VeriCorder MiniMic Review

As most podcasters can attest, you often find yourself in a situation where you need to, or have the opportunity to record an interview. And if you are blessed enough to have the funds to own a mobile recording solution well good for you. As a husband and father of 5, it’s quite often necessary for me to take the “budget” approach to fulfill my geeky adventures. And here is another example of that. Using a $20 microphone and my iPhone 3GS, appears to have saved me a few hundred on a mobile recording device.

So if you follow me on YouTube, you may have already seen this unboxing, and this test video for the MiniMic. If you haven’t, please give them a watch.

In my testing over the last three days, I am finding that they MiniMic is a mic that you want to hold away from you and your subject as the gain will easy over modulate if held too closely. If you are in the field, you can easily hold it out or in between you and your subject a couple of feet, and get really good results. If you are doing a sit down interview, it’s perfect. Set it down on the table and press record. Depending on your recording application you may want to record in a .wav or .aiff format to process and mix down the sounds. Or, just record to .mp3 and you’re set to go.

The VeriCorder is also an ideal solution to use with your iPhone 3GS (and other video recording capable smart phones) when recording video. Thanks to the flexible 180° rotating mic, you can point it towards you for video narration. Or out towards your subjects or talent that are in the video.

I have included in sample audio recording that was recorded on my iPhone 3GS using the built in sound recording app in .mp3 format. Zero post processing was done in this piece of audio. iPhone and mic placement was about two feet from me.

Specs

Omni-style mic
Impedance 2.2K ohm
Sensitivity: -47 +/-2 dB
Frequency range: 20 – 16K Hz
Flexible mic rotates through 180-degree range

Conclusion:

A good product that has given me good results at this point. Three of my recordings have had mysterious pops and clicks at various times during the recording. But that could have just been that my iPhone needed to be rebooted as i haven’t done so in little over three weeks and i’ve installed and uninstalled a number of applications. I also was able to do 6 recordings on my wife’s iPhone 3G without a single issue. So it’s highly likely at this point that it was due to needing to be restarted.

With the caveat that I will continue to test this mic over the next week to see if I can duplicate the sound issues. At $20. It’s an attractive option for iPod Touch, and iPhone as well as other smart phone owners who need a good mobile recording solution.

More information on this product can be found here.

12/03/09 (update) After seeing my review of the MiniMic, John Matechuk from VeriCorder reached out to me. He said that the pops and clicks are from RF interference from the iPhone, and he advised to use it in “airplane” mode. Which I have done several times, and the mic works flawlessly. Thanks, John!