I bought a thumb-tack mic for my ipod touch just for this application... only to find out that whenever a microphone is plugged in it disables the speaker, making the whole thing useless. If I would've been able to use regular microphones with the thing I wouldn't have needed to buy another one in the first place, but regular mics doesn't work with the touch, screw me twice.
So I had to buy idiotic headphones with an embedded microphone, and its not as fun...
I definitely recommend this one. The instrument samples are the best of any app. It could do with some updating - it needs a recording setting and a copy/paste option would be nice, but for 99c its a bargain.
Johnnyg0, I use an iphone extension microphone on my ipod touch and it works fine (basically a microphone on a lead but with an input at the end for headphones). I can plug in a splitter and headphones and then play and listen to the music on headphones while simultaneously recording it. Obviously the microphone is not in the ideal position to blow but so long as you have it on a lead you can place it wherever you want (hold it onto the touch, between your lips etc). By the way the ipod touch can take a lot of peripherals - its just that there are not so many on the market. I have started to make my own these days. I made a guitarbud cable and have recently wired up a decent microphone that works through the headphone input of my ipod touch and I plan to do the same with the dock connector once I can source the correct plug (taking apart a usb cable turns out to be not the ideal solution).
@ Sigmund : I ended up buying something like that (I really didn't wanted to get the apple earbuds), it even has a little clip so its easier to position, but it would've been so much more fun and simple to only use the thumbtack mic with the integrated speaker.
At least the thumbtack mic was cheap, and I learned that Apple just won't support anything standard... I mean, not supporting the microphone standard plug, used by every mics since the beginning recording, including professional microphones,.. I cannot begin to describe how stupidly idiotic it is from Apple not to support this without screaming. None of my mics at home would work on that piece of shit, and I do own quite a few professionnal grade mics, and adapters and converters... none would work because they wanted it to be that way.
... remember that when apple launched the iphone, NOT A SINGLE PAIR OF HEADPHONES WOULD WORK ON THE STUPID THING just because those idiots carved a smaller hole than the standard and they wanted to force people into buying their headphones.
Johnnyg0, I initially had similar problems to you. The inbuilt speaker in the ipod touch is simply not good enough to use for music but in order to use a lot of music apps you need both a microphone input and an output and the current setup limits your options. It doesnt eliminate them, however. If you use a 4 ring TRRS plug and wire it correctly you can get mono-input and stereo output from headphone socket of the ipod touch (and probably the iphone too. I make these connectors myself - 10 minutes of soldering using old cables and connectors will get you one. All my microphones work on the ipod touch now - although these are all mono. There is the possibility of a stereo microphone input through the dock connector (this is how Blue Mikey get their stereo microphone to work). I intend to make such a connector when I can find a source of ipod dock connectors that have long pins available for soldering - the usb cable connectors seem to have the 30 pins sheared off and so are too tiny for my basic soldering skills.
Still don't you wish you wouldn't have to do soldering just to have a standard mic to work?
The internal speaker is good enough when you just want to play around. Its far from perfect, but its still fun sometimes to play unconnected (same goes for my SX-150 or my Thingamagoops). Of course anything serious will be made connected, but there are those (many) times where I enjoy that cheap speaker (bathroom? :)
Johnnyg0, the headphone socket has enough power to drive some quite large speakers without the need for external power. I have a couple of old computer speakers (the cheap sort that you normally run off a transformer that is plugged into the mains). I was surprised to find that connecting up the ipod touch allowed me to hear the speakers - perhaps not at full volume but certainly loud enough to listen normally to music. If you want to play the ipod touch perhaps a small pair of speakers (or a single one) connected to the headphone socket might be something to think of.
8 comments:
Amazing app btw.
I bought a thumb-tack mic for my ipod touch just for this application... only to find out that whenever a microphone is plugged in it disables the speaker, making the whole thing useless. If I would've been able to use regular microphones with the thing I wouldn't have needed to buy another one in the first place, but regular mics doesn't work with the touch, screw me twice.
So I had to buy idiotic headphones with an embedded microphone, and its not as fun...
I definitely recommend this one. The instrument samples are the best of any app. It could do with some updating - it needs a recording setting and a copy/paste option would be nice, but for 99c its a bargain.
Johnnyg0, I use an iphone extension microphone on my ipod touch and it works fine (basically a microphone on a lead but with an input at the end for headphones). I can plug in a splitter and headphones and then play and listen to the music on headphones while simultaneously recording it.
Obviously the microphone is not in the ideal position to blow but so long as you have it on a lead you can place it wherever you want (hold it onto the touch, between your lips etc).
By the way the ipod touch can take a lot of peripherals - its just that there are not so many on the market. I have started to make my own these days. I made a guitarbud cable and have recently wired up a decent microphone that works through the headphone input of my ipod touch and I plan to do the same with the dock connector once I can source the correct plug (taking apart a usb cable turns out to be not the ideal solution).
@ Sigmund : I ended up buying something like that (I really didn't wanted to get the apple earbuds), it even has a little clip so its easier to position, but it would've been so much more fun and simple to only use the thumbtack mic with the integrated speaker.
At least the thumbtack mic was cheap, and I learned that Apple just won't support anything standard... I mean, not supporting the microphone standard plug, used by every mics since the beginning recording, including professional microphones,.. I cannot begin to describe how stupidly idiotic it is from Apple not to support this without screaming. None of my mics at home would work on that piece of shit, and I do own quite a few professionnal grade mics, and adapters and converters... none would work because they wanted it to be that way.
... remember that when apple launched the iphone, NOT A SINGLE PAIR OF HEADPHONES WOULD WORK ON THE STUPID THING just because those idiots carved a smaller hole than the standard and they wanted to force people into buying their headphones.
sorry for getting carried away...
Johnnyg0, I initially had similar problems to you. The inbuilt speaker in the ipod touch is simply not good enough to use for music but in order to use a lot of music apps you need both a microphone input and an output and the current setup limits your options. It doesnt eliminate them, however. If you use a 4 ring TRRS plug and wire it correctly you can get mono-input and stereo output from headphone socket of the ipod touch (and probably the iphone too.
I make these connectors myself - 10 minutes of soldering using old cables and connectors will get you one. All my microphones work on the ipod touch now - although these are all mono. There is the possibility of a stereo microphone input through the dock connector (this is how Blue Mikey get their stereo microphone to work).
I intend to make such a connector when I can find a source of ipod dock connectors that have long pins available for soldering - the usb cable connectors seem to have the 30 pins sheared off and so are too tiny for my basic soldering skills.
@sigmund
Still don't you wish you wouldn't have to do soldering just to have a standard mic to work?
The internal speaker is good enough when you just want to play around. Its far from perfect, but its still fun sometimes to play unconnected (same goes for my SX-150 or my Thingamagoops). Of course anything serious will be made connected, but there are those (many) times where I enjoy that cheap speaker (bathroom? :)
Johnnyg0, the headphone socket has enough power to drive some quite large speakers without the need for external power. I have a couple of old computer speakers (the cheap sort that you normally run off a transformer that is plugged into the mains). I was surprised to find that connecting up the ipod touch allowed me to hear the speakers - perhaps not at full volume but certainly loud enough to listen normally to music.
If you want to play the ipod touch perhaps a small pair of speakers (or a single one) connected to the headphone socket might be something to think of.
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