Can an iphone app deliver a quality recording?

  • Thread starter Thread starter bahner
  • Start date Start date
B

bahner

New member
Hello all,

Ive joined this forum in search of some help with a school project. I'm currently in my last semester at business school and have been assigned to a senior project for a company that has developed an application for the iPhone that records at 48kHz. The only problem is that I don't know anything about recording haha.

What I do know: It records at 48kHz. You can title recordings before making them. It offers EQ presets for gain, highs, mids, and lows. There is an auxiliary cord you can use to attach the phone to a mic to make recordings. You can get a recording and send it to an FTP site or email it and then drop it into a timeline in an editing system with out having to make any conversions. I'm not aware of any other apps like it that offer such a high kHz recording option.

Ive tried to educate myself as best possible since joining this forum but I am pretty clueless when it comes to recording and was hoping you can help me out a bit.

*Does or has anyone here used an iPhone app to record anything?
*If so, what were the pros and cons to using the app?
*If not, would you be interested in an app that can record at 48kHZ?
*What do I need to know about recording to understand where this product stands with people who are looking for top quality recording?
*What are my next best options price (sub $100) wise for getting a quality recording?

I don't want to seem as though I'm marketing to you so Ill leave the company and product names out. Ive joined a number of forums to hopefully learn a bit about this topic in a short time period. Ive got my newb flame suit on so any and all feedback would be GREATLY appreciated!

Also, If I have posted this in the wrong section then I apologize, I haven't learned my way around here just yet :)
 
bahner said:
*Does or has anyone here used an iPhone app to record anything?
Click to expand...
Yes, there are a lot of apps that record things for various purposes...they all sound about how one would expect a recording on a phone to sound (meaning....intelligible).
bahner said:
*If so, what were the pros and cons to using the app?
Click to expand...
Pros - it was on my phone which was handy, cons - it sounded like a recording made on my phone.
bahner said:
*If not, would you be interested in an app that can record at 48kHZ?
Click to expand...
Nobody is going to make any decisions based on that criteria, I guarantee it. As long as it's at least 44.1 khz, nobody really cares.
bahner said:
*What do I need to know about recording to understand where this product stands with people who are looking for top quality recording?
Click to expand...
Nothing, because it stands nowhere with that crowd, nor will it ever. Sorry, dude...just being honest. There is a different market, however, that is interested in recording stuff on their phones and sharing it with friends (HeyTell is popular and a perfect example of exactly...that), but "people who are looking for top quality recordings" don't turn to cell-phones for them.
bahner said:
*What are my next best options price (sub $100) wise for getting a quality recording?
Click to expand...
I don't mean to be rude and laugh, but.... LOL. Setting aside the price restriction - this whole forum and all of it's millions of posts are dedicated to the plethora of details involved in answering that question.
 
Wow, Thanks for the detailed reply TyphoidHippo. No offense taken at all! I appreciate your honest input.
The app in question was designed for field reporters from CNN to use so that they always had a decent recorder on them in case of a breaking story. Seems like a great place for a recorder since there are tons of iPhone users who cant go anywhere without their phones!
Quality recording for what? $100 is pretty low.
Click to expand...
I suppose its safe to say that the app was created to help get quality recordings for tv and video. I know that many DSLR cameras are now capable of recording video but their audio recording capabilities don't quite stack up so I believe that is also a reason for creating this app. Yes $100 is low but that is about $40 more than the app and an auxiliary cord for a mic would cost. I know mics can get pretty up there in price.

Nobody is going to make any decisions based on that criteria, I guarantee it. As long as it's at least 44.1 khz, nobody really cares.
Click to expand...
So you don't think the fact that it can record at 48kHz will have much affect on somebody looking for a decent compact hand held recorder?

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't a 48kHz recording considered Hi-Def?
 
The advantages of 48k over 44.1k are minimal.

The phone's mic and circuitry will be the limiting factors for audio quality. No fancy app will make up for that.
 
The simplest answer to your initial question is 'Yes.' An iPhone app can be developed to provide an interface for adequate audio recording. On another forum a question was raised recently by a long term member concerning an advert he saw regularly on yet a different forum concerning what could make a near field monitor worth $18k. The speakers in question were not actually near fields but for this discussion that's not particularly relevant. In the market, which sort of defines the idea of 'quality' audio, where $18k for a pair of speakers is not, necessarily, an extravagance the iPhone is never going to be a dominate tool for either recording or editing. That said phone and pad technology will be integrated into both hobbyist and commercial recording environments.

As other people have indicated whether an app can support 48 kHz is not a marketing point, it's inability to support that sampling rate is, can be, should be a deal breaker (at this time). The 'app' has little or nothing to do with establishing word depth or sampling rate. Those are established by hardware constraints. 24/44.1 & 48 kHz have been common in hand held digital recorders for a decade. Many, if not all, of the current crop of smart phones/ pads support those parameters.

The place for the phone/pad in any recording environment is in extreme flux @ the moment & that's going to be the biggest challenge for company trying to profit from that environment. And since your company is piggybacking on existing capabilities (how well or how poorly it is 'possible' for a device to record is beyond your company's control) the thing you can control is how well your interface matches needs of a target market. Defining that market adequately will make the difference between success and failure. Some of those 'needs' are psychological, some practical. Identifying, defining and exploiting those is a huge challenge (and how app companies that survive typically handle it is the reason why we, who strive to make money from the proffered apps, typically hate you all). An interesting part of the challenge is that the companies that bubble to the top will have clients that deploy both the phone/pad and the app in ways that your company neither intended nor imagined.

Companies that have successfully exploited what I would assume to be your companies target market (if it isn't they are then mostly addressing this as a novelty) are Nagra, Olympus, Marantz, Sound Devices. (For you to at least take a look at history of portable recording, focusing on reporters and film/video industry, should be informative. This market goes back to 1878 with practical recording devices showing up by the 1940s: Miniphone, Mowhawk Midget Recorder, Olympus Penrecorder all predate the modern audio cassette) Studying Sony's missteps with the mini disc recorder would be an interesting corollary. A current leader, again hardware, in this market is Zoom. If your company is actually attempting to 'develop' software and not merely derive momentary profit from a hype driven 6 month fashion window they need to examine why, when cell phones have been able to record conversations effectively since at least 2003 that someone, a reporter for example will figure out how to carry around, all the time, not only another relatively expensive hrdwr device but also the separate charging and interface I/O. Oddly enough recorders build in existing microphone designs never took off. Mic improvement in existing handheld recorder profiles has been a profitable development. Bluetooth mics never got popular, USB mics and small portable USB interfaces for existing mics have been, seemingly, profitable.

I have very little experience, these days with any Apple product. I have never been positively impressed by either their hardware or software. So while event horizon for any profitability demands 'i' attention . . . I have seen much more interesting software development on the Android side of things. Too early to tell whether Apple 'i' is going to end up this year's Betamax . . . If for no other reason then Apple has survived for generations on misplaced hype so far . . . But your company is already facing some powerful Android competition . . . Where a number of those products are going to integrate seamlessly with the Linux environment.

Can it be done? Yes. But you need to define a profitable target market and guess correctly about infterface that market needs (without that market, necessarily, being aware of what it needs).
 
Now if you could incorporate an extremely high quality microphone into a case with very little bulk, you'd be onto something...
 
Whoa - that's pretty cool, right there. I read the product page and downloaded the manual, but I don't see any indication of how exactly it works with iOS. Have you used one? Does it like... install a driver that apps can access or something? Is there even a useful DAW "app" out there? I've seen the frontend / remote control apps for computer-based DAWs, but not one that actually runs on a phone.

I can't immediately think of practical way I, or anybody I know, really, could use that thing that a phone's built-in mic wouldn't handle ok (I just mean I never find myself needing one channel of higher-quality-than-built-in-to-a-phone-input while traveling), but the target market the OP spoke of at some point - reporters and such, might, I suppose. I just think it's cool that even exists.

edit: My post was about the Tascam. I'm reading about the Alesis now...
 
Last edited:
TyphoidHippo said:
Whoa - that's pretty cool, right there. I read the product page and downloaded the manual, but I don't see any indication of how exactly it works with iOS. Have you used one? Does it like... install a driver that apps can access or something? Is there even a useful DAW "app" out there? I've seen the frontend / remote control apps for computer-based DAWs, but not one that actually runs on a phone.

I can't immediately think of practical way I, or anybody I know, really, could use that thing that a phone's built-in mic wouldn't handle ok (I just mean I never find myself needing one channel of higher-quality-than-built-in-to-a-phone-input while traveling), but the target market the OP spoke of at some point - reporters and such, might, I suppose. I just think it's cool that even exists.

edit: My post was about the Tascam. I'm reading about the Alesis now...
Click to expand...

I think the Tascam is probably vapour-ware... The Alesis I've at least seen in operation. I think it's crazy overpriced as the Tascam and Zoom handheld recorders offer way more value for money.
 
moresound said:
Forget the iphone ... get an ipad.
Click to expand...

Moresound speaks the truth - there are serious interfaces for iPad, but I think people were emphasizing total portability. The price point for anything involving an iPhone or iPod is going to be too high considering the low price of the far more capable Tascam and Zoom handhelds. The Tascam DR-05 is about $75 from Amazon... Product: DR-05 | TASCAM. The lack of removable storage on the iWhatevers can be a deal killer in the field (in areas without 3g coverage) unless you have a laptop with you to download to.
 
Wow Oretez, thank you for your feedback! You make some very great points there. It's not my company haha I am merely a college student that drew this project out of a hat so to speak for my senior project.
 
bahner said:
Wow, Thanks for the detailed reply TyphoidHippo. No offense taken at all! I appreciate your honest input.
The app in question was designed for field reporters from CNN to use so that they always had a decent recorder on them in case of a breaking story. Seems like a great place for a recorder since there are tons of iPhone users who cant go anywhere without their phones!

I suppose its safe to say that the app was created to help get quality recordings for tv and video. I know that many DSLR cameras are now capable of recording video but their audio recording capabilities don't quite stack up so I believe that is also a reason for creating this app. Yes $100 is low but that is about $40 more than the app and an auxiliary cord for a mic would cost. I know mics can get pretty up there in price.


So you don't think the fact that it can record at 48kHz will have much affect on somebody looking for a decent compact hand held recorder?

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't a 48kHz recording considered Hi-Def?
Click to expand...

I use my phone's built in voice recorder all the time. I'm a field linguist and record conversations, interviews, dialogues etc. The only times I'll use a higher quality set up for that sort of thing is when I need a real hi-fi recording to analyze phonetic details. I also use the built in mic and voice recorder to record meetings, and presentations when necessary. It's actually pretty decent for that kind of stuff.

so, in my case, just a better mic to attach to the iphone would be wonderful and fill all of my recording needs, but I wouldn't want to spend more than maybe $50 on it.

To be honest anything more than field notes (music related stuff) I'm not gonna be pulling out my iphone.

Umm, maybe an app that can manage larger files and organize them better than the voice recorder.
 
chuckduffy said:
Moresound speaks the truth - there are serious interfaces for iPad, but I think people were emphasizing total portability. The price point for anything involving an iPhone or iPod is going to be too high considering the low price of the far more capable Tascam and Zoom handhelds. The Tascam DR-05 is about $75 from Amazon... Product: DR-05 | TASCAM. The lack of removable storage on the iWhatevers can be a deal killer in the field (in areas without 3g coverage) unless you have a laptop with you to download to.
Click to expand...

Very true...removable storage is a HUGE deal in the field. Most of what I do is around my area and I just go home and upload it or email from the site. But removable storage is absolutely necessary for more remote projects. I did one where we would spend some time in the Amazon for 3-6 days then come back to the city in Brazil. I would never have trusted storing all my notes on my phone and not being able to back it up every few hours.
 
aaronmcoleman said:
Very true...removable storage is a HUGE deal in the field. Most of what I do is around my area and I just go home and upload it or email from the site. But removable storage is absolutely necessary for more remote projects. I did one where we would spend some time in the Amazon for 3-6 days then come back to the city in Brazil. I would never have trusted storing all my notes on my phone and not being able to back it up every few hours.
Click to expand...

Im not sure whats around the corner but I use Beatmaker 2, a kind of MPC for the ipad/iphone, and its connected to my dropbox account...its just drags and drops in seconds so I dont actually keep any files on the ipad/iphone

that solves any removable storage problems..I think my dropbox account is at 10gb and thats a free one


though its not much good in the amazon :D
 
kcearl said:
Im not sure whats around the corner but I use Beatmaker 2, a kind of MPC for the ipad/iphone, and its connected to my dropbox account...its just drags and drops in seconds so I dont actually keep any files on the ipad/iphone

that solves any removable storage problems..I think my dropbox account is at 10gb and thats a free one


though its not much good in the amazon :D
Click to expand...

Oh yeah - outside of anything I posted about field use, and storage limitations when you can't get 3g - I def want an iPad. I normally don't buy any computing stuff unless it can pay for itself within the normal course of work, but I am sorely tempted.
 
chuckduffy said:
Oh yeah - outside of anything I posted about field use, and storage limitations when you can't get 3g - I def want an iPad. I normally don't buy any computing stuff unless it can pay for itself within the normal course of work, but I am sorely tempted.
Click to expand...

I have the camera kit...you pick them up for a few bucks and they can take SD cards up to 32gb, but Im not sure how convoluted transferring files is on them...I use it for a midi connection
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top