Though modern smartphone cameras can deliver in the video department for home-cooked musicians hoping to go viral on YouTube or dedicated vloggers, video reviewers and online tutorial makers, the device's audio recording prowess may well disappoint. Roland launched a pocket device at CES back in January that's designed to help. The Go:Mixer, which is now available to buy, allows users to capture a high quality audio track at the same time the video is recorded, and mix in vocals, instruments and backing music on the fly.
The Go:Mixer has been designed with the sole purpose of giving the audio track on smartphone videocasts a quality bump, with Roland promising a "marked upgrade" over a smart device's built-in mono mic. It's compatible with iOS and Android smartphones and is ready to roll out of the box.
The 3.75 x 3.75 x 1.1 in (95 x 95 x 28 mm), 4 oz (100 g) pocket mixer is cabled up rather than going wireless, drawing its power from the smart device (so users may want to keep a weather eye on host battery levels), and a user just needs to launch a favored camera/video app to get the recording session started.
Mixing knobs up top can be used to combine up to five input sources at once, meaning users can plug in a guitar or bass, supply beats or drone sounds with a digital keyboard, feed in vocals and run backing tracks from music players. There's no phantom power available though, so care will need to be taken when choosing microphones.
There's a function that reduces the volume of the main vocal in a song played through the device, giving the user the opportunity to take lead vocals in karaoke fashion, and a stereo output jack is included for headphone monitoring or to output the mix to a powered speaker.
Rather than hooking up expensive and complicated audio recording hardware to a videocast setup, and then wasting precious time getting everything to sync up in video editing software, the Go:Mixer digitally transfers audio straight to a smartphone video recording in real time. Neat.
The Go:Mixer comes supplied with USB/Lightning cables and is available now for a street price of US$99.
Source: Roland
So you kick off recording after doing mic tests and adjustments with less that an hour of time before you have to pause, put the phone on charge wait 30 to 60 minutes and go again.
All they had to do was include the ability to optionally connect an external power source to the device and they could have had phantom power + unlimited recording sessions via power outlet / portable power pack. maybe next time...