CES was full of surprises this year and one of the pleasant ones was a fabulous little condenser electret microphone from IK Multimedia called the iRig MIC Cast. About the size of postage stamp and the same thickness as your iPhone, this little wonder enables you to do high quality recordings (100 Hz – 15 kHz) anywhere with minimum setup needed.
Simply plug the iRig MIC Cast into the headphone jack of your compatible iOS or Android device. Fire up one of the two included apps for iOS (one app for Android) and you’re ready to record. Its tight, unidirectional pickup pattern isolates your voice and drops out background noise. The microphone has been engineered to have an extremely flat response – not coloring the sound of your audio.
A mini analog switch enables sensitivity to be set for close-up or distant recordings (set it on ‘Lo’ for close-up recording.) On the side of the microphone, you can plug in your headphones to get real-time monitoring of just what is being recorded. (If you’ve never tried this, you’ll be amazed at all the sounds out there that you don’t want recorded.)
An adjustable stand comes with the mic so you can adjust your phone or other device to a comfortable angle for recording. When you’re done, the stand folds pretty flat. You’ll find that this makes a great addition to conference calls and speaker phone applications. The mic works with Skype, Tune Me, Voice Pro and others.
At a MSRP of just $39.99, this is a quality mic with a can’t be beat form factor. So small, there’s no reason not to always have it along.
Doug Bardwell, based in Cleveland, OH, writes about interesting new travel technology topics, across the country and around the world at DougBardwell.com. Feel free to drop him a line at travel.dougbardwell@gmail.com with suggestions for future products to be reviewed. If you've ever used one of the products he's reviewed, please leave your thoughts in the comment box below. To get his stories delivered to your inbox, click the RSS feed or the "Subscribe" button above or follow him on Facebook , Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. To read Doug’s disclosure notice, click here.
Comments