Less than half the size of my iPod Touch, the Mikey 2G is an external coincident stereo microphone for most iPods. Mikey 2G is designed for musicians, cub reporters, students and anyone who needs to capture high quality audio on the spot with their iPod.
The product ships with a plush lined black cloth pouch, and a bilingual French/English printed user manual almost small enough to fit in the bag as well. Mikey 2G comes with a free companion download from the iTunes Music store, Blue FiRe, a simplified version of Audiofile Engineering’s FiRe field recording application. Blue FiRe includes an audio quick start file built in, which walks you through the major features and functions while you play the file.
Using Mikey 2G is darn easy. Plug it in to the Dock connector, launch the app, and start recording though I found it best to shut down my ’Touch, plug in Mikey, start things back up, and launch Blue FiRe. Blue claims “Compact Disc quality recording directly to your iPod” and, you know what? They’re right!
After receiving the second generation Mikey, I trotted over to the lovely Studio Trilogy, where co–owner Justin Lieberman and assistant Alex Knickerbocker had X–Y stereo pairs of very costly Neumann KM 84 and Schoeps CMC 6 small condensers already set up in their big room. I brought along my pair of MCA SP1s, fave condenser of audio bottom feeders everywhere.
We patched all six mics into their API 1608 desk, while I set up my 3G iPod Touch with Mikey 2G on an improvised mic stand. We enlisted Alex to play some wide dynamic material, David Lanz’s Vesuvius, which we recorded flat to Pro Tools HD while I recorded Mikey using Blue FiRe at highest quality, 44.1/16. After recording, we easily FTP’d the Mikey 2G files over WiFi to the Mac, using Blue FiRe’s built in server, and sync’d everything up in Pro Tools.
Listening back, we were frankly amazed at the timbre, clarity and directivity of the Mikey 2G. I had brought my SP1s since the pair is very close in cost to Mikey. After some critical listening, we agreed that, believe it or not, the Mikey sound was closest to the Neumann’s. The frequency response was very good and the amount of direct versus reflected pickup was just right.
Since this rant is about Mikey 2G, you may be wondering what's with Mikey the 1st? The first generation Mikey didn’t have a line input, direct monitoring or passthrough USB. The gain switch was hard to access, and the product didn’t include any container to store it in. Some user complained about the gain settings as well. Oh yeah, the mic could only swivel 180º, sometimes making placement difficult.
Article comments
1 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
Were you guys actually "playing" the reference material or was it playing through monitors? Because I think there would be a huge difference in sound quality if the Mikey 2.0 had to handle real dynamics as opposed to those coming from a CD. And that's not a knock on the Mikey 2.0 but the D/A Converter in the iPhone...
2 - Oliver Masciarotte
Hey Brian,
Good question and, agreed. Loudspeaker playback ain’t the same as live… Turns out, we were kickin' it old school: a real piano in a real room, with Alex hammering away. We’re all audio engineers so we wanted to test Mikey’s real world capabilities. The mic array was about 5 feet from the closest edge of the piano, in a spot that Justin determined was a good location for that instrument in that room.
If you head over to Studio Trilogy, you’ll see a pic of the piano in the room during the slide show. We were recording in Studio B, actually one of three control rooms that tee off of the studio. The control room faces the back of the piano bench, to the far left of the orange guitar in the photo.
I’m taking a few days off for the holidays but I’ll post all the audio files on my site when I’m back in the office. So, check my blog mid-month and I'll have those up for you… Happy holidays!
3 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
Hello Oliver,
Thanks for the reply. I ask only because I'm trying to find a decent & inexpensive way to record a project I'm working on. So, if an "iPhone mic" is that good then purchasing one of their other mics should do the trick. I hear their "Snowball" is pretty good as well. Anyways, can you upoload those tracks in FLAC?
Thanks again... Merry Festivus:)
4 - Alex Holmes
A meaningless article until you post the audio..
5 - Oliver Masciarotte
Hey Brian,
The audio files are all ZIP'd up and available on my blog for your listening pleasure.
Happy 2011!