Snap tool enabled will be trouble.
One problem I run into quite a bit is when I am dragging a bit of audio from one track to another. I don’t have a very steady hand (so you don’t want me doing brain surgery on you :)), so I almost always manage to slip the audio a bit left or right when I am just trying to drag it up or down. Of course, this will mess up the timing, and I often find myself undoing (“ctrl-z” is the best keyboard shortcut EVER) and trying again. Or I drag the edge of the audio item out beyond its actual start or stop time to get it to line up with a gridline, then turn on the Snap tool, then drag it up, then turn off the Snap tool. Craziness, I know! In my mind, I knew there was a way to keep the audio aligned in time while dragging to a different track, but I’m lazy, so I never looked it up.
Well, it turns out the answer is “Snap Relative to Grid.” You just go to the Snap/Grid settings (right-mouse click on the Snap tool) and put a check mark in the “Snap relative to Grid” box. That way, if the edges of your audio happen to fall between gridlines, and you want to drag the audio up to a different track, the edges will stay aligned with however far away the audio was from the nearest gridline to start with. In a nutshell, this means you can drag your audio clip up to a different track without worrying about it slipping left or right (earlier or later in time) in the process. In other words, it’s the right tool for the job I’ve been doing the hard way for years. Yay!
Here is Reaper’s blog post about it, along with an animation that shows you both how to select the option and what it does for your audio item when dragging it up or down to a different track. Hope this makes you as happy as it makes me :). http://reaperblog.net/2014/10/reaper-faq-what-does-snap-relative-to-grid-mean/