If you start out with the Sing! App on your phone or tablet, you probably use a simple headset like the one that came with the device. And that is fine! The Apple EarBuds for example are pretty good for what they cost. But if you are looking for better options you will find that the professional microphones used on stage or in studios are meant to be plugged into a professional mixer, not a phone or tablet. But with a little device, you can use any professional mic in the Sing! app. There are two problems to overcome:
Audio cable jacks
Professional microphones use the XLR connector standard with three pins. Today’s phones and tablets use a 3.5-mm 4-conductor audio jack for analog audio input (microphone) and output (headphones). It is basically a tweaked headphone socket with an additional connection for the microphone to save the room for a dedicated microphone input socket. As a result, you can plug any headphone with a 3.5-mm jack into your phone, but not any microphone. The microphone cable needs to be specifically made to work with these 4-conductor phone sockets. So even microphones with a 3.5-mm phone connector, which might work for your computer or digital camera, won’t work with your phone or tablet without an adaptor—even though the jack fits in the socket. And XLR microphones aren’t meant to be plugged into phone ports at all.
- Left: XLR jack
- Middle: standard phone connector jack with 3 conductors for left, right, ground (“TRS”—Tip, Ring, Sleeve)
- Right: Typical smartphone connector jack with 4 conductors for left, right, ground and microphone/control signals (“TRRS”—Tip, Ring, Ring, Sleeve)
Phantom Power
Professional microphones, especially the ones used in studios, are often condenser microphones. They require a permanent power source to work. If you just plug a condenser mic in a regular mic input, you won’t hear anything at all. To make a condenser mic work with Smule, you not only need an XLR to phone connector adaptor, you also need to provide the necessary phantom power. But luckily there are several devices available to achieve this and they aren’t even that expensive.
A common choice is the iRig PRE, which I use myself. You can plug in any XLR microphone including condenser mics. The phantom power is provided by a battery which lasts for about 10 hours (or 30 for dynamic microphones). There is a gain control knob on the side of the iRigPRE. You need to play around with it a little bit to find the perfect setting, so the mic input signal in Smule is neither too high nor too low. There is an additional headphone socket on the device, so you can still hear the audio signal from your phone or tablet. However, the sound quality is not as good as when you plug the headphones directly into your phone or tablet and the buttons of the Apple EarBuds also stop working.
The iRigPRE output is an analog audio signal, so you can be sure it works with any app that supports the regular mic input port (so basically all of them). There is also the much more expensive iRig Pro I/O, which has a digital output and connects to your device through a lightning or USB cable. This should provide a better audio quality with less noise, but I haven’t tested it myself and can’t say if it is compatible with the Sing! app.
Similar to the iRigPRE, both in price and functionality is the TASCAM iXZ. The advantage of it is that the input socket does not only support XLR jacks, but also 6.35-mm jacks for guitar/line input. As with the iRigPRE you can be sure this works with Smule and any iOS device with a 3.5-mm headphone socket.
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