Coming soon: iPod microphone reviews

I'm testing three products for transmogrifying your iPod from a player to a recorder. The XtremeMac MicroMemo, the Griffin iTalk Pro, and the Belkin TuneTalk Stereo (dang, remember when there used to be spaces between words?). These devices are handy for recording podcasts, lectures, and meetings. Do you have experience with iPod recorders? Please drop me a note at jongordon(at)gmail.com or leave your comments here.

Look for my review here and on Future Tense soon.

I think you should do some of your patented beatboxing as sample audio ... that'd be a real good test of the mics' ability to handle plosives ... or do your FutureTense listeners not know of this ability?

Tom,

My mad "beatboxing" skills almost got me to Hollywood on this season's American Idol. But seriously, I will pop some serious p's into the mics, see how they perform.

Pie
Planet
Poo
Pizza
Proletariat

-Jon

All seriousness aside ... I'm interested in what you're finding ... what bit depth/resolution can you record at ... good enough for the refined ears of MPR listeners? Or just recording mid-night flashes of genius ("note to self...")

I do interviews on the run for my job all the time, so I'm trying out the Xtreme Mac with the Ipod. Using it's microphone sounded better than I expected, but there was 'hiss'. Then I plugged in my Audio Technica AT 822 and the HISS is always there. This is not present on my MINI Disk recorder or my new SONY PCM-D1 recorder.

Plus the 'stereo' input works only for Line input. My Audio Technica AT 822 is stereo, but the Ipod does not record in stereo for the mic.

The hiss is unacceptable to re-play for broadcast.

I'll be trying the other units (belkin, etc...) to see if they have the hiss or not. I know this was intended as a lecture recorder and not for broadcast, but I see no reason why the HISS has to be there?