Heil PR40 vs ATR2100 Mic Comparison

Hello. Welcome to Daily ish for Tuesday, February 20. It's currently minus 18 Celsius. Feels like minus 27. Really freaking cold, but that's all I have to say about that.

This is not a weather podcast. My thanks to Patreon supporters, possibly just like you. Patreon.com/ichris is where you can check out how you can support podcasting stuff I'm doing here a little more directly. And, what I'd, I'm just doing a quick episode today because I wanted to try out a comparison of sorts of my microphone that I normally use that you usually hear me talking into, the Heil p r 40, which is around a 2 to $3.50 $2.50 to $3.50. I forgot where what price range it is.

Anyways, it's a 300 ish dollar microphone plugged into a, $70, amplifier device thingy, the technical terms you just gave me this morning, into a USB mixer, into the Logic Pro, which is like a 200 some dollar thing. DAW, they're called digital audio workstation software. Yeah. And so that's how I normally record. And what I'm comparing that with is what I'm gonna switch to right now, which is the recording on my iPad using the ATR2100 USB microphone, which can usually be found for about 60 to $70, sometimes a little more.

Here in Canada, I happen to catch it on a rare, sale on Amazon and ordered one. It's a USB microphone, so it can plug into the camera adapter for an iPhone, an iPad, but also has XLR connectivity, so you can connect it to, like, a normal microphone into my USB mixer device with sort of three prongs that are on an XLR connector. But, yeah, it allows you to have sort of that flexibility of a portable mic that you can use with USB or with a standard XLR connectivity. And so it's and it's very cheap, obviously, compared to the more professional sounding looking microphone, apparently. So this is by no means pure a great scientific test.

I have the ATR2100 on the little tripod that it comes with on my desk, which is like a glass desk that probably has a bunch of audio reflecting off of it. And whereas my Heil PR 40 is mounted into a, shock mount with a pop filter on front of it and, on a stand and stuff like that. So two different, ways that they're set up, and, and you can probably hear a few more pups and wind noises from my mouth and and stuff on this this mic. But to my ears right now, anyways, as I'm recording it, they both sound pretty good, not nearly as much echo and reverb and stuff that I thought there would be on the cheaper microphone. And and it the iPad, interestingly enough, picks it up right away, sees it as the ATR USB microphone, even though it's plugged into this camera dongle into the lightning port on the bottom of the iPad.

I'd mentioned I wanted to sort of update actually, here, I'll switch back to the other mic just that there's some back and forth. I had mentioned I wanted to, sort of update folks on how it was going trying to use an iPad for podcast editing, and the app I was using I'm using is called Ferret, and, link will be in the show notes. And it it works great. It's an awesome, app on the iPad, a very powerful audio editor. The main issue that I am struggling with is because I edit podcasts for other people for in exchange for money for a living as part of my business, the what I often do is edit at two x speed.

So the the shows are typically like, two to three to four people talking, conversational style where I'm not piecing together like a public radio kinda like story with the audio. It's more cutting out, technical issues, Skype hang ups, and and editing a bit of the conversation, but not really cutting out and moving pieces around. And so it's it's not that I need I need to listen to all the audio, but I don't need to listen to precisely every word that was said and sort of track changes and and listen for, all the emotion that was maybe recorded. I'm listening more on a technical side and making sure it sounds good. And so that's where the listening at a faster speed allows me to get through it faster, not take as long to edit for clients who maybe just aren't worried about having necessarily NPR quality sound, but just wanna make sure that the content is as they intended and hiccups, coughs, ums, ahs, extended breaks, hang ups, etcetera are edited out.

As well as, show notes being recorded and and written down in links and stuff like that just like what I do here at Good Stuff. Okay. I'm gonna switch back. So back on the ATR2100. The so the main issue with the audio so far on the iPad seems to be that I can't find one, an editor that allows me to play back at multiple speeds.

The next option so there's GarageBand that's included with iPad for free, which is a pretty powerful editor, music editor, and playback device. And then the FerriA, like I said, there's one called Aura, a u r I a, that's about a $70 I think $70 US, so might even be a $100 Canadian iPad digital audio workstation app, and it may have that as well. It's what is recommended if you're in heavy into music production on the iPad, and it looks really powerful, but I can do everything I need to do in Ferret other than this one thing. So I've pinged a couple reviewers of Oreo to see if they have any idea if it works and can do a sort of faster playback. But otherwise, I don't think I'll be investing another 70 to $100 in some software that likely won't solve the issue for me.

So all that said, aside from the audio side, which is a big reason why I was trying out the iPad, the workflow for publishing the workflow for publishing, audio files to, like, our Good Stuff CMS using, Git to check-in files and update images, using Pixelmeter to adjust artwork, write up documents or show notes and stuff in, what was I using? Textastic maybe, I think. I can't remember which app I was using for that. Some really neat text editors and GitHub apps and workflow stuff that works actually really well and and isn't as sort of awkward as I thought it might be, considering you're just using your fingers the whole time and switching back and forth between apps. I've really loved, when I'm trying to, like, write something or work on, say, a schedule for myself.

I can have, I was using Numbers to sort of work out a weekly schedule, and then in tabbed open window, I can have, some notes I have in, Bear app, which is just a text editor basically, and have those two open at the same time and sort of drag and drop, copy and paste between them, and and just have reference and helps in a interesting way helps keep it very focused on what I'm supposed to be doing. Cause I have notifications turned off for the most part on the iPad, and, and there isn't the temptation to command switch away to Tweetbot or or whatever the same way there is on on the desktop Mac. So that's where it's at so far. I've had moments where I felt like, shoot, I've made a huge mistake and moments where I'm really excited about what the possibilities are with this thing. I still will be for like, we're doing a little trip, and I'll be taking on my old MacBook Air to edit podcasts with likely just because I know I especially if I'm on vacation at all or whatever, I'm gonna be even more sort of self imposed pressure to get it done quicker than than trying to, like, take the full amount of time to edit in, on the iPad.

But for personal stuff and and sort of trying things out or if I'm in a pinch and need to record something somewhere or edit something somewhere, it certainly looks to be good enough and is gonna be great for it's I've already used it a lot with clients and stuff where it's just kinda handy for making notes, keep taking screenshots, crossing things out they want off, taking off their website, things added, all that kind of stuff. It seems to work really well for that. So switching back to the high PR 40 here for the end. I hope, you have a great day wherever you happen to be. Make sure you're watching some Olympics Canada, the women's hockey team is playing in The US later no, tomorrow, Wednesday, I think.

And, so that should be a fun game to watch if you're into hockey and or, Canada beating The US again like they did four years ago, I think. Yeah. Probably. Right? I think they did.

That's how I remember it. Anyways, hope you have a great day. Thanks for listening. Bye.