Mics YouTube and Performances

MichaelLawrence

I was looking at getting a mic to hook up to my iPhone 6 to record videos for YouTube.

Bought a nice tripod stand today that's works well and I'm interested to hear if anyone has good reccomdenations for a mic I can plug into my iPhone jack.

When I record with just my phone there's way too much background noise so I'm looking to get a pretty clean sound

Any suggestions?

JohnnyGoodyear

@Noirflux There's probably a fair amount of input on the subject of possible mics in the archives. I use an Apogee 96k and I like it a lot. Not the cheapest (or the most expensive), but travels well and I've had no problems with it. Having said that I know that one of the best singers we've heard on this forum swears by climbing into his wife's wardrobe with his iThing in hand and he gets terrific results....

fRAS

I use Zoom IQ-5. I think, this is the only one in the IQ series, that can by adjusted so the left-right orientation can by preserved in any iphone orientation which is good for shooting videos (in landscape orientation)
Next, I really like the input gain wheel, so you can fine adust it unlike fixed 2 or 3 positions I saw on other mics.

The sound quality is acceptable (for the price) , I use it a lot for field recording.

u0421793

If it’s for a selfie-type of video, investigate lav mics. You can get cheap ones (ridiculously cheap) from China that really aren‘t too bad at all, and also get a four-pole 3.5mm mic/headphone splitter adaptor and plug it directly into the phone.

Here’s an example of me a few years ago (into a proper camcorder but that shouldn’t make a difference) doing a quick present to camera with a cheap lav mic (you can see it clipped to my collar - little black thing with black foam windshield). I’m beside the Thames at Temple station, and beside a busy London road, and it still manages to isolate me quite well enough for this sort of dialogue. The cost of the mic? I got five for £5 on amazon. Don’t underestimate a lav mic.

richardyot

It depends exactly what you are looking for, and at what price range.

The cheapest and most easily available option is simply to use the mic on your Apple headset.

If you want something more pro then you would be looking at a mic that plugs into the lightning port. The Zoom IQ5 already mentioned works OK (I own one) but the problem is that it's got a fairly wide field whereas it sounds like you need something with a cardiod pattern, in which case something like the Shure MV5 or MV51 might be better. The Apogee Mic is also a very good option.

MichaelLawrence

Awesome! Thanks everyone.

I'll do some research on the above options and see what works.

Coincidently, I just saw the below irig lav mic video pop up in my news feed too

Martygras

From my tests, when I use the video function on my iPhone 6+, the external mic is muted and only the internal mic is connected to the camera. I've always understood that you have to import the audio from another device in post.

ikmultimedia

@Martygras said:
From my tests, when I use the video function on my iPhone 6+, the external mic is muted and only the internal mic is connected to the camera. I've always understood that you have to import the audio from another device in post.

The built-in video app does not provide real-time monitoring but the audio is recorded by either analog or digital input microphones that are connected. I just tested with the nearest mic I had (iRig Mic Field) and it worked this way. I disconnected it mid-video and the app switched to the internal mic (I wanted to hear the clearly different audio quality in playback, just so I could be 100% sure I was using the mic) and it switched at that point.