Week 24, Simple to Center

YouTube link for iPhone

I’m sorry folks, but sometimes pop happens… and it happened a bunch on this song.

Simple to Center was written and recorded (except for the drums) in one sitting on Valentine’s Day. All of the tracks – acoustic and electric guitar, bass, vocals, and a little shaker – were recorded with the Blue Mikey. I tried to finish the song off on V-day by recording a drum take with the Mikey, but it was a total fail. The Mikey (version 1) is just not a good tool for recording drums into the iPhone. It can’t handle the high volume and clips well beyond the effect of a little distortion. This is also a problem when attempting to record a live band with the Mikey, which is something it’s supposed to be able to do. This is a known issue by Blue, and the original Mikey was developed for the iPod and not the iPhone, so they never claimed to fully support it.

Blue just came out with a new version of the Mikey, which was developed with full iPhone support. I think my Mikey is a great tool, but before shelling out another $80 on version 2, I wanted confirmation that the clipping issue was addressed and resolved. I emailed Blue’s support to find out, and even copied some of their other departments to give them a heads up about my site since I’ve been pimping their product. Alas, no one got back to me. That’s too bad because I’d love to be writing today with a definitive answer about the drums, and my hunch is that if they didn’t answer then maybe the problem isn’t fixed. That’s really too bad because otherwise the Mikey is a great sounding mic (as you can hear), and it’s even better now using version 1.1 of MultiTrack which allows for use of the Mikey’s dual condensers in stereo.

This cheesy little pop song is for my wife Jenn. I wouldn’t have made it past week 1 without her patience, understanding, and support. I really appreciate it.

1 Comment to Week 24, Simple to Center

pwnified
February 23, 2010

It’s too bad that Blue wont fill us in on the clipping problem, although their press release says something about an acoustic attenuator I still want to try it first.

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