iPhone App Directory

Use an old video cable to connect your iPhone to a mic


Thanks to dcp for sending in this photo and for suggesting such a simple and straightforward idea. I'm sure I've got one of these cables around somewhere ...

10 comments:

Joel said...

Yeah, I've been using the same type of cable and it works good. Your photo is showing it wrong though. The guitar / mic input goes into the yellow "video" cable. Cheers!

Anonymous said...

Best to put a direct box inline for input.

Anonymous said...

Cheaper than a $200 Sonoma Wireworks solution.

x said...

I just ordered the "A/V Composite Cable TV Out for Apple iPod" from monoprice to do this. It works great.

dcp said...

No, sorry, on my cable it's right as i labelled it.

I checked it with riotFX and the mic input was in the right place worked, connected like you can see on the photo.

It's possible that the cable's pinout on the 4-pole jack differs from model to model or different brands of the camera though. This cable was taken from the accessories of a sony camera.

naw said...

they do differ model to model mine uses the yellow for input and the red and white for output. just note one thing about this great hack and I do mean great as an under 20 dollar hack vs the 200 "tool".
any how my point is with this I did notice that if if the input to the ipod come in at certain higher high pitched volumes like that of a guitar it can trigger itunes to start up ;)
funny surprise I got when I was suddenly playing along to fennesz. I think the 4 ring pin can trigger the same on off switch that the itouch/iphone mic input headphones trigger to turn on and off itunes.
Any how great hack it is such a great and fun hack I went out and picked up a 20 dollar high quality set of a/v cables to do this with sure beats the 200 dollar options.
good job for figuring this out, its so simple Im not 100 percent sure why I never tried it myself...
Neil
phoniq.net
vagueterrain.net

Joel said...

That makes sense... Sony always likes to do things differently.

Icepulse said...

How's that work for line-level sources... such as another iPhone or a synth?

Sigmund said...

I've made several of these cables (and yes, the inputs can be different for the different brands).
They work OK but it is advisable to put a variable resistor on the input as some instruments can overload the system.

Ikki said...

I've made the cable as the pictures shows however it doesnt work :S it says that there is no microphone plugged in.
Why is this happening?