If you are a video producer who is using a smartphone and looking for a way to connect an audio device to your phone, we provide you with a good solution. You don’t have to go out and buy a series of accessories for your phone in order to get good audio; with some adapters, you can use your old device with your smartphone with a traditional camera.
Although there are many advantages to using smartphones to shoot videos, there are also some disadvantages. We always hear one of the biggest disadvantages of audio. The microphone on the phone is designed for calls, not for recording. Although the built-in microphones of each model of the smartphone are getting better and better, they are still not as good as what can be obtained with a dedicated camera microphone. You can buy many accessories for your smartphone, including microphones, but the quality of these accessories may vary, and there are few wireless accessories among them, which limits the functionality of your phone.
If you have some radio microphones that were previously used for camcorders around you, then you can hack a method and use them with your smartphone to provide you with professional-grade audio without being restricted to your subject or purchasing New microphone settings-you only need some adapters.
Connect any wireless microphone to your smartphone
If you are using a smartphone with a headphone jack, then you only need an adapter. The headphone jack on most smartphones is TRRS, and most camera microphones are TRS (the acronym only indicates how many loops the plug has), so in order to plug the wireless microphone receiver into the phone, you only need a TRS to TRRS adapter. Simply plug the TRRS side into the mobile phone mic and the TRS side into the wire from the receiver, and you are ready to use. Place the microphone and transmitter on the subject, and then your device can be used.
If you are using a phone without a headphone jack, such as a newer iPhone model, you will need more adapters, but this is still easy to do. Now you would think that you can just use your headset to light up the adapter, but it won’t work. Therefore, you will need a USB to the Lightning adapter and a microphone to USB adapter. You plug the receiver into the USB adapter, and then plug the USB into the USB to lightning adapter, and then your microphone settings will be connected to your phone.
The quality of the external microphone is better than the built-in microphone of the smartphone. Therefore, if you use an external microphone, you will record your vocals more naturally. Unfortunately, connecting an external microphone to a smartphone is not easy nowadays.
Some people might say that you can simply use a USB microphone with your Android device via a USB to 3.5 mm adapter. It is relatively easy to use an external microphone on an Android smartphone. You only need to plug one into the headphone port. But now, the 3.5mm jack is dying. If you want to use an external microphone on your Android phone, what choice do you have?
There are basically four ways to connect your smartphone to an external microphone:
- Bluetooth
- TRRS jack
- TRRS wireless connection
- Mobile phone charging port
Let us introduce each of them below;
Connect via Bluetooth
Bluetooth technology has been present on mobile devices since 2001, and it has improved a lot since then. Now, every smartphone can use Bluetooth. Bluetooth is a simple wireless communication protocol designed to transmit data and signals over short distances via short-wave UHF radio waves (2.400 to 2.485 GHz). The function of a Bluetooth microphone is the same as any other wireless system: a transmitter (part of the microphone) and a receiver (present in your phone as part of the chip).
You can easily connect an external Bluetooth microphone to your smartphone using the following steps:
- Turn on the Bluetooth microphone
- Turn on the Bluetooth option of the phone to ensure that the phone can be detected
- If the device is in range, the microphone should appear as a device on the screen
Connect the microphone to the smartphone
Most smartphones have a TRRS jack for headphones instead of microphones. However, you can use the headphone splitter to adjust your TS or TRS microphone connector for use with the TRRS jack on your smartphone.
TRRS microphone
The TRRS microphone allows you to bypass all the tricks of the TRRS splitter and adapter, and use its TRRS jack to connect the microphone directly to your smartphone.
XLR-TRRS jack
Another useful option is the XLR-TRRS jack. Just like XLR-Bluetooth adapters, there are also XLR-TRRS adapters on the market that allow you to connect professional studio SYNCO Microphones to your smartphone using the TRRS port.
Wireless TRRS connection
As long as you have a wireless adapter that can be connected to your smartphone using the TRRS jack, you can wirelessly connect almost any microphone to your smartphone.
Connect via charger port
Many new smartphones do not have the traditional 3.5 mm headphone jack. Therefore, more and more devices are directly connected via smartphone charging connections. Android phones use a Type-C connector to charge the device. There are microphones and adapters that can be connected to Type-C and Lightning ports.
Smartphone audio software for external microphones
For external microphones, you don’t actually need any additional software. Smartphones usually activate the microphone for recording as soon as the correct connection is established, no matter which method is used. Any recording software on your phone will only use this input, because the smartphone will direct it to use this as the main source of audio input instead of its internal microphone.