Wouldn't it be great to just whip your phone out, plug it into the back of the club's mixer, and record your DJ sets? Turns out that there are a few software and hardware solutions out there that can help you do just that...
Picture this: It’s your big break, and you’re about to step up into the DJ booth with your dream set, ready to rock the place. Then you realise that the venue’s promised set recording facilities haven’t materialised!
Sadly it looks the stunning two-hour beatmatched, harmonically tuned masterpiece that you’ve been preparing for weeks and planning to record is only going to live on in the minds of your audience…
“Hang on, I’ll just use the record function on my DJ software!” you might think. Well, I for one don’t trust my laptop to record and work flawlessly when DJing. And there are other situations where this might not cut it, too: maybe you’re DJing a mix of digital and analogue, or you have live percussion, or you want to capture crowd noise, or MCing…
Luckily, it turns out that your iPhone can rescue you… but you’ll need to have pre-planned it.
What hardware you’ll need
The iPhone can already record, straight from the built-in microphone. But that’s hardly going to be good enough for recording a DJ set. We want a line output from the mixer directly into our iDevice. For this we’ll need an additional interface of some kind. Be warned though your choice of interface will vary depending on the version of your iDevice! With the arrival of the first iPad in 2010, Apple phased out stereo analog input (via the 30pin connector). This means that you can only achieve a stereo digital input on iPhone 4, iPad or 4th Generation iPod Touch by using a USB audio interface with a built in analog-to-digital converter (ADC).
30-pin connnector devices
These plug in to the bottom of your iPhone, and offer the best stereo quality – but are harder to get going with software that is different to that provided with them or designed to use them.
The best choice would be the Blue Microphones Mikey Digital microphone. The Mikey is great for field recording but also has a stereo line input via a 3.5mm input jack.
The Blue Microphones Mikey Digital device is not only a microphone; it has a line-in too. You could even multitrack record, using the microphone for crowd noise and the line-in for your set.
It can be set up with automatic or manual gain control so you can ensure your mixer output doesn’t clip at louder volumes. Retailing at $99, another benefit of this device is that it is compatible with most recording apps on iOS.
(This is actually the third generation of the Mikey product line, for recent devices; there is an older version for earlier devices including iPod Nano and iPod Classic. A compatibility chart helps you decide on which is more appropriate for your device.)
Alternatively, if you don’t ever think you’re going to want a microphone, you could look at GuitarJack. While this feeds into its own control panel that is built in to some specialist guitar apps, there’s also a “hack” that lets you use it with most third-party apps. (You set everything up in its control panel, quit, open the third-party app and all settings should be retained.)
By the way, another device we found – Line6′s MobileIn – looked good too, but nobody seemed to be able to get to work with any app other than the company’s own guitar modelling software – making it no good for recording DJ sets, unfortunately.
Recording direct with an adaptor lead
The second method is to buy an adaptor lead that attenuates the stereo line-in signal from your DJ mixer and feeds it through the 1/8″ headphone/microphone adaptor on the top of your iPhone or iPod Touch.
This lead works with a whole load of other smartphones too…
While you may not get the same quality (we haven’t tried it, but we have found the lead that does it; KV Connection sells it), it may be plenty good enough.
Update: Using the headphone jack would only give you a mono audio input. The socket has four conductors, left and right stereo output, one ground and one for mono mic input.
A bonus here is that judging by the compatibility chart on KV’s website, this lead works with a whole load of other smartphones too. And of course, as you’re just feeding into the iPhone/iPod Touch’s built-in external microphone input (didn’t you know the headphones output was also a mic input? You do now…), there’s no problem getting it to work with any recording software.
Software for the job
Your next job is deciding what to actually do your recording on.
If you’re underwhelmed by the iPhone’s built-in Voice Memo app, you could half-way house it with one any of the many iPhone sample recording apps, one of our favourite being FiRe 2.
Alternatively, you could go the whole hog with a specialist music app (such as Apple’s own GarageBand). If you had also opted for a Mikey interface, you could then record crowd and DJ set, for mixdown later, as we suggested above.
And that’s it! You’re all set up to capture your sets, potentially with crowd noises and all, to keep forever.
Conclusion
GuitarJack: Pricey, but good.
The aim of this piece was to investigate whether it’s feasible to whip your iPhone out and record your DJ set, straight from the mixer.
Whether you choose to use a simple audio adaptor or go with a proper line-in solution, it turns out that it is; however, once you’ve invested in one of these solutions (you’re looking at anything from US$30 for the lead up to closer to US$170 for GuitarJack
Then at least if your phone rings while you are DJing, you can at least try and take the call…
Do you record your mixes with your mobile device? Have you got a preferred recording app or hardware solution? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
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Tags: ios, ios dj tips, recording on an iphone, set recording
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How would you record both Mic and Line in?
If I wanted to do a multitrack recording of both and then manually add the people’s screaming/shouting but only in certain parts.
Apparently Audacity can’t do multitrack recording…
Thanks
[ link ]It’s not possible to record both line in and mic on iOS, it’s one or the other I’m afraid. I think it’s probably a limitation in how CoreAudio works, in a similar way to the single stereo output situation.
[ link ]I guess you could do dual mono in and split the channels to separate tracks?
[ link ]Record your set inside the software, if you can, and also make an ambient recording with your phone. Audacity wont support mutli-channel recording, however it does offer multi channel playback and mixing, so you can lay both recordings down next to each other and crossfade between the 2 at your chosen points. Get post-production cray cray!
[ link ]To record the Mix and the audience, I still use an old minidisc connected to a Mackie Mixer. Works great and quality is better.
[ link ]As always, if you got VDJ it’s all in the software. No need for external recorder, key software etc.
[ link ]If you’ve got one of these adapters plugged into your 30 pin interface, you better have a good charge! This is the biggest problem I see with this particular recording strategy…
[ link ]I recently picked up a iPad and a Alesis IO Dock to record with… Its great for situations like this… However I’m more of a Producer/DJ and like more elaborate multi-track style mixes & realized while it was possible to do it’s not the ideal setup… Too many glitches and issues… Maybe because I had the 1st gen iPad.
[ link ]I have run into this issue time and time again ever since I decided to become a DJ. Spending hours which I will unfortunately never get back, beatmatching and mixing to make the perfect mix but I can’t save it. I have tried using my laptop but my processor is too slow. It always ends up freezing my laptop at terrible times. This seems like a great solution since most DJs are armed with a mobile smartphone, but what about us Android users? I have a 3D Evo 4G and I would like to be able record my mixes on that. Do any of you guys have any suggestions?
[ link ]I’ve been tasked with laying some scratch choruses on a few tracks and didn’t want to record internally on traktor since I want to give the engineer wav files of just scratching. I could just turn down the left deck and record the scratching deck in traktor, but I want the scratching to line up with the exact timing of the original track and starting one deck while hitting record will always be a tiny bit off.
Okay how about recording internally to another piece of software like garageband or audition? Well I’m running an early 08 mbp with 6gb of ram, but as the article states above, I don’t trust my computer to record and flawlessly run the latest version of traktor dvs so what to do what to do?
Oh yeah, we have a zoom h4n at work that has “multi track recording” mode. Brought it home, but could not get it to load up the original track, did some Google fu but never could find a satisfactory solution and I didn’t feel like experimenting different set ups and modes with the hideous ui on the h4n. So that’s not going to work and my sights are set on a tascam dp-004 for $110 at b&h photo and get guitar center to price match it. Still wasn’t pleased I would have to drop a note to layer these scratches.
Still seeking solutions, I thought about my wife’s old iPhone 3GS that we use as a roku remote and music emergency kit in case traktor crashes on me. I read up on this article, checked out the mikey. The one that works for the 3GS is $20 at amazon. Things are looking good! Next was to decide on the fourtrack app or garageband. I’m glad I did some digging, because the fatal flaw in garageband for recording DJ mixes is that the recording limit is 320 measures, so fourtrack it is (record til your hd is full)! Should get the mikey in tomorrow. I’ve already downloaded the fourtrack app for $5 and checked it out. Fairly straightforward and user friendly. Hopefully importing and exporting will go well. Bottom line is I think I found a solution for $25 and an old repurposed iPhone. Hoping this works out!
In regards to recording the mic and line in at the same time, I believe with the mikey, since it’s using the dock instead of the headphone out, the internal iPhone mic will still receive signal. I’m not sure if the line in and internal mic can be sent to individual tracks in fourtrack.
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