iRiver Audio Review Notes
Having subjected myself to the iRiver podcast review / supermarket sound-seeing tour again, and having received some feedback, I should post some notes on the iRiver and Griffin Lapel Mic recording itself:
- I managed to take a better picture today of the iRiver and mic that doesn’t look like there’s a nasty fingerprint on the screen (this was actually corrected glare from the flash) and shows the pretty blue backlight.
- Apologies for the heavy breathing. It would appear the Griffin Lapel Mic is very sensitive and when swivelled into a vertical position for stealth purposes picked up the down-draught from my nostrils, making me sound like an asthmatic toad. Lovely.
- Likewise, you definitely need some sort of furry windshield for the mic because there was little more than a breeze, yet it sounded at times like I was in a hurricane.
- Dreadful sound quality on the music – I thought I had the levels right at first, but my car stereo automatically raises the volume when you go above a certain speed. You don’t notice this yourself because that’s the point. At 22 kilohertz you have a narrower range of frequencies than real life – hence the crackling – not the iRiver or mic’s fault
- I chose the supermarket because I thought it would be noisy enough that I didn’t feel self-conscious. I was wrong.
April 21st, 2005 at 3:37 am
Steve, I have downloaded twice the .mp3 file and enjoyed it quite a lot. Not that I think the review’s supposed to be funny, but it was actually quite funny that you were experiencing hurricane while smoking at the same time.
I don’t know exactly what it is, but your review has something Top Gear lacks in. Keep up the good work, man.
April 21st, 2005 at 3:01 pm
I have the same setup for mobile Podcasting–we do need to devise a windscreen for this microphone–it does sound like a hurricane at times. Anyone have any ideas?
April 21st, 2005 at 10:16 pm
This doesn’t help existing mic owners but I wrote to my contact at Griffin, Jason, and he thought a windscreen was a great idea. He’ll pass on the details to the product manager who – hopefully – will agree.
Now what we need is to devise something to fit over one of these. Trouble is, its cylindrical shape is not like most lapel mics:
Dimensions
Width: 38mm Diameter: 12mm
It would need to cover both sides. The lead extends down from the centre-bottom and is 5mm wide, while the clip holder is fixed to the centre-back and is 8mm wide with a 3mm gap between the holder and the clip itself.
Another requirement of mine would be to make the foam a more neutral colour so it blends in a little better / doesn’t show dirt. 😀
Foam engineers, get foaming!
July 1st, 2005 at 12:40 am
Hi Steve, enjoyed your singing, you have a good voice. I am thinking of getting the Griffin mic for my Iriver 795 to record bird calls and lectures. Couple of questions to help me decide. Did you use “line-in/ext mic” for your recording? Do you think the mic is sensitive enough to record sounds or voices about 30 meters away? Thanks.
July 1st, 2005 at 6:35 pm
I used the Ext. Mic setting by holding on the joystick, going into Control and choosing Ext. Mic from the Line-In/Ext Mic option.
I really didn’t know whether the mic was sensitive enough to record birds singing at that distance, so I hung it out of a window early this morning. I made recordings at two different quality settings, and the higher quality seemed to pick out much more, although there was some sort of air-conditioner humming in the lower quality version, so it’s not exactly a scientific test. The birds would have been at least 20 feet away and most of them much further than that. You can listen for yourself…
At 64 kbits/sec:
http://reinventedsoftware.com/blog/wp-content/audio/birdsong64.mp3
At 128 kbits/sec:
http://reinventedsoftware.com/blog/wp-content/audio/birdsong128.mp3
Of course, the only other problem would be wind noise, since the mic doesn’t have a windshield, but some sort of furry cover would fix that.
September 26th, 2005 at 8:25 pm
you need to look on the net for binaurial and the concert recording sites that use the sony minidisc recorder.
I built my own set of binaurials that make the griffin mic sound like utter crud, I get extremely good stereo seperation and by adding a battery box I can record in extreme dynamic range situations like the 110db sond pressure level as found center-stage at a rock concert.
hiding the binaurials in a set of “croakies” on my glasses makes it 100% stealth, add’s a windsock and makes it completely impossible to record breath noise.
it took me about 3 days to build (you can buy them for around $125.00 pre-built) and about $7.00 in parts.
September 30th, 2005 at 8:45 am
I just bought the iFP-899 and am quite happy with it — or would be, if only there wasn’t this little background sound that sounds like a cricket.
It’s there in all recording modes and at any encoding rate, it seems to be faster with higher bitrates (?).
Come to think of it, it wasn’t there before I upgraded to 1.28 UMS firmware. Oh my—that appears to be the price I’m paying for using UMS firmware…. but I really need to be able to work without this Music Manager.
Steve, what firmware are you using?
Those wind noises pale in comparison to a “cricket” chirping away all the time. Almost like a squeaking a cassette tape…
If you can point me to instructions on how to do it, maybe I can upload a sample. I am wondering whether my unit is just bad, or wether this is a 1.28 “feature”? Either way, it won’t really do for me.
September 30th, 2005 at 11:59 am
Arnd, I let someone borrow my iRiver, I’ll check on the firmware version when I get it back tomorrow but I think I updated it to 1.29, which seems to be the latest available: http://www.iriver.com/html/support/download/sudw_list.asp?searchProductIdx=34&searchCategoryIdx=1&searchString=&page=1&idx=&tmpSearchProductIdx=34&tmpSearchCategoryIdx=1&tmpSearchString=
October 1st, 2005 at 5:51 pm
Steve and all, I decided to bite the bullet and DOWNGRADED to 1.25 US (using iMM) and VOW what a difference! Crystal clear audio recording and excellent voice recording even with the inbuilt Mic. Elsewhere, they say that 1.25 has a number of advantages over later versions, so I’ll stick with it. Finally a decent way to rip my old music cassette tapes…
So, the moral of the story is: the iFP-8XX are great, especially for recording, but don’t even think of installing the UMS firmware (where the iFP is recognized by Windows as a USB disk drive)—this ruines recording capabilities completely. And, to answer my own question: The horrendous noises and low bitrates for recording ARE a 1.28 ‘feature’ indeed—stay clear!!!
I had one major problem—to get my folders in the right order (you can reorder files but not folders in iMM). I copied the entire folder structure (empty) onto the iriver first, basically all the folders for all the music I care to listen to. The reason is: Anything you add later gets appended at the end. I run a CMD script that creates an empty tree from my music library (mostly in iTunes). I drag the tree unto the iriver after a format, then I fill in the music I actually want to keep around. I leave about 255MB of the 1G free for recordings.
October 11th, 2005 at 8:49 pm
My basic question here for the Griffin Lapel Mic is, is this hands down the mic you are most happy with? Is there another mic you would prefer for this purpose? I’m shopping for a mic and didn’t really know the specs for the Griffin Lapel.
October 11th, 2005 at 9:04 pm
I can’t really say that I am *that* happy with it.
On the plus side it looks cool, is stereo (great for soundseeing tours) and the sound seems good to me (obviously sounds better with better encoding than the recording I did). But on the downside it’s hardly inconspicuous and the lack of windshield makes it almost useless if you want to use it while outside and there is the more than the slightest breeze.
I’m hardly qualified to recommend an alternative, so the best thing would be to recommend a site. The Podcast Rigs forum has lots of experienced podcasters who’d be happy to weigh in on a subject like this. Check it out here: http://podcastrigs.net/forum/
December 21st, 2005 at 1:34 am
Has anyone figured out how to properly wear the Griffin Lapel Mic? It seems like the L/R are reversed, as you either have to loop the cord from above (not hanging) or have the clip facing outward and the mic buried in your chest.
May 8th, 2006 at 6:02 am
would’ve liked to hear these… damn
May 11th, 2006 at 4:20 am
Sorry, I didn’t realise I had removed the files. They’re back now.