Mic for iPhone X (no jack) for Remote Podcast

C

celticmoose

New member
Hello,

My name is Ryan, I just stumbled upon this great forum! I was hoping someone would have an answer for me, I've spent weeks researching this and I think I just actually need to find someone with the gear I'm thinking about, and see if they know what I want to do will work or not.

My buddy and I cohost a podcast remotely, i.e. we don't live anywhere near each other. We've used Anchor to record and distribute, and we both own an iPhone without a 3.5mm jack. For whatever reason he doesn't own a computer so this is our only option for recording the podcast. We aren't married to Anchor, it was just quick and easy. Skype, Ringr, and Discord with Craig are all solid options for recording our episodes on our iPhones.

I want to up our microphone game. Initially I had us buy a couple of budget headsets with boom mics, with a 3.5mm out, which we can convert with a lighting adapter, and while they are better than the built in mics on the iPhone or even the earphones that come with iPhones, now that we are one season in I'm hungry for more. So I went out and bought a Shure Motiv MV5, which I'm happy with from a quality standpoint, but I didn't realize that Apple doesn't play nice with external mics for voice chat apps. As soon as I connect on Anchor, Skype, Discord, the mic shuts off and it uses the internal mic and speakers.

I'm wondering if a dynamic mic with a preamp, such as an iRig, will work. I know there is an iRig with a 3.5mm out, the iRig Pre, but also ones with lightning out, the iRig Pro. I was hoping someone here had a similar setup, even if they aren't using it for voice chat, if they could test to see if it would work on Skype or Discord. Alternatively, would a USB mic work with a camera to lightning adapter? I would assume not since that isn't going to be that much different than the Shure MV5.

My suspicion is that the signal needs to be analog TRRS, which is why I was thinking the iRig Pre would work.

If anyone can help me out here I'd greatly appreciate it!
 
Hi Ryan, welcome to the forum!

Any USB interface or USB mic that is USB2 audio compliant works with iOS via the camera adapter. Even multi channel interfaces. One problem is that manufacturers of USB mics don't always specify that, even if that's how they work.

For recording stuff like skype, you might want to look at Studiolink. It's a VST plugin that allows recording VOIP sessions in your DAW, with separation between every participant. So you get one channel per participant, which allows easy corrections.

Studio Link - Professionelle Audio-Over-IP Verbindungen

Studiolink also allows to use another VOIP service in stead of skype, which might make your life a lot easier, as it would allow your partner to dial into a normal telephone number, or choose a VOIP app on his phone. It's what I use for telephone interviews. Skype sucks bigtime. Every new version seems to come with at least one new problem.

There are devices out there that allow an external mic to be used for VOIP conversations, but not many. I'm actually looking for a BlueTooth device that allows to connect a phone to my audio system AND play stereo music from that phone. It seems most kits do one of those two. There's a new mixer from Rode that allows it, but it's around 500$ and would bring me nothing besides the BT connectivity. Some carkits also allow it, but to use that in the studio would require some DIY power supply and cables.
 
Thanks for the reply. What would be the difference in connecting a USB microphone like the Samson Q2U direct into the iPhone using the camera lighting adapter, versus running it through a USB2 audio interface first? I mean besides the obvious improvement in audio quality; I mean in terms of being able to use the microphone in VOIP apps on the iPhone?

I'm probably going to switch to my laptop and find a way to record us that way (since I'm stuck with my Shure MV5), something like with what you said, but the problem remains of getting my remote cohost to be able to use a high quality microphone on his iPhone 8 that can be used to chat with me on whichever program we do end up using. I don't believe you can use an external mic like the Shure MV5 for just a phone call either.
 
Hi Ryan,

Have you tried the new version of Shure? Shure MV88 is much advanced and it's for all iOS devices equipped with a Lightning. I think it should work well with all the apps.


--
All best,
MuzzMaker
 
I have not tried the MV88, but I would assume it operates in the same manner as the MV5. Although it doesn't have live monitoring, which I absolutely need, so maybe since it isn't trying to do input and output maybe it would work. But I'd still need a way to hear my cohost unfortunately, so I never did consider the MV88.

At this point I've given up, I'm just going to switch to my laptop and pipe my remote cohost in using Voicemeeter Banana or something similar. It doesn't solve the mic problem for him though. An even bigger problem for me is that he just doesn't care about upgrading our sound quality, he thinks it's fine which I can appreciate, but just disagree with.

Thanks for all the feedback!
 
celticmoose said:
Thanks for the reply. What would be the difference in connecting a USB microphone like the Samson Q2U direct into the iPhone using the camera lighting adapter, versus running it through a USB2 audio interface first?
Click to expand...

No difference at all. Note that in most cases, the USB mic isn't the same as the XLR mic, even when the manufacturer sells it like that. And sometimes, even the name is confusing, like having several versions with same name, but a different order number.

In general, I'd stay away from USB mics...

Maybe your partner is right. The mic on an iphone isn't bad and as long as you don't use it to record singing, it'll be fairly hard to do better. Especially if he was to use it in other (noisy) places.
 
Thanks cyrano. Ultimately I think this will be the end result, we will use the same mics and I'll just get better at post-processing, or outsource it.

Do you think a podcast would sound off if one host had a nicer mic (me, Shure MV5) and the other host had a subpar headset 3.5mm mic? I wonder if I could record and get two tracks, how close I could get his to match mine. I don't want it to sound unbalanced or anything like that. We have the same mics right now so it sounds like we are in the same room even though we are in different cities hundreds of miles away. If the Shure MV5 setup would have worked I could've convinced him to get one too, but since it doesn't and any other solution is a little more technical (he seems to be tech averse), we are sort of stuck.
 
Hard to say...

Depends on voices, rooms, placement. The mic itself is of lesser influence. And don't get fooled by prices. I've just equipped a small pro podcast setup with 5€ dynamic lavalier mics and these work quite well for spoken word.
 
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