The Best Way to Record Audio From an iPhone
By Avery Martin
The iPhone provides a free, built-in method for recording audio. You can record complete voice memos or attach a microphone and record demos, recordings and audio suitable for an audio podcast. The Voice Memos app also has some basic built-in audio editing features that enables you to trim silence or noise at the beginning and end of a recording. Recordings provide a CD quality sample rate of 44.1KHz in the MPEG-4 audio format. The maximum audio bit-rate for an audio recording on the iPhone is 64Kbps with a mono channel. While the iPhone isn't capable of professional audio recording, it provides suitable audio quality for spoken tracks.
Recording
Step 1
Tap the "Voice Memos" app icon to launch the app.
Step 2
Press the "Record" button on the left of the screen. While recording, the Record button turns into a Pause button.
Step 3
Press "Pause" if you want to pause the recording. Tap the "Stop" button to stop recording. If you pause a recording and then leave the app, it will end the recording session and save it to the phone.
Editing and Sharing
Step 1
Launch the Voice Memos app and tap the "Speaker" icon. Locate your recording in the list and tap the name to start playback.
Step 2
Tap on the left arrow button to the right of your recording.
Step 3
Tap "Trim Memo" to edit the length of the recording. Drag either edge of the recording to change the start and end time of the recording. You can't remove segments from the middle, you can only change the start time and end time. Press the Play button to preview your changes and tap "Trim Voice Memo."
Step 4
Tap the "Share" button and then tap "Email" to send the recording by email. You can then access the audio file from your email account on any Internet-connected computer.
References
Tips
- For best results, attach a microphone to the headphone jack.
- Watch the VU meter while you are recording. If the VU meter enters the red zone, move the microphone or iPhone further away from you. Exceeding the VU meter can cause clipping and distortion of your audio. Aim to keep your recording between -10 to -5 on the VU meter.
Writer Bio
Avery Martin holds a Bachelor of Music in opera performance and a Bachelor of Arts in East Asian studies. As a professional writer, she has written for Education.com, Samsung and IBM. Martin contributed English translations for a collection of Japanese poems by Misuzu Kaneko. She has worked as an educator in Japan, and she runs a private voice studio out of her home. She writes about education, music and travel.