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What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
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Best/cheapest option for mic/line input?
Hi there,
I'm shopping for the first time for a way to hook a shure mic or guitar to my iPad— I know about the iRig devices but I was wondering there's anything of good quality that's straightforward, I just need a single 1/4 or 1/8 inch line input.
Thanks!
Comments
Alesis Core 1 - USB so you will need the apple USB3 adapter or the older Camera Connection Kit
I am not sure if this will do the job?
https://itrack.focusrite.com/products/itrack-solo
Thank you for your recommendations!
I use the https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&hl=en-us&q=behringer+uca202&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjf55_p_NTRAhUk3IMKHcu1AfEQ7xYIFigA&biw=414&bih=628&dpr=3 with a 1/4 female to rca male adapter. Works great.
Steinberg ur12 or focusrite solo. Or then put a few more bucks to it and get ur22 mkii, which has midi ports.
Steinbergs are easier to get power to, unless you are already using some usb hub with enough power to power the focusrite
The new roland:go mixer maybe...
there's a huge difference between handlin a mic and a line signal.
With line level you can get pretty well along with cheapos like Behringer, but on mics forget them... in particular with dynamic types like Shure (probably the 57).
These mics may appear simple, but are quite demanding to amplify, seriously.
(way more than a Rode NT-1a for example)
In front of a guitar cabinet it's not that dramatic, though - as the sound is distorted by nature anyway.
The way I currently think about this is along the lines of separation of concerns. Although it is messy and sprouts more boxes, I would (and I've done it the other way but wouldn't again if I were to start again) simply get a thing that concentrates only on getting line input (because that is the simplest case) into a good ADC and into USB.
Then, as a separate thought process, I'd seek a thing that takes mic level, with or without phantom power, or guitar level (which is higher than mic, but lower than line), or indeed anything else, and turns it into line level - that's all - a preamp, if you like.
Preamps are fairly straightforward and can be easily got, but as soon as you couple it to USB output as well, the range and choice becomes more limited and the cost is incorrect. The getting of audio into USB is straightforward too, and with the Behringer examples given above, are also easily got for reasonable money (and can be tweaked and op-amp swapped if you want to waste time down that rabbit hole) but as soon as you worry about differing input ranges and suchlike, the choice is more limited and the cost goes up.
I say that, but didn't follow it in the past. I was lucky in picking up stuff cheap on eBay, such as an A&H Zed10 basic mixer with usb output, but I also started putting together stand-alone preamps with the intention of simplifying the gear (this was mainly when I was concentrating on audio for live video streaming, so the mixer sort of made sense then). I even bought (cheaply) a nice thing, a Tascam iXZ, which I don't use as intended, but rather, I use it purely as a preamplifier / level fiddler (with the aid of a cheap 4-conductor 3.5mm adaptor)! I haven't done noise tests, but in terms of usefulness, I've found it far more useful as a glue device than I ever imagined when I reluctantly paid hardly anything for in a surprise eBay find years ago. Mainly useful for putting audio into DSLR cams, admittedly, but that's the sort of direction I was heading.
some guitar/bass outputs are in fact lower than (consumer) line level, but some are higher.
My Precision bass with Dimarzio pickups delivered > 300 mV moderately picked, peaking at 800 mV when played more engaged. Same is true for a lot of guitars with heavy humbuckers.
The most important fact is the (high) input impedance that passive pickups require to not loose their tone (a more subtle thing than just reduced highs).
A good input stage is worth some extra investment, as what's spoilt won't come back via some eq-magic or whatever.
I'd second quality gear like RME, Apogee or Audient any time - it will serve you a long time.
Roger that! I always hook up the my sm57 to a mixer first before it goes to the uca202.
Same here. I have guitar, bass and vocals all running into an old Yamaha 12/4 mixer, then out to a Griffin StudioConnect, so the iPad stays powered and everything runs through decent mic preamps.
The zoom h1 has a line in and can be used as a USB mic/interface as well a handy portable recorder
@billjobs_in_space "Line in" is for pre-loudified signals, which is not what you have. Guitars and dynamic/non-battery mics need preamps and will sound awful or silent without them, which is what "line in" is about. You need something else.
You need a self-powered (battery, wall plug or powered usb hub) audio interface with preamps and a digital audio converter (DAC or D/A converter). The best ones are expensive, e.g. broadcast quality Sound Devices MixPre-D approx $957 US dollars.
For decent consumer-grade ones you might consider Line6 or Apogee. The Apogee Jam (£99-ish) is great for guitar alone but has no mic input. However it can run a battery powered condenser mic if you have an XLRF - 1/4" Jack plug cable to fit the guitar input socket.
Mics and guitars have different requirements and cheap preamps can be hissy noisy so what you're asking for is complex.
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@5pinlink At Sweetwater dot com the Audient ID4 is $299 which is treble their $99 price of the Apogee Jam, which directly contradicts what you said, so ...
Audient is top notch, in particular the ID22 (+Adat IO, hardware inserts with dedicated converters and better ouput converters, excellent low noise power suppla design).
In my humble ears the records are on par with Metric Halo, which is 3 times the price.
The 'smaller' Audient interfaces have identical input stages, but reduced features for budget restrictions.
The Alesis IO dock quite surprised me - it's not that high end, but very solid for the price tag.
When gear is introduced as 'great' in threads like this, one should keep in mind that most users don't have comparisons of different input stages.
Differences can be subtle but that's what preamps are about
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My bad, thanks for catching my extra "1" mistake, heh.
Well, the OP did ask explicitly for "best/cheapest", and since it's iOS I figured portability was likely to be relevant, and the Apogee jam has recorded audio for me which I have amplified in processing +48dB and the low/zero noise levels astounded me, plus it can do a guitar/mic with the caveat I mentioned, and I think that getting a DAC of that quality for cheaper is going to be difficult, so that was why I suggested it.
I'm sure your suggestion is better, however it is still also pricier, so the OP can choose from the options presented.
For me personally, portability is almost more compelling than low noise floor ... ALMOST.
@Telefunky and @5pinlink Thanks for introducing me to Audient, I never used their stuff before, but hey, is it weird to name themselves after the listeners and not the performers who use their products? Or do they target the audiophile demographic? I just think it's funny, "audient" is how I describe a singular listener.
I'm really happy with my MixPre-D so am unlikely to test Audient gear anytime soon, but I'll keep an ear out for recordings made with it.
Is there an objective comparison between the Audient range and the Focusrite or Apogee gear anywhere? Just curious.
Type into a web search engine the names of the equipment you're interested in comparing, plus the word "shootout", that should get you something.
I found this video:
I'll check it out, thanks.
Reason I was asking is that I currently have a Focusrite 2i4 and a small collection of condenser mics: Oktava MK319, AT 2035, and a Violet Atomic.
The Oktava is my favourite because it has a lovely smooth tone, but I tend to sing pretty quietly compared to most singers and with the Oktava I can only turn the gain up to about 6 O' clock on the 2i4 before the hiss becomes audible (the other mics can take a bit more gain).
So the Audient ID4 or ID14 look quite tempting for the price, but only if they can get me some additional clean gain compared to the Scarlett. Maybe I need to hunt through the specs.
@richardyot If your mic has a high noise floor, awesome preamps may simply amplify the noise floor. I mean, you're amplifying what goes in, right?
Those Focusrite's tend to sound pretty good to my ears, at least for music (vs quiet foley sound fx), so I suspect you might be better off with a cleaner hotter mic instead. Cheap awesome second hand ones can be had on eBay.
The Audio Technica AT3032 is an awesomely quiet small diaphragm mic, and the AT899 is awesome too and cannot be beaten for the price and convenience, it is a TINY lavalier with a huge sound. I have and am impressed with both.
Check out mic specs S/N ratio (Signal to Noise [how much signal before noise becomes evident]) and SPL (Sound Pressure Level [how soon they clip]).
Good luck!
Thanks. I already have a fairly clean mic with the AT2035, it's very neutral sounding. I just really happen to like the sound of the Oktava, but if there isn't much I can do about the noise floor I will just keep the gain down on the interface.
Thing is, if I keep the gain down and then boost digitally I get much cleaner sound than if I turn the gain up. This is why I wondered if a different interface with more clean gain might help.
Sure it'd help. It just seems to me more efficient, not to mention much much cheaper, to address the noise issue by reducing it before it enters the signal chain, rather than addressing it afterwards by having to work around the avoidable obstacle.
My favourite-sounding non-neutral mic is the AT4033. It adds such a pleasant shimmer to timbres from ± ~220Hz right on up, especially human voices. It also is the cleanest hottest mic I own, with a noise floor rivalling the most expensive mics I've ever heard. I recommend having a search round teh intartoobz to check out mic shootouts including it.
Did you mean something like this?
http://www.canford.co.uk/Index/Inline-microphone-pre-amplifiers/FEL-MICROPHONE-PREAMPLIFIERS-Phantom-powered
Also, if the Audients /RME etc are class-compliant USB interfaces, why would they need drivers?
they don't need drivers for the audio part, it's about the control software for routing and monitoring (there's a near-zero latency DSP mixer on board).
This software doesn't exist in IOS, so you have to route via Audiobus, MiMix, etc and monitor through the respective app you're using.
For singing that may be a slight drawback (never missed it, though), for guitar abd virtual instruments you'll use the software path anyway.
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Interesting, so Audient interfaces crap out their OS-built-in drivers on all desktop OSes? As far as I know I've never seen that happen with any usb audio interface, maybe I've just been lucky.
That Fethead looks cool, so the OP can choose between that for dynamic mics or the FEL for condenser mics, depending on what mic the OP has.
It might be only my isolated opinion, but I put preamplifier fussing in the same bucket as hdmi snobbishness and speaker cable gullibility. Well, maybe not that bad, as preamplifers can certainly vary a lot and there are differences, but, and it's a pert but, there isn't always a correlation between outlay and reward.
Just as I used to be always looking for ridiculously cheap rangefinder cameras and now and again finding one I paid almost nothing for that had a superbly impressive lens, and just as I don't believe in there always being a correlation between cost and results in microphones (I've experienced a few excellent cheap ones, among a lot of unusably crap cheap ones), I'd suggest trying a few low cost preamp solutions first. Mainly on the basis of 'what have you got to lose?' - and just stop when you get to one you like.
On eBay at the moment there's item number 370935361060 which is actually a pretty good price for this particular module. The data sheet is here: https://www.kemo-electronic.de/en/Light-Sound/Amplifier-Splitter/Modules/M040N-Universal-preamplifier.php
Solder it up to the requisite connectors, apply suitable power.
I guess it depends on your usual sound sources. I find that for recording music and the like, the preamp, as you say, isn't that big a deal.
Having said that, my usual sound sources are quieter than music by several orders of magnitude, e.g. raindrops landing on surfaces, heartbeats, footsteps, etc. In those cases, I find powerful silent preamps to be critical to success, with regular ones all I get is mostly hissy noise.
I liken it to a tall double decker bus ride and a hatchback car drive both going on a mystery route with lots of bridges. The bus ride is way cheaper, but if a bridge is too low, you're stuck. The car is way more expensive but will get you to many more places much quicker. You might only need the bus fare, but you need to decide at a time when you can't know which vehicle will be needed. The extra headroom of quiet preamps allows for much more varied recording situations.
Of course everybody advertises their preamps as "quiet and powerful", which is annoying, that's why specs are so important.
This video of ants' legs has audio recorded with a Sound Devices 702 recorder. Sound Devices preamps are broadcast industry standards and I think the audio here illustrates why.
If this audio had been recorded by, say, a Zoom H4n (which by the way I have and like a lot for some things), then I think the ants would have been nearly inaudible.
I made this heartbeat recording with a contact mic and Sound Devices MixPre-D preamp, directly into TwistedWave on my iPhone SE.
So I dispute that special preamps are always trivial.
But I agree that sometimes they are.
Wow, this thread has really blown up since last I've checked— thanks for all your responses, I still haven't had the time to look through everything yet but it might be a little while before I can actually pick up anything.
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[Edit: Removed bulky repeats of previous quoted posts]
It looks like the preamp you linked to is explicitly for live PA applications, which is a less demanding environment than recording, because live audio is only heard for a second before it's over (unless it's being recorded, which in my experience is rare), whereas a recording result is forever (more or less).
And unlike in live PA which has an amp doing most of the heavy lifting, in recording applications the preamp is the only amp, so it needs to be good. In recording, the point of an external preamp is to REPLACE poor built-in recorder preamps, not supplement as in live PA.
I hope that made some kind of sense.
Indeed, preamps alone are a huge vast expanse of a topic, I'm glad you're taking your time to work out where your most useful investment might go.