Bias iProRecorder for the iPhone
Even a jaded gadget guy like myself cannot help but be amazed at the power today’s portable electronics. I am old enough to remember when there were no cell phones. Now my cell phone plays YouTube videos, games, music, and also doubles as a decent
voice recorder.
When I came across I came across the Bias iProRecorder for the iPhone and iPod Touch, I was hooked. I use their Sound Soap 2 product for cleaning up my audio recordings, so I knew something of Bias’ product quality – which is excellent. To my delight, iProRecorder was on sale for $1.99 (USD), $3 off the usual price of $4.99, so I quickly snapped up a copy for myself.
While there are several other good voice recording apps for the iPhone, the user interface for iProRecorder is probably the “sexiest”. It is at once beautiful, functional, simple, and cool. It’s the kind of simple, intuitive interface that just begs you to play with it.
Of course, what good is a sexy interface if you get poor recordings. The iProRecorder provides 3 quality settings: High quality (HQ), Medium quality (MQ), and Low quality (LQ). I recorded a short paragraph (30 sec.) in each quality setting so you can compare the differences. As you would expect, the quality settings impact file size. The table below summarizes the file size difference for each setting
| Quality Setting | File Size |
| HQ | 2 Mb |
| MQ | 1 Mb |
| LQ | 512 Kb |
Here are some of the interesting design features that make iProRecord such a great tool for podcasters:
- Virutal jog wheel for fast-forward and rewind
- Simple, intuitive controls
- Assign recordings to categories
- Transfer recordings to your PC via wireless
- Many more features described at the web site
The links below connect to the sample recordings. Frankly, unless you are wearing headphones or play them at a high volume it may difficult to hear the differences. However, the differences are there, so the quality settings must ratchet up some kind of equalization algorithm, or something like that. The recordings are uncompressed audio.
The fact the iProRecorder only records in .WAV format is a downside for me, as I would prefer the option of recording directly to .MP3. On the other hand, .WAV is a standard non-compressed audio format which means you can, depending on your quality setting, get the best audio quality possible with the mic built into the iPhone and iTouch.
My next review will take a look at Griffin’s iTalk voice recorder for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and I’ll compare and contrast it with iProRecorder.
