XtremeMac MicroMemo Microphone Plugin for iPod Video Way back in
November last year I got excited about the prospect of the increased
recording quality allowed by the software in the (then) new 5G Video
iPods. With three different microphone plugins fairly quickly
announced, but more than half a year later, Belkin's page for the
TuneTalk Stereo has been up for months, but still displays the
disclaimer "Coming soon. Please check back for updates on
availability", while Griffin Technology haven't even got an official
page yet for their upcoming iTalkPro. Thankfully, the first microphone
plugin to hit the market, the XtremeMac MicroMemo has arrived!
At first glance this is actually a pretty impressive little device.
The MicroMemo plugs straight into the iPod Video (5G) with no fuss,
and instantly the record menu pops up. There are two quality settings
(16-bit audio at 22 kHz and 44 kHz) which can easily be toggled
between and recording starts at the press of a button. Unlike past
iPod mics, the MicroMemo has a microphone on a flexible lead, so it
can be positioned easily for recording either one person or two in an
interview setting (although, it should be noted, the recordings are
not in stereo). The MicroMemo also has a switch to allow you to record
line-in from any mini-jack (the bundled microphone can be unplugged,
unlike the design of the iTalkPro or the TuneTalk). There is also an
embedded speaker that's by no means loud, but is adequate to check
that your recordings are working properly (this can be toggled on or
off by holding how the single button on the front of the device). Even
though it records in uncompressed WAV, with a 30Gb iPod as the lowest
usable size, you can record more than the average interview (and far
longer in low quality). The only major drawback is that the while
recording the iPod's harddrive continuously spins, so the battery life
is only a few hours for continuous recording (and, annoyingly, you
can't charge while using the MicroMemo). That said, in usability
terms, it's pretty smoothly designed and straight-forward to use.
In order to check the quality of the recordings, I conducted four
tests of the MicroMemo with the microphone very close to my face
(about 10 -15cm away) and also with the mic about 50cm away (which is
the more likely distance if it was on a desk during an interview or
similar circumstances). I recorded for roughly thirty seconds at both
distances on the High Quality setting and the Low Quality. You can
judge with your own ears, as I've posted these four tests, completely
unedited (in their original recorded WAV formats) here:
[1] MicroMemo Audio Quality Test - Low Quality - Close to Face (1.5Mb)
[2] MicroMemo Audio Quality Test - Low Quality - Mic 50cm from Face
(1.4 MB)
[3] MicroMemo Audio Quality Test - High Quality - Mic Close to Face
(6.1 MB)
[4] MicroMemo Audio Quality Test - High Quality - Mic 50cm from Face
(5.9 MB)
While there was a notable difference in the volume moving the
MicroMemo away even to 50cm, a quick tweak with Audacity or any other
audio editor to increase the volume finds pretty decent sound quality.
The low quality is a lot smaller in size, but more than adequate for
playback and for most podcasting recording (unless working to
professional production values). For more detailed tests of the
MicroMemo, check out reviews at both iLoungeand The iPod Observer.
In a nutshell, I wanted to know if the MicroMemo would be a useful
device for student podcasts, recording interviews and other audio
production citizen media rather than professional media in nature. I
think the MicroMemo is more than up the the task and I hope with all
the iPod projects going on in universities across the world, this
little plugin will make student podcasts (not just lecture recordings
or coursecasts!) a more sizable part of university curricula.
My only major gripe is that the MicroMemo can't record directly to a
compressed format like mp3 - that functionality would really make this
device ideal!
[Cross-posted from my eLearning blog.]
[Tags: xtrememac | micromemo | ipod | 5g | microphone | plugin |
evaulation]
3 Comments:
At 10/09/2006 06:13:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...
It has been said that this is an attempt to discourage
copyright circumvention (on the principle that the old mic
quality on an iPod was Really Low for this reason) by making it
Possible but Difficult. It's also been said, and this is more
likely, that the people programming the iPod chipset would have
had to do much more Actual Work to do on-iPod encoding, which
wouldn't be trivial. Straight-through to WAV needs far less
work, because it presumably won't have to do any of the work in
figuring out which of the sounds can be dropped in lossy
compression. If it's less actual work, and it will even be a
better feature (leading to sales to professional musicians and
picky audiophiles), and they can save money by using a less
fancy chipset, it seems obvious to drop the 'record to
mp3/aac/compressed' idea.
iPod owners *de facto* have access to a computer. Stereo
recording is a nice extra that gobbles battery and drive as it
is. Compression would ease up on the drive space while sucking
harder at the juice and still hammering the hard drive from the
point of view of constant access, I should think.
It's a relatively sensible decision to say, 'do the
post-processing on your computer, where you have the fine
control anyway'.
At 10/29/2006 02:44:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...
So one question is, can you adjust the volume of the recording
while recording? Say you're in a lecture theatre and you want
to record the droning voice of an 90 year old professor. Is it
possible to amp up the volume sufficiently, and then drop it
when you want to make a comment. Just curious and thanks for
any help
At 10/29/2006 03:11:00 PM, Blogger Tama said...
It's not possible to change the volume during the recording,
but you can edit the sound file afterwards very easily (with
Audacity or a similar audio editor) and increase/decrease
specific parts of your recording as needs be.
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