5 ms·

I am probably one of the few that use my iPhone more or less like a dumb phone, so pardon my ignorance. Is the iPhone mic able to pick the entire audible spec

by subhro 5y ago

I am probably one of the few that use my iPhone more or less like a dumb phone, so pardon my ignorance. Is the iPhone mic able to pick the entire audible spectrum (and then some)? Does this mean companies like Neumann, Shure, Rode should feel someone is coming for their lunch?

chris_st 5y ago
Anecdata, but a number of people in the online guitar group I'm in report that their iDevice can't really hear their bass guitar. My iPad Pro can, indeed, hear my bass fairly well, but I don't use it for recording the bass (long story). The microphone is, as I understand it, optimized for voice communication, since its main original job is to be a telephone.
- earthnail 5y ago
  Apple has fairly strong incentives to improve recording quality overall, including just better audio quality for the videos you shoot. Given the form factor of the iPhones, I'm frankly blown away by the sound quality you get from them. The SPL they can handle is absurd. Admittedly, your comment made me curious - I think I might have to annoy my neighbours with some bass playing this evening. In my experience, recording with my iPhone Xs, the bass frequencies of my synth are picked up extremely well. If the bass is indeed lacking, maybe we can recover some of it algorithmically. I'm not thinking about EQing, more like having a fantastic paper idea for some good academic work :-).
  - chris_st 5y ago
    Very cool! Just tried my bass into my iPhone 11 Pro max, recorded okay, but Tape It identified it as keyboards.
    - earthnail 5y ago
      Ooops :D. I'll take the version 1.0 excuse card if I may :D. All kidding aside, we know our instrument detection has room for improvement. But you gotta start somewhere :).
- kall 5y ago
  Aren‘t there two types of microphone in the apple world? You have "studio grade microphones" on, I think, the iPad Pro and MacBook Pro, and just plain microphones on anything else. It‘s a marketing term like Retina display but I assume that it means entirely different classes of mic hardware in terms of frequency response etc. If that‘s the case, they should definitely put it in the iPhone Pro as well.
earthnail 5y ago
Yes, they should. And they are already very worried about it. Only know that with certainty about Shure but I'd be surprised if the other companies weren't thinking in the same direction. My assumption is that we'll see the same development in the audio recording space as we saw it in the camera space. It's not 1:1 exactly the same - microphones have always been a lot more in the (semi-) professional area than cameras have been, and stage mics etc. aren't going anywhere. But for home recording, be that audio-only or the audio for your video, dedicated microphones (and audio interfaces) will see their market shrink significantly.
- 52-6F-62 5y ago
  Anything can happen. Guitar pedal and amp modelling of some real quality and portability hit the market over a decade ago, but in that time the boutique analogue market for effects and amplifiers has exploded. It'll be hard to model the variations possible in microphone configuration. There are some techniques that will just plain require multiple dedicated microphones—no matter the environment. But other solutions like Zoom handhelds will definitely diminish in number. I used to rent something like that to direct from the soundboard so a former band could record our live sets. Now all you need is a line-in to your phone. Same with just being able to jot down ideas—I'm totally excited to have recordings to my phone not end up compressed garbled messes—even possibly usable? Yes please! That said, if everyone is done with their Neumann's, you can kindly deposit them with me for free!
- subhro 5y ago
  Again, very little knowledge about audio, but some knowledge about photography.. From what I have read, it is important to have a physically large condenser/diphragm for a mic to have high fidelity. Could you educate me a bit please? At least for photography, I can tell you with certainty, an iphone camera is basically a toy when you are talking of challenging scenes being put on large fine art prints. It is nowhere near creating same "fidelity" images as even a micro 4/3rd camera, and there are medium format digital cameras out there.
  - earthnail 5y ago
lostgame 5y ago
I think a few people here are forgetting, importantly - that iOS supports external audio interfaces via the Lightning cable. Anyone looking for solid semi-pro audio quality from their iPhone/iPad can spend around $100 and get a quite nice audio capture card with traditional XLR / 1/4" cable support; allowing them to directly plug a guitar, amp; or microphone into the device. I have had a lot of success with this method - I wouldn't really suggest recording with the internal microphones on the iPhone if you are looking for any sort of notable quality. I'm not sure how you could even effectively sing into it with a sense of actual response from the mic like I get with even a basic Shure SM58. Not really a comparable tool. More for whole room recording, maybe; but even then you'll of course be missing a lot of the bass frequencies and get a bunch of garbage you don't want.
- earthnail 5y ago
  Yep, fair point. Agree with everything you write. Also, if the EU actually sees their USB-C power charging standard through, I'm hopeful that it will be much, much easier to connect audio interfaces and other accessories to an iPhone. For recording singing voice, the microphone itself is part of the instrument set up, and trained singers react to the behaviour of the mic instantly as they sing. I agree that it'll be borderline impossible to replace an SM58 for that. That being said, room recordings are a very common use case. Tape It isn't designed to replace a professional recording environment; it's rather there to help you in the stages before you get to recording at professional quality. Looking a bit into the future, though, I think it's reasonable to assume that the quality will steadily increase, and such will its applications. Just compare video capture on the iPhone today vs ten years ago.
dev_tty01 5y ago
In a word, no. First, it isn't just a matter of "picking up" frequencies. There is noise, transient response, overload and harmonics, etc... You might be able to mimic some of that with signal processing, but microphones are also designed with different directional responses for different situations. That has a big impact on the eventual signal that is recorded and will not be recreated with a built-in cell phone mic.

by subhro 5y ago

chris_st 5y ago

Anecdata, but a number of people in the online guitar group I'm in report that their iDevice can't really hear their bass guitar. My iPad Pro can, indeed, hear my bass fairly well, but I don't use it for recording the bass (long story). The microphone is, as I understand it, optimized for voice communication, since its main original job is to be a telephone.

earthnail 5y ago
Apple has fairly strong incentives to improve recording quality overall, including just better audio quality for the videos you shoot. Given the form factor of the iPhones, I'm frankly blown away by the sound quality you get from them. The SPL they can handle is absurd. Admittedly, your comment made me curious - I think I might have to annoy my neighbours with some bass playing this evening. In my experience, recording with my iPhone Xs, the bass frequencies of my synth are picked up extremely well. If the bass is indeed lacking, maybe we can recover some of it algorithmically. I'm not thinking about EQing, more like having a fantastic paper idea for some good academic work :-).
- chris_st 5y ago
  Very cool! Just tried my bass into my iPhone 11 Pro max, recorded okay, but Tape It identified it as keyboards.
  - earthnail 5y ago
    Ooops :D. I'll take the version 1.0 excuse card if I may :D. All kidding aside, we know our instrument detection has room for improvement. But you gotta start somewhere :).
kall 5y ago
Aren‘t there two types of microphone in the apple world? You have "studio grade microphones" on, I think, the iPad Pro and MacBook Pro, and just plain microphones on anything else. It‘s a marketing term like Retina display but I assume that it means entirely different classes of mic hardware in terms of frequency response etc. If that‘s the case, they should definitely put it in the iPhone Pro as well.

earthnail 5y ago

Yes, they should. And they are already very worried about it. Only know that with certainty about Shure but I'd be surprised if the other companies weren't thinking in the same direction. My assumption is that we'll see the same development in the audio recording space as we saw it in the camera space. It's not 1:1 exactly the same - microphones have always been a lot more in the (semi-) professional area than cameras have been, and stage mics etc. aren't going anywhere. But for home recording, be that audio-only or the audio for your video, dedicated microphones (and audio interfaces) will see their market shrink significantly.

52-6F-62 5y ago
Anything can happen. Guitar pedal and amp modelling of some real quality and portability hit the market over a decade ago, but in that time the boutique analogue market for effects and amplifiers has exploded. It'll be hard to model the variations possible in microphone configuration. There are some techniques that will just plain require multiple dedicated microphones—no matter the environment. But other solutions like Zoom handhelds will definitely diminish in number. I used to rent something like that to direct from the soundboard so a former band could record our live sets. Now all you need is a line-in to your phone. Same with just being able to jot down ideas—I'm totally excited to have recordings to my phone not end up compressed garbled messes—even possibly usable? Yes please! That said, if everyone is done with their Neumann's, you can kindly deposit them with me for free!
subhro 5y ago
Again, very little knowledge about audio, but some knowledge about photography.. From what I have read, it is important to have a physically large condenser/diphragm for a mic to have high fidelity. Could you educate me a bit please? At least for photography, I can tell you with certainty, an iphone camera is basically a toy when you are talking of challenging scenes being put on large fine art prints. It is nowhere near creating same "fidelity" images as even a micro 4/3rd camera, and there are medium format digital cameras out there.
- earthnail 5y ago

lostgame 5y ago

I think a few people here are forgetting, importantly - that iOS supports external audio interfaces via the Lightning cable. Anyone looking for solid semi-pro audio quality from their iPhone/iPad can spend around $100 and get a quite nice audio capture card with traditional XLR / 1/4" cable support; allowing them to directly plug a guitar, amp; or microphone into the device. I have had a lot of success with this method - I wouldn't really suggest recording with the internal microphones on the iPhone if you are looking for any sort of notable quality. I'm not sure how you could even effectively sing into it with a sense of actual response from the mic like I get with even a basic Shure SM58. Not really a comparable tool. More for whole room recording, maybe; but even then you'll of course be missing a lot of the bass frequencies and get a bunch of garbage you don't want.

earthnail 5y ago
Yep, fair point. Agree with everything you write. Also, if the EU actually sees their USB-C power charging standard through, I'm hopeful that it will be much, much easier to connect audio interfaces and other accessories to an iPhone. For recording singing voice, the microphone itself is part of the instrument set up, and trained singers react to the behaviour of the mic instantly as they sing. I agree that it'll be borderline impossible to replace an SM58 for that. That being said, room recordings are a very common use case. Tape It isn't designed to replace a professional recording environment; it's rather there to help you in the stages before you get to recording at professional quality. Looking a bit into the future, though, I think it's reasonable to assume that the quality will steadily increase, and such will its applications. Just compare video capture on the iPhone today vs ten years ago.

dev_tty01 5y ago

In a word, no. First, it isn't just a matter of "picking up" frequencies. There is noise, transient response, overload and harmonics, etc... You might be able to mimic some of that with signal processing, but microphones are also designed with different directional responses for different situations. That has a big impact on the eventual signal that is recorded and will not be recreated with a built-in cell phone mic.