I do a lot of recording through my iPad. It's a great tool for an on the go recording set up. Garageband is a decent program too.
I highly recommend the
Apogee MiC. It's got an incredible sound and I use it for nearly all of my videos. It connects through the lightening port or you can hook it up to your computer.
I second the apogee MiC for great sound. The built in preamp and gain control really helps you dial in the perfect sound and it has connectors for any kind of iDevice you may have. It is mono however... FYI. i think Booli would third this microphone as well.
Ha Ha!
YES.
The Apogee MIC is the
simplest solution, while ALSO the best SOUNDING, and MOST versatile, that I've tried in the past 20+ yrs or so of trying to record on a computer in a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) environment.
Back in Nov'14, as per a very kind and helpful recommendation from fellow UU brother Librainian, I took advantage of the Apogee Black Friday sale and bought both an Apogee MIC, and an Apogee JAM at a great discount.
They have replaced RACKS full of gear, and a 1/4 mile of cables that I had accumulated over the past 20+ yrs. My pro condenser mics have not been taken out once since then. Also for doing stereo mic setups (aka X/Y) there are several free software plugins that you can use to take your mono track and 'simulate' pretty accurately a stereo X/Y mic sound, which for a close-mic'd instrument is really just to give a bit of depth via Haas comb filtering and impulse response curves to simulate how the human ear perceives sound - ALL via a single cable - MUCH better for me than the 30 mins to setup all the gear otherwise before owning the Apogee...
My setup now takes like 3 mins:
1) take items out of carry case
2) clip mic holder to desk
3) attach Apogee MIC or Apogee JAM to holder
4) plug in cable
5) open software, check levels
6) hit record
Also, adding to what was said by our fellow UU member thejumpingflea:
IMHO, Garageband is both very
powerful while
simple to use.
You can start a project on iOS, and then later, via iTunes, bring that project over to your Mac, and then open it on Garageband on the Mac and continue to work on it and add polish, but sadly, I do not think that you can go from Mac OSX Garageband back to iOS Garageband after that...
Also, I can confirm that the Apogee products work with the older 30-pin iOS connector as well as the Lightning connector (new since the iPhone 4), and with the USB cable, I can confirm that both products work with Ardour, Jokosher, oCenaudio, and Audacity on Xubuntu Linux,
and all programs that I've tried on Mac OSX and iOS (way to many to list), but I don't know first-hand if they work in Windows, since I'll never touch Windows again, but I read that some folks have tried them on Windows.
This wide compatibility is due to the hardware being USB-Audio 'Class-Compliant' which means it needs no drivers, and should work on basically any hardware/operating-system without issues.
I love the sound quality and ease of use of both the Apogee MIC and JAM. You cannot go wrong with an Apogee product. They are considered high-quality and high-end devices by many pros.
Every time I use mine, I am thankful :bowdown: to Librainian for sharing the info about the Black Friday sale.
I've noticed that on their site, Apogee sometimes has refurb models for sale at a discount, and the units I have were in fact refurbs, and they both have worked flawlessly for me.
Sweetwater Sound typically has a demo or 'open box' model for sale, with free shipping, and I've also had good luck buying gear from B & H Photo in NYC, which also has free shipping for MANY items and no tax if you are outside of NY.
TLDR; get an Apogee product!
). These are generally $100 or less. And from there, the sky is the limit with mics and interfaces.
