Thursday, January 19, 2012

Sing hello to the iRig PRE, turns iOS devices into on-the-fly mic preamps

Sing hello to the iRig PRE, turns iOS devices into on-the-fly mic preamps

IK Multimedia's never fallen short of giving you some of the better tools for all your on-the-go music-making utilizing your beloved iOS device as the main rig. Now, the peripheral connoisseur's taking the wraps off its iRig PRE, which aims to help you digitally process those glorious vocal chords by allowing you to plug in any XLR mic into it without the need for other adapters or cables. Furthermore, the dongle features a 3.5mm jack for audio monitoring, gain control and can squeeze a runtime of up to 40 hours (dynamic microphones) or 15 hours (phantom powered condenser mics) from a standard 9V battery. The PRE amp will also come included with two of iRig's usual suspect apps (iRig Recorder and VocaLive) to help you get started in your quest to be the next idol. We know you can't wait to get your singing on, but you'll have to wait until "early Q2" to do so, for a moderate price of $39.99 -- perhaps the iRig Miccan get you through the days in the meantime.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Woz Wishes His iPhone Could Beat Android

Woz Wishes His iPhone Could Beat Android 

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is a big fan of smartphones running Google's Android OS . . . and in some ways finds them superior to mobile phones running iOS. "My primary phone is the iPhone. I love the beauty of it. But I wish it did all the things my Android does, I really do," Woz told Dan Lyons.

The both fascinating and amusing article on The Daily Beast quotes Woz as favoring Android in some ways over Apple smartphones, such as for voice commands and GPS. He even has a gripe with the shortened battery life of an iPhone. The change happened when Apple built the software into the iPhone 4S.