Help! No microphone/recorder for our iPod

<p>Ok, so we got the good news today:</p>

<p>My D needs some kind of voice recorder before she goes off to college to study MT, but it seems there is no for-sure microphone/recorder that will work with her first generation iPod Nano or her brand spankin' new iPod Touch. I just spent 20 nice but unproductive minutes on the phone with a guy at Apple, and he says that there are microphones for 2nd generation iPod Nano devices, but none for first generation iPod Nanos and NONE that work reliably for the very new iPod Nanos or the iPod Touch.</p>

<p>My D's computer is a very new Macbook, so any recording device she uses needs to be able to download (hope that's the right word) into her laptop. Any suggestions?</p>

<p>It would be nice not to spend a gazillion bucks ...</p>

<p>Try looking at professional quality hand held digital voice recorders. Olympus makes a line of them and while the upper models are pricey, the lower models may be reasonable. They can be configured to record in .wav format and then can be downloaded to a computer. Olympus is not the only manufacturer but those are the ones I use in my office.</p>

<p>It's frustrating; I bought my daughter an ITouch thinking she could combine her music needs with a great calendar and organizer that would sync with a calendar on her 'puter only to discover the same dilemma you are having.</p>

<p>NMR - my D has had the Olympus DS 30 for some time now and it has been great for recording her voice lessons and accompaniment for rehearsing. It is about $150.00 I think. You can probably do better online. It is not top of the line by any means but is easy to use. There are some really nice ones out there but they can be really pricey. She would be able to do more professional quality recordings with those. There are a couple of great threads on the Music Major forum about digital recorders. </p>

<p>[url=<a href="http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/product.asp?product=1276%5DDS-30%5B/url"&gt;http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/product.asp?product=1276]DS-30[/url&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p>

<p>My son answers: The Macbook has a built in microphone that works with a program called Garageband that comes standard on it. The bonus with using this is that the files are already recorded onto the computer so that you can burn cd's of old lessons if needed, but the storage is more than adequate on a macbook. Once you open it, go to track, select new Track, then select real instrument. The menu on the right will give you an option for vocals on the bottom. You can even add affects with this menu. I recommend turning off the metronome under the Control menu so that it won't record over your vocals. Any problems can be answered by the help menu at the top. Hope this helps!</p>

<p>So ElonMom, are you saying that kids should just record right on their macbooks using garageband? That sounds like a very reasonably thing to do and my D has a macbook (brand new) so it would mean not buying anything else.</p>

<p>My daughter has an Olympus that has a USB connector so you can plug it straight into the computer. She likes it but uses it for lectures rather than vocals so I can't address that angle.</p>

<p>My son uses Garageband extensively for recording work his band does but has found that an external source for the signal (microphone, guitar box to plug into etc) provides much better results than recording directly on the computer microphone. Also keep in mind that your daughter will have to lug her computer to her voice lessons, make sure there is a place to actually put it that is out of the way but yet in a good position to record everything that is going on. Obviously, a digital voice recorder is much more convenient in this regard.</p>

<p>I wish I had seen this thread a couple of weeks ago. My son is using a Macbook pro for school but we didn't know there was a voice recorder with it. We ordered an Olympus voice recorder like the one mentioned above. None of the digital voice recorders, including the the one we ordered, seems to work with Mac as far as the USB download cable. He figured he would just use it as a hand held.</p>

<p>I also looked into the Ipod voice recorders. It's hard to believe that after so many year in the market that Ipod has not come out with a better voice recorder that works with different models.</p>

<p>The Olympus requires that you install the software that came with it. It should come with, or you can purchase from Olympus , a USB cable that matches the recorder. The sound files can be transfered to the computer, using the Olympus software, as either .dss or .wav files. The .wav files have more universal application but the .dss files play back just fine using the Olympus software.</p>

<p>ajsurfs - have your S do more research into compatibility with the Macbook. I looked into at one point and found that it was compatible but I can't find the best website right now. You can start here - </p>

<p>Amazon.com:</a> Customer Discussions: mac compatibility?</p>

<p>Here is another site that has info on Mac compatibility about half way down the page - </p>

<p>Amazon.com:</a> Customer Reviews: Olympus DS-30 Digital Voice Recorder</p>

<p>My D has the Macbook Pro too - I somehow accidentally threw out the cable that came with it thinking it was an old phone charger so I can't test it with her new Mac. She has always used it as just a handheld. She never needed to download her lessons onto the laptop, but she has been playing around with Garageband. She doesn't want to take her laptop to voice lessons.</p>

<p>The Olympus software disk should have Mac versions on it. If not, they are available from the Olympus website.</p>

<p>I had a 20 minute conversation with someone at Apple on Friday about this issue (how there is no external microphone/system that can be used with a first generation iPod Nano and with the iPod Touch) and the guy said he couldn't do more than apologize. He acknowledged that there was "a short window of time there when people could buy systems/mikes from Belkin, etc. that worked with the second gen iPod Nano," but that people have been calling about this in droves and there is nothing he can recommend. He said if you do buy something that is advertised as being compatible (such as a microphone, etc.) don't spend a lot of money on it, as some of them just don't work, even if they say they will. He said that the technology of the iPod keeps changing and that the microphone/recording systems just have not kept up with it. </p>

<p>I think the idea of recording directly onto the macbook is a fine one. My D will likely be taking her laptop around to most of her classes at NYU, anyway, and recording directly onto it will certainly eliminate one step: having to download whatever she recorded on a smaller, handheld device into the macbook. Macbooks are not that large. Plus, it will save us a hundred dollars or so buying yet <em>another</em> little thingie for her to carry around/keep track of and so forth.</p>

<p>NMR - I did that same research when we were deciding whether to get the free IPod Touch with the MacBook Pro or the discount. The incompatibility was the reason we took the discount. She already has an IPod so she only wanted another if she could record on it. Fortunately she's fine still with her Olympus and it looks from what I've read and Michael has said, it is compatible with the new laptop - fingers crossed anyway.</p>

<p>Thanks for the tech information and links about downloading music to the Mac. He will give it a try this way. He has yet to attend a singing lesson with this recorder so I hope he can figure it out beforehand. It seems that he has been less interested in exploring the capabilities of the Mac than he was with his old HP laptop.</p>

<p>this is a bit late to be joining in, but in case anyone else reads/needs the info - when you need to upgrade the sound - it will be a better microphone to look at first. Call a sound store - Guitar Center - or similar for suggestions on good mics for vocal recordings. They may have a different type of plug than your computer - (Most are 1/8th inch jacks) - you can get a converter jack. My son's been doing sound mixing for recording and live concerts and church services for nearly 5 years - now he's off to college for MT. :) Best of luck to you!!</p>

<p>My daughter will be a vocal major in the fall. We are looking into all the digital recorders to record her studio lessons . My question is about downloading them to her new laptop. Will she need to download and keep all her sessions. This could fill her laptop quickly. Do most have external drives that they download to or will she just keep a few sessions and the record over them?</p>

<p>collegesearch – my daughter uses hers to record lessons and practice sessions. The recorder she got has a huge amount of memory – so she’s never had to download anything onto her computer. She eventually deletes the files and re-records over them.</p>

<p>Not the best quality option, perhaps, but with my ipod touch, I purchased an iphone headset (has the earbuds and microphone). There are several apps in the app store that will record – some are free, some have a pricetag. There’s also some multi-track recording options there. Just started exploring…but figure could be good in a pinch!</p>

<p>If you are looking for an easy to use, reasonable quality (not studio quality, but quite good) recorder, look at the Zoom H2. My D and I have used it a lot the past year, including lesson recording. It has built in mike and looks like an electric shaver. I also use it for digitizing LPS, just plug into your receiver tape deck outputs, turn it on, and drop the needle.</p>

<p>There are microphones available for the IPod Classic. For some reason, as other models of IPods, ITouches, IPhones came out, the microphone technology did not keep pace. My daughter uses an IPod Classic with a microphone, down loads her voice lessons and accompaniments to her MacBook and can then play through external speakers or cut a cd.</p>

<p>I had earlier posted about the Olympus digital recorders. I use one for my office dictation and have found that if operating in Windows, the Olympus software works great but if in the Mac OS, I just can’t get the Mac versions to work.</p>