How to record good audio from your smartphone with a microphone

JJ 499 no comments Android, Apple, Mobile, Reviews

5.5 Total Score

~~$69~~

Buy for best price

Good quality and sturdy
Comes with professional shirt lapel
Very compact
Good clear recording

Designed to record audio, vocals, Instruments and voiceovers, this MiC is a little more than your average smartphone mic, because it comes from one of the brands that make professional microphones.Rode!

Get a Mic for your smartphone

Smartphones are the invention of the century, and every second person has it in their pocket ready to click photographs and record video.

It has pretty much taken away business from the camera companies and video cam recording companies. However audio recording is still done with professional equipment and Rode is just changing that by bringing their professional expertise to recording audio on your smartphone.

Recently I had the opportunity to be in video shoot and I was surprised to see that the cameraman just handed me his smartphone with a RODE Smart-lav mic fore the segment. He had a Apple iPhone.

Best Microphone for iPhone and Android

I was surprised how this would work and tested it out with my Samsung galaxy 6 and it worked fine too with crystal clear recording. When i got to see the finished recording of the video i was quite surprised,the audio quality was really good.

I was really impressed that this mic could just be used with plug it in to the audio jack on phone and pressing record on your smartphone app, without having to download anything. And guess what it worked on an iPhone and Samsung as well.

The video i got to see a week later was awesome. The audio recording was stitched together with video by an amazing software called Final cut pro x, which i will get into more detail later, but first let me give you more info on the mic as i went ahead and got my own after doing more research on it .

Here are my findings.

PRODUCT FEATURES or HIGHLIGHTS

Clip-On Mic for iPhone and Android
Improved Sensitivity & Signal-to-Noise
Quality Recording to Your Smartphone
Use with Rode Rec App for Apple iOS

Original price: $69 on amazon – Check features

Nerd specs

Sensitivity
-32.0dB re 1 Volt/Pascal (25.50mV @ 94 dB SPL) +/- 2 dB @ 1kHz

Frequency Range
20Hz – 20kHz

Dimensions
1180.00mmH x 4.50mmW x 4.50mmD

Weight
6.00gm

I got A RODE Smartlav Mic for smartphone for $39

Yes$39 dollars AUD for a Brand NEW Rode smartlav mic, but only because i got lucky with ebay giving me $20 off on that day for any purchases over $50, so this was actually priced at $59 and I got it for $39.

There was one used one going for $36 on ebay which ended up at $46 after auction bidding and i missed that and decided to buy full price and got lucky.

Smartphone cameras are great, but their built-in microphones tend to have limited range and it can be difficult trying to place them properly for recording sound due to the shape of the phone.

You also get background noise competing with your dialogue or audio. However, if you regularly make videos where you need to hear people talking then you should consider investing in some external sound equipment like above

Another option in similar price range is The Olympus ME-51S Stereo Microphone

Its range is not excellent so your subjects will need to be fairly close to your camera, but it does have better range than you would get using your inbuilt phone’s microphone.

Get the rode smartlav from amazon over here

Get the Olympus mic from amazon over here

Final cut pro X – Yes as I told you earlier, this software was used to stitch the audio with video. I enquired how this was done.

And I got told that the 4k Camera i tested, itself records audio as well but not so good , even though It was a 4k camera i had used . So what the director software does is, it just imports the recorded audio from the rode mic onto the software and the software has a function to sync the audio to video recognising the better recorded audio and you can stitch it together.

I watched the end result and was quite pleased with the whole video and my next buy obviously would not be the 4k camera, but the Final cut pro X video editing software instead.

Let me know if you have any experience with similar mic recording gadgets or software in the comments below.

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JJ likes to write about Technology and Gadgets.Google +JJ is the author and founder of Gadget Australia, a widely-read tech and Gadget blog. Email:
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