Best USB-C mics for recording podcasts on iPhone with Riverside

00:00 If you wanna look and sound professional, I'm gonna tell you the best mics to use to record a podcast with your phone. I'm gonna share a budget pick, an upgrade pick to sound studio quality and give you live examples of what they look and sound like recording with your phone and the Riverside app.

00:14 And you can do everything from your phone, record a high quality podcast, edit using the Riverside app, including animated captions and making vertical clips of your recording and exporting up to 4K all with your phone.

00:24 Now to record in high quality video and audio, use the free Riverside app, which also allows you to record with remote guests. We've also updated the app to make it even less steps to start recording and streamlined everything. So I just hit the create button, hit record, and I'm in the studio, one button away from recording my content.

00:41 Now on your iPhone or Android device, you can download the Riverside app for either, make sure to disable the orientation lock. Now you can turn your phone in landscape mode and now you'll get that widescreen 16 by nine video.

00:53 Now for the budget pick, I'm gonna recommend the Samson Q2U. My typical recommendation was the ATR2100X, mostly because it had a USB-C port instead of a mini USB, but this microphone has actually been discontinued. I just discovered that as I was recording this video, but the Samson Q2U is still available. It's a great microphone and it's $70.

01:11 So with this microphone, you'll see the mini USB and headphone jack there. It also has XLR if you wanna connect it to an audio interface, but we'll connect the USB cable there and then connect the other end directly to the iPhone.

01:21 Now you should see a pop-up right here asking about the microphone. Now this pop-up may be confusing, but we're actually gonna choose headphones because we are gonna use the microphone as our headphone output. So I'm gonna tap headphones and you have to see this pop-up when you connect an external mic.

01:36 If you don't see this, it means that microphone is not compatible with the Riverside app. Tap no here and now you'll be able to record with the USB mic. Now if you get any other piece of gear, of course I recommend a small tripod with a phone mount. This is actually a MagSafe mount. So if you have an iPhone 12 or newer, you can just stick right on there.

01:54 And now I'm gonna record a test clip with my front-facing camera and the Riverside app. So here we are in the Riverside app talking into the USB microphone. I'll move it a little farther away so you can tell this is actually the microphone that I'm holding right here. It's not the built-in mic on the iPhone.

02:08 And you can see you get high quality video and audio. And this is actually recorded locally on the iPhone or your Android device, meaning no internet blips or freezes is gonna get in the way of the quality of your recording.

02:19 If I wanted to, I can invite a remote guest by clicking the three dots there and then invite, share that guest link with them and they can join in the studio, either from their iPhone or a computer and you can start recording right away.

02:30 And remember, we also have a script and teleprompter feature here. We keep that text close to the front-facing camera so you can record and refer to your script or notes right here on your mobile device.

02:40 Then when you're done recording, I'll just hit the stop button here and you'll see that high quality video and audio is uploading now to your Riverside dashboard. And then you'll be ready to edit it right here on your mobile device or on the computer.

02:50 And keep in mind, when you record from a mobile device, you do have some effects here. So if you wanted to blur your background, you can go to this and tap a little blur or a lot of blur to blur the background of your video virtually.

03:01 And you can also use virtual backgrounds here on your mobile device. Go into different locations. And yes, if you'd like to join me in my own studio, you can do that too. Background on, background off.

03:11 And before we get to editing, I'll show you the upgrade pick microphone, which is the Shure MV7. I actually prefer the newer MV7 Plus because it has that USB-C connection instead of the other weird USB ones. It is $300, but this is gonna give you a professional sound.

03:25 The MV7 Plus is a high quality dynamic microphone, has a capacitive mute button right here, and also has USB-C and XLR plus that headphone jack on the back. Plus if you have an iPhone 15 or newer, you can connect this with a single cable, one USB-C from the mic to the phone.

03:41 Again, you should see that pop up here on your phone, Android or iPhone, tap no. And now I'm using the microphone both as my mic and I'll plug in a pair of wired headphones so I can hear my remote guest.

03:52 I'll tap record here in the studio. I get that five second countdown. And now I'm recording in high quality with the Shure MV7 Plus. I'm using the back camera on my iPhone this time so you can see the quality there. You get full 4K video when you use the Riverside app on your mobile device.

04:07 And I can hear my remote guest in the wired pair of headphones. So I'm recording an entire podcast here from my mobile device. And again, so you can see this mic is actually being used. If I move it farther away, you see it gets quieter. And as I move it closer to my mouth, it's getting louder. Using the audio from this USB mic, not the built-in one on the iPhone.

04:24 Now, if you wanted to record with something like a lapel microphone that has that eighth inch microphone connector, you can still do that with your iPhone or Android, but you're gonna need a few adapters. The first thing you'll need is a USB-C or lightning if you have an older iPhone to a headphone jet. I would recommend getting the one directly from Apple if you have an iPhone because you can actually split this into microphone and headphone attachments.

04:46 This will also work with any microphone that has an attachment like that, the eighth inch, the one that looks like a headphone jack. I'm gonna plug that headphone adapter into my iPhone, and then I would recommend getting a splitter like this. This is gonna plug into that headphone jack here, and then it splits it into microphone and headphone connections separately.

05:03 So now I can plug this into my iPhone. You'll see, I still get that pop-up and we are going to select headphones because we're gonna connect both to the same connector. Then I would connect my headphones to the headphone side of the splitter, and I can connect my lapel microphone or other mic into this connection.

05:21 And this will also work with the Riverside app, still giving you high quality audio and the ability to hear your remote guest. Now let's leave the studio and jump into editing our content. You'll see here the two latest recordings with the two microphone testing. I'm gonna tap the play button and just preview it right here.

05:37 That looks great, and if we wanted to edit it, I can tap right here and jump into the Riverside editor here on my mobile device. You see, I get that full transcript even here on my phone. And if I wanna edit it, I can jump in. Here I can select individual words to delete, and I'm editing via transcript here on my device.

05:54 I can also make the text smaller, which also allows me to edit larger chunks. So if I wanna delete all of this or just select individual phrases or sentences, I can tap delete and I've edited my video via the text right here on screen.

06:07 If you just need to trim the beginning and end of your content, just tap the trim tool and then you can drag the in and out slider. You even see a live preview of where that text or where the audio begins and ends. Maybe I'll end it right here.

06:19 And I can even jump to a 15, 30 or 60 second clip, and that will crop it to exactly 30 seconds, and then I can scrub the timeline either way. So I know I'm getting a 30 second clip, but I get the exact moment that I want. Then when I'm ready, I can just tap the share button at the top and I can export all the way up to 4K video right here on my mobile device.

06:37 I can remove background noise if that was an issue and I'm ready to export. I can also choose to just export the audio if I want to export an MP3 file from my podcast host and export that. And then here on the page of the recording, you'll see all of the clips you've already exported and edits you're still working on and you can always jump in to make further changes.

06:55 Also, if you're recording a video just directly on your iPhone, you can still bring it into the Riverside app to add those captions and edit it. Tap add captions, then select a video that you already recorded on your iPhone that will get uploaded to your Riverside dashboard. And here's that fully uploaded clip.

07:09 I'll tap the scissor icon to go in and edit it. And I can add that caption both to recordings I made in the Riverside app or ones I've uploaded. I can choose a style of caption that I'd like, even going to change the font, the style, even the animation for the active word. I'm gonna go with that boxed look. I'll tap done.

07:25 And then I can move those captions down for my vertical video and I've added animated captions to a video I recorded on my phone. Then of course I can go into trim and edit this content as well, just like I did when I recorded in the Riverside studio.

07:36 So those are the best USB mics and how to record and edit high quality videos with the Riverside app on your iPhone or Android device. Links to download those apps are in the video description and subscribe to the Riverside channel and hit that like button. If you'd like more gear reviews, ways to use your mobile device to make high quality content and more. I actually did a whole video on how you can build a YouTube studio with just your phone in your bedroom. Check out that video right up here.

07:58 And if you wanna learn more about the Riverside editor on desktop where you can live stream to multiple destinations, use things like magic clips and magic audio to enhance your recording even more, check out this video right here. If you have any questions, leave comments below this video. I answer those personally and thank you for watching. We'll catch you next time.