DL iPad Recording with Voice Record

[WK154]

I don't use the iPad for recording but for those that do here's my take on squeezing the max out of it. Let's look at Voice Record (VR) since it is useful for both recording and immediate playback. Here are my settings for recording in VR. Sample rate of 48K unless my target is CD or YouTube at which time I use 44.1k. Bit rate of 160 kbps which unfortunately is the max for this app. I would have liked to see the iTunes 256 kbps or the AAC max of 320 kbps. The bit depth is 24 no point going to 32 its the DL limit and 32 won't get you anything more. Stereo channels and max encode quality is my choice. These settings are under advanced recording. Now for the DL setup. Since the meters in MF are pretty much worthless VR has a pair of VU meters that lend themselves nicely to recording as they should. I set up the MF faders at 0 across the board in L&R. Then it's sound-check time for each channel that will be recorded. I adjust the channel with the trim on the preamp (it's the only place where you can affect the S/N ratio) to 0 on the VU meter. The VU meter is the closest approximation to hearing loudness of all the meters available here. A Dorrough meter would be great but it costs more than the DL. Yes it's a lot of back and forth between MF and VR for mute but that's why you get paid the big bucks. Let's address the "what if the drummer goes wild" well that's were the compressor can help on individual channels. I would set the threshold at -6dBFS soft knee with a ratio of 6:1 and a fast attack time or whatever you like there. No clipping here. I also set the L&R main output compressor with the  same values for any additional surprises. Since most music has a crest factor of somewhere between 8-12 dB we should be good since these settings will give about -15 dBFS rms in the recording. If your doing classical orchestra you may want to drop the VU level to -2 for adjustment. This should give a recording very close to final and post will need little adjustment. The philosophy here is to do it right the first time and you may have what you need without post. A view of the results in an audio editor will verify this and you can do post processing if necessary.

[robbocurry]

Good info WK, will try your method this weekend

[WK154]

On the Voice Pro 160 kbps rate both iTunes and Media player show 117-118 kbps on the recording. So much for specs. A sine wave at 0 VU meter will get a recording of -12 dBFS. Music will be harder to get a 0 VU setting on and will give a lower rms value around -15 dBFS depending on the music of course.

[RoadRanger]

On the Voice Pro 160 kbps rate both iTunes and Media player show 117-118 kbps on the recording.

Weird, MediaInfo shows 160kbps on the three recordings I did as does Windows Media Player.

[WK154]

What were the other conditions frequency, bit depth, including kbps. No conversions? .m4a file? Encode quality? I used max.
I looked at a 16bit 48K 160kbps file and it's 142kbps. There seems to be a pattern. This was Freestudio take on the file.

[RoadRanger]

These were 16/44/160/Max .

[WK154]

At my end none of the programs give 160kbps. I am using Voice Record Pro free version. If they changed something in the paid version other than remove advertising their not saying. Let's hope iOS V7.1 due in March will have a lot of bug fixes. They have a lot of bugs to fix especially in core audio and F/B tasking. The software community is certainly not happy with fruit. If your interested in a detail of what makes this tick here's a link.
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/miscellaneous/conceptual/iphoneostechoverview/Introduction/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40007898-CH1-SW1
To bad Bob Katz is hanging his hat on iRadio ending the loudness wars by mid 2014. I agree with him that there should be a standard and his proposed one is good, but an Apple proprietary standard will never fly. So far "sound check" is optional contrary to some reports.

[RoadRanger]

I did try 24 bit and it did drop the bit rate to 160 nominal 137 actual.

[WK154]

That makes more sense and reinforces why I don't use the iPad for recording.

[abzurd]

Is there a benefit to this app over the TASCAM PCM recorder? It's only 16/44.1, but records to a WAV file, which seems  better to me than going to an uber compressed format right away. Note: I've not actually used it yet, but downloaded it a few weeks ago.

[WK154]

Is there a benefit to this app over the TASCAM PCM recorder? It's only 16/44.1, but records to a WAV file, which seems  better to me than going to an uber compressed format right away. Note: I've not actually used it yet, but downloaded it a few weeks ago.

Update if you are going to use it, they just released a fix for iOS7. Yes the obvious advantage of VR is size of files had it worked as advertised. There are also more choices of recording quality to cover more intended uses of recordings. There are also more ways to get the files out of the iPrison besides the iCloud on PCM.

[RoadRanger]

Hmm... Just noticed that Voice Record Pro now goes up to 320Kbps quality whereas it used to top out at 160Kbps. iOS 8 improvement? I also noticed that they recently added PCM/WAV recording so yous guys that want that can be happy too .

[WK154]

Hmm... Just noticed that Voice Record Pro now goes up to 320Kbps quality whereas it used to top out at 160Kbps. iOS 8 improvement? I also noticed that they recently added PCM/WAV recording so yous guys that want that can be happy too .

Time to check the actual values instead of advertised. A lesson from past history. Not a iOS 8 fix just a improvement on Voice Record Pro.

[RoadRanger]

BTW you can normalize the M4A/MP4 audio files without re-encoding using MP3GAIN upgraded with AACGAIN.
http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/
http://www.rarewares.org/files/aac/aacgain_1_9.zip

[robmcl]

I found Voice Record Pro to be a great alternative to the 1608 internal record function.
Not only does it allow instant replay of recordings (great for rehearsals) but has built in upload to Dropbox etc.
Also the latest master fader 3 now has routable record option.  I set my aux6 to be the record source and set a record mix using that aux.  works well for me.