Once at church, we needed to do a quick phone interview during the worship service with a guy away on a mission trip. Our pastor remained on stage, speaking into his microphone for the congregation. The phone stayed in the back with me, and the guy on the line could hear everything coming through our sound system. When he spoke it fed into one of our mixer input channels.

In case anyone needs the exact setup:

• Mixer AUX 1/4" TRS female line-level balanced output
• 1/4" TS male -> 1/4" TS male patch cable
• Direct-injection box with 1/4" TS female line-level unbalanced input and XLR female mic-level balanced output
• XLR male -> 1/4" TS male adapter
• 1/4" TS female -> RCA female adapter
• RCA x3 male -> TRRS 1/8" male camcorder cable, connected to iPhone (the RCA colors were wrong on ours)
• RCA x2 female -> TS x2 1/4" male patch cable
• Mixer INSTR 1/4" TS x2 female line-level unbalanced input

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A question regarding these postings: does anyone know if there is an external mic solution for the iphone 3GS? I'm shooting video/audio for a music festival next week and will be doing interviews as well as on-site shots of concerts. So as to be as portable and unencumbered as possible, I'm going to try to do all the video and audio work on the iphone 3gs.

If I pick up a good mic and plug it into the iphone via a coupler to the A/V 4-conductor mini-plug, will this record ok? Or will I need to put something (a line attenuator?) in between mic and iphone to modify the input signal such that it will record. problem of course is that ill be on location and so wont really have ability to have extra equipment along with me – was hoping to do this with just the iphone and an external mic.

I went down to J&R Music World in New York this morning to test out some mic options with my iphone. I tried out the the Audio-Technica ATR50 and made an interesting discovery. The mic plugged into the iphone via the A/V four-conductor miniplug did actually record sound at a decent level, *but* the recording was accompanied by a strange regular metronomic clicking sound. This sounded like some sort of power loop. I've uploaded a copy of the recording here:

www.norums.com/Memo.m4a

Does anyone have any idea what this is and/or if there is any way to get rid of it? Or do you think I am fighting a losing battle?

Cheers in advance,
Roger

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How is this possible. Isn't the iPhone jack only output? I've tried to do this with RCA cables and the right adapters and using an amplifier and still the only audio picked up by my phone is from the internal mic.

Can someone please confirm this?

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Many of these 1/8th inch-to-phono cables vary by manufacturer. Can you post what model camera your cable is from?

Apple has made several of these cables and their compatibility varies across models. These links explain some of the compatibility issues between them:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1454
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA22690
http://www.tuaw.com/2005/11/01/how-to-convert-an-ibook-av-cable-to-an-ipod-av-cable/


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I think this is from my old Panasonic MiniDV camcorder. The one that came with my Canon is mono.

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This might also work with the newest generation MacBook Pro, as it works great with the iPhone earphones/mic combo – I haven't tried, though.

That would solve the old problem of the MBP not having a mic-level sound input. OTOH you can always use a cheap external USB "soundcard". Most work with the Mac right out of the box.

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I use an iPhone App called 4track, as an external talent recorder when shooting video and syncronise the sound track to the picture during editing.

The quality of the 3G/3GS microphone is absolutely astonishingly good and the only downside is the physical bulk of the device in the talent's top pocket.

Following the good advice here, I have found a company who sells specialised cables, including a microphone adapter. For those who might be interested, here's the link:-

http://www.kvconnection.com/product-p/km-iphone-mic.htm


Regards



David.

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Just as an important note to my last post, the KVC adapter is designed to take a stereo 3.5mm mic and converts to a mono input into the iPhone.

If you are using a Mono 3.5mm plug to start with, you will need a 3.5 mono input to 3.5mm stereo output adapter to use with the KVC adapter, otherwise a mono mic plug on its own will be shorted out and won't work.

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