Is it best to have a UST pickup and plug right in to your computer, iPad or phone or are some of the USB mics OK for recording. I see a Blue ball snow ball looking USB mic for reasonable price and it seems to get good reviews.
Comments?
I asked a similar question not too long ago for the purpose of recording myself for practice and based on the feedback I received, I bought a Zoom H2N digital recorder. I got the unit and accessory pack (used but I certainly couldn't tell it was used) for $120 off eBay. Couldn't be happier. Very easy to use, very portable. And the results are surprisingly good, er ah, I should say accurate (but I'm sure it would sound damn fine if it was recording somebody who was good! ;-).
The first part with the Iriguchi tenor was recorded through the pickup into a Jam interface to the iPhone. The banjo uke part at the end was recorded with a mic - might have been the iPhone built in mic or I may have used the Blue Mikey.
I use a Blue Mikey with my iPad, which is very portable, needs no batteries (has a charging port for the iPad) and works very well. It also has a stereo in jack which I use with two Azden wireless mic systems and mini mixer when I need to get wide stereo sound. (This is a quick reply, I'll try and shoot my actual setup soon, I'm totally occupied learning/rehearsing songs for the U-Space Expo Saturday playing with the Westside Ukulele Ensemble.)
I use one of these for recording piano. I'm too new to uke to have recorded myself, but for piano I'm quite impressed (given the very low cost of this portable recorder - typically $89 on sale at local stores). Piano is notoriously difficult to record well, but this little recorder does a decent job if you set your levels appropriately, so as not to overload the mics. I imagine it would be great for uke, based on my piano experience with it. These portable recorders come more feature laden and more expensive, but unless you're a pro you probably don't need that extra. I pop the memory card out of the recorder, plug that into my computer, and use Audacity for sound editing (like when I record a recital, and want to parse out individual performances).
If you want to check out the results of my ipad apogee setup check out my youtube channel from my sig. Note the lack of hiss anywhere. Note no sound editing was done on. My videos.
Is it best to have a UST pickup and plug right in to your computer, iPad or phone or are some of the USB mics OK for recording. I see a Blue ball snow ball looking USB mic for reasonable price and it seems to get good reviews.
Comments?
for my computer (which used to be a mac mini and now a dell lap top meh)
I use just for recording electric or acoustic-electric instruments a thing called guitar link
allows you to plug direct into the usb pretty handy.
I have a Yeti USB microphone (from Blue Microphones that I like quite a bit. You can use the included stand or mount it to a regular microphone stand. I find it works excellent for my needs. This can be used on the iPad as well, but requires a workaround that isn't exactly convenient so I keep it with the computer.
I also use the Apogee Jam (first gen) for plugging in instruments. It works really well on iPad or computer and the gain control on the unit itself is very handy. Never had any issues with this, and always get fantastic results.
I find the apogee products to be the easiest, you literally plug and play. Nice clean sound and makes the sound of videos from the ipad camera nice and crisp. I use the mic for vocals, or the jam for direct input from a pickup via a guitar cable. Only drawback is you can't use both are the same time.
And thanks for Asking Sukie, I'm doing ok I guess, surgery is in 3 weeks, trying to stay health and upbeat I the meantime though it's not easy...l trying to play music every day to keep my spirits up.
I find the apogee products to be the easiest, you literally plug and play. Nice clean sound and makes the sound of videos from the ipad camera nice and crisp. I use the mic for vocals, or the jam for direct input from a pickup via a guitar cable. Only drawback is you can't use both are the same time.
+1 on the Jam interface but you're right you can't also record a vocal at the same time. For that, you'd need an interface with at least two channels. The simplest there is probably Focusrite iTrack Solo. You don't need the Jam since the iTrack has cable input but you would need a standard XLR mic instead of the USB versions.
When recording onto my Ipad I use a Presonus Audiobox usb interface which I connect too the ipad through a powered USB port and a lightning to usb converter. This allows me to use any microphone and to plug in my uke. This set up works when recording video but each input is recorded as left or right channels in the recording.
I use Music Studio record in software for Ipad when recording audio only and am very happy with the results. The software has a option to record so that the left are right channels are converted to two mono tracks making the presonus function like a two channel mixer.
Maybe I'm not getting a couple of these answers, and I think Hood and iDavid may be saying what I'm thinking.
The iPad Mini (2014 model) seems to have a great mic (like Hoodster says), but needs amplification. Wouldn't the simplest solution just be to play the ukulele through any amplifier and record the room-filling sound with the iPad built-in dual-microphones?
I don't know, I'm asking here. If I'm going to buy extra gear (e.g apogee, tascam, etc.) and still use cables and such, then mix it through Garageband, it just seems like the above would be cheaper and easier.
