How to Connect External Mic to iOS Devices, iPhone, iPad and iMac

Apple Inc has undoubtedly made its name among the most luxurious yet top-rated products of all time. Famous for the crisp quality of cameras and convenient user interaction, Mac devices act as an all-rounder for personal in addition to professional use.

Its microphone considerably gives smooth output for personal use, but if I’m a blogger, Youtuber, or videographer, connecting the finest quality mic may fulfil my need for a detailed professional setup.

We can use it to record some euphonious soundtracks and video conferencing. But unfortunately, many of us are not well informed of the appropriate procedure required to generate miraculous outputs, or my iPhone behaves mischievously.

In the article, I would be maximally discussing iOS devices and how to connect them to your external mic.

Before I proceed toward further details, let me tell you the types of external microphones.

Types of External Microphones

There are three types of external microphones.

1- Shotgun Microphones

2- Lavalier Microphones

3- Handheld Microphones

External microphones can be connected with multiples cable types. The most popular cable type is USB cable other than that XLR, TRS and TS cables are also used to connect external microphones with various devices.

How to Connect External Mic to iPhone 6s?

Before connecting my mic to the iPhone 6s. It holds fundamental importance for me to know which type of mic I’m choosing.

There are two distinct types of mics available in the market, a USB mic that can connect directly to the USB port provided in the iPhone and the other XLR mic that outputs better-quality audio but requires a detailed setup, as compared to the USB mic.

We would be discussing both the procedures simultaneously.

If I want to connect a USB mic to my iPhone, I need to follow the following procedure.

1. Firstly, we need to connect our USB mic connector to the Lighting-to-USB adapter.

2. Now we have to bridge the adapter to the iPhone.

3. After that, use the compatibility app (we can easily find one on the apple store) for a successful connection.

4. A notification will pop up on my screen confirming the use of an external microphone.

5. We will verify our priority.

6. My setup is ready to record some beautiful voice notes.

We are advancing on to the next category of mics which are XLR microphones. And let us see how they can go with our iPhone 6s.

Before mentioning the procedure, let me inform you that this type of mics follows a bit of comprehensive working, but the results are worth the effort.

It is essential to collect foundational equipment before we move on to the procedures.

• We need an XLR mic.
• 5mm adapters and cables for stereo plug and the other for mono plugging.
• TRRS adapter with built-in male and female jack. (Buy the one with four silver heads, the one with three heads won’t work better).

Now when we have all the tools on our checklist, let us start with the settings:

1. Firstly, let us connect the TRRS adapter to the port available on our iPhone.
2. Now attach the cables to the mic and TRRS adapter.
3. Check for connectivity.
4. Confirm external microphone on our iPhone.
5. Use the app for recordings and compatibility.

Setup is ready to use.

How to Connect iPhone External Microphone?

If you want to improve your audio quality over iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 and the next series, you will notice that your iPhone is deprived of a headphone jack, so what should you do in that case?

Do I unable to go any with iPhone7?

The answer is “NO”.

We can do a lot with our iPhone 7 and beyond iPhones thanks to the Belkin 3.5mm audio +charge rockstar, which comes with two ports. The one acting as a headphone jack while the other works as a charger.

If you want to use a USB microphone it can work by simply plugging the USB microphone into the adapter and then connecting the adapter to our mobile sets.

In case you intend to use a professional XLR microphone, you also need phantom power in addition to the adapter and some cables for a smooth connection of our microphone.

If you are not able to use the built-in audio recorder app or due to some fault, our iPhone is not recognizing our mic try installing an app from the apple store such as Audacity. Moreover, confirming the connection over iPhone is also necessary otherwise, your mic won’t work.

How Do I Connect an External Microphone to iPad and iPad Pro?

If you want to connect an external microphone to your iPad, it depends considerably on the model of your tablet. In most cases, a lightning port that’s located at the base of our iPad.

In the given condition, we can use a camera adapter (accessory easily accessible over the apple stores), and if I’m using an iPad pro-multi-port adapter is recommended apart, from that, we can also use a different form of USB adapters with built-in ports.

Connecting one head of the XLR cable to the iPad port we utilized and the other end of the cable to the XLR mic. It would perfectly work only and only if we are using a dynamic microphone, not in any other case.

The dynamic microphone is the only of its kind which does not require phantom power. If we are using condenser microphones or ribbon microphones, then the procedure would be slightly different.

But do not worry, I have multiple solutions for that too.

Another option that we can utilize is an audio mixer. The audio mixer consists of various ports to connect the cables and in addition to provided phantom power for the smooth working of condenser mics.

We can later attach the audio mixer cable to the port connecting to the iPad.

Similarly, like an audio mixer device, we can use a USB audio interface device, but the drawback of an audio mixer is that as it is built for a computer.

It is inherited to consuming power in the case of iPad it cannot afford to provide such a high power you can use it if you have additional power inputs such as a USB adapter or hub.

How Do I Connect an External Microphone to iMac?

Connecting an external microphone to your apple laptop is an incredible idea to start your studio.

But it carries immense importance for you to know the correct method to use an external microphone.

We may not discover immediate microphone input as the audio line has been drawn out by the company but wait, we don’t need to panic. Here I would explain the ways to get your hands-on professional experience.

For that, you need a couple of cables, including TRS and TTRS consisting of three and four heads with two and three rings, respectively.

The sleeve section is for the mic, and the rings are dedicated to the mic. The audio port of our iMac may vary, and we have to choose a jack compatible with our audio system.

There are two distinct types of jacks Cita- compatible jack and an Omps standard jack, we can choose according to our needs.

We need a splitter too with male and female jacks for our mic and headphones. Photon power is also necessary if we are using XLR mics except for dynamic mic.

1. After you have chosen a compatible jack, connect it to your iMac.
2. Connect the mic with the splitter
3. You can either connect your mic to a phantom power source or an audio interface device.
4. Change your input audio settings to the mic you are using once your iMac detects the settings.
5. Save the settings and proceed with your activities

Can We Connect a Yeti Microphone to an iPhone?

The short answer to the detailed question is yes. Yeti microphones are one of the highly compatible USB mics that one can use with the iPhone. And assuredly, they are offering better sound quality than internal iPhone microphone (iPhones lack good quality internal microphones).

Yeti Microphones do not connect directly to your Apple devices but do require a Lightning-to-USB adapter or USB-C-to-USB adapter for its processing.

For lengthy recordings, I would prefer USB3Camera Adapter.

Yeti offers a wide range of mics, including Yeti, Yeti Nano, Snowball, and Snowball iCE. We can connect these mics to all the microphones without facing an error next to it.

The output quality that yeti mics provide is unbeatable. Many professionals rely on yeti microphones for some unbeatable audio recordings.

If you want a portable studio over our iPhones, we must give it a try to Yeti microphones.

To connect Yeti microphones to my iPhone, I follow the following procedures:

1. Connect your iPhone to the available USB adapter.
2. Now connect your cable to the Yeti jack available at the base.
3. Connect the Yeti cable to the USB adapter.
4. Confirm the settings on your iPhone

Final Thoughts on iOS External Microphone 

Apple Inc. is a reliable name in the field of communication technology. They undoubtedly offer some of the best quality output, but if we talk about internal audio quality.

It offers decent quality for personal use. We can utilize external microphones with the help of adapters and audio-interface devices to cope with the problem effectively, producing amazingly beautiful content in the field of videography, and podcasting.

Understanding the procedure for each gadget is necessary because every device has a working of its own to operate correctly.

Elaborate procedures and workings under different conditions are already been discussed in the proceeding article. Hopefully, it would immensely benefit the readers.