16Nov Irig Pre XLR audio interface for your DSLR – First impressions
Basically the connector above combines the headphone output as well as the microphone input cable into a single device. That way you can use your headphones to answer calls as well as listen to music on your iphone. You might see an iOS audio interface with a connector like this and think “useless”, but if you add a simple adapter you can turn low price iOS XLR adapters like the Irig Pre and Tascam iXZ into very affordable (sub $40) XLR adapters for your DSLR.
The Irig Pre (above) is an XLR audio interface designed for iOS devices that can provide 48 volts of phantom power as well as audio gain to an XLR input all on a single 9 volt battery. Why not put something like this to work as a DSLR audio interface? Simply combine the iOS to PC adapter cable with the Irig Pre and now you have headphone monitoring and Phantom power with audio gain in a very compact little package.
To get things started I’ve plugged the pink lead on the adapter cable into the cameras microphone input and the green lead into the camera’s headphone output. Plug the other end of the cable into the Irig Pre and you’re ready to get started.
I’ve only spent a few hours testing the Irig Pre, but so far it appears to work quit well for the price. Just to give you an idea of what it sounds like I’ve recorded a short sample of audio directly into the camera. For this sample I’m using a Shure SM57 microphone plugged directly into the Irig Pre. The gain on the Irig pre is set to max and the input gain on the 5d mark III is turned to the lowest setting. The mp3 file is encoded at 256kb.
Here is the audio sample file (download .mp3)
I was only able to take a quick measurement, but at a glance it looked like the noise floor was below -60db which is very good for something like this. I’ll post some more on this once I’ve had time to use it with a few phantom powered microphones but right now it’s looking like a very good value.
Look for a video review in the next week or two. I’m also working on a Noob adapter that would allow this to be cold shoe mounted. I’ll keep you posted. Special thanks to Alex for point this one out.
November 16th, 2012 at 1:16 pm
Cool, I look forward to your review. I recently bought the Fiio e11 as a pre amp. Works great, but this looks like it could be a winner as well and it works with XLR.
November 16th, 2012 at 3:53 pm
Wow, that was quite an impressive sounding sample, I just bought an ME66 thinking I could go through my Beachtek DXA-2S (which works fine with my ew100) but the signal turned out to be quite low so had to use in-camera gain which introduced allot of noise (not really useable), really interested to see if this would work in my case with the ME66 as a cheap temporary solution before I can get hold of a JuicedLink.
November 16th, 2012 at 4:36 pm
Yea, you’ll need something with gain to get a good signal out of the ME66, a lot of the passive adapters end up reducing the mic signals to the point that it’s hard to use.
November 17th, 2012 at 4:51 pm
Yeah, have you tried the iMic with something like the ME66 yet? If you think it would get me to a decent enough level I’ll probably order one now….
Thanks allot, appreciate your YouTube videos and blogs man, good stuff!!
November 17th, 2012 at 5:17 pm
Sorry typo *iRig
November 17th, 2012 at 5:30 pm
I should have some boom mic tests to post either today or tomorrow. I think this would also be great for people who use a zoom h1 and don’t want to upgrade to the h4n.
November 18th, 2012 at 9:09 am
I bought it and tried it with my new 5D3 and wow… it’s really clean. I also have the Juiced link DT454 and it’s as clean or cleaner. Great value, great product. on the 5D I turned the volume all the way dow on the 5D3 and then up two clicks. Is that what you did?
November 18th, 2012 at 2:37 pm
@ Chez Rough, do you mean to clicks up on the 5D Mark III’s manual gain /volume control
November 18th, 2012 at 5:05 pm
yes, on the 5D3
November 18th, 2012 at 2:40 pm
I turned it all the way down with the volume will then one click up.
November 18th, 2012 at 5:06 pm
ok I did 2 clicks, I’ll do one as well, 2 clicks was still very clean
November 18th, 2012 at 3:07 pm
I have the iRig Pre and use it with the my iPhone all the time. Is there a trick to using the headphone part. I don’t hear anything in my head phones
November 18th, 2012 at 3:11 pm
Not sure, I don’t actually own an iphone.
November 18th, 2012 at 4:28 pm
can you hear the audio when using headphone jack input when using the iRigPre on the Canon 5D Mark III
November 18th, 2012 at 5:06 pm
Yes, but you need the adaptor… you can get it at Radio Shack
November 20th, 2012 at 9:03 pm
which adaptor is correct, the link is for a 2.5mm to dual 3.5mm, or do I need a 3.5mm to dual 3.5mm
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002NQV0N0/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B002NQV0N0&linkCode=as2&tag=dfn0c-20
November 21st, 2012 at 5:59 am
Sorry about the link mistake Ron, here’s one that works. You can also find them on ebay for about $2.
November 21st, 2012 at 6:50 am
Thanks, so in theory I can get a 2.5mm to 3.5 mm adapter to work in the meantime…..
December 3rd, 2012 at 3:00 pm
Hi, so what would I do if i wanted to use this on a canon 600d? like how would I workaround the issue of not having a headphone jack?
December 3rd, 2012 at 4:52 pm
Right now you are kind of out of luck. A headphone amp might be a usable option.
December 4th, 2012 at 11:47 am
Could you explain that a little bit more? Sorry, looking into getting a 600d and some things getting a little bit confusing 😛
December 4th, 2012 at 4:26 pm
damn, ordered the wrong part. the fist link is incorrect… arg. nice and helpful article though… thanks…
January 5th, 2013 at 2:55 pm
When using your setup, do you know monitor the audio outup from the camera through the audio output on the iRig? Since the Headphone Buddy adapter is plugged into the headphone jack of the camera now.
Deejay you need to change the two links in the article to the correct adapter link. The links in the article are for the 2.5mm to 3.5mm adapter
This is correct link for the 3.5mm to 3.5mm adapter:
http://www.amazon.com/Headset-Buddy-Adapter-Smartphone-01-PH35-PC35/dp/B00332DPDG/ref=pd_cp_pc_0
January 5th, 2013 at 8:24 pm
Thanks Henry, I’ll fix those today.
January 5th, 2013 at 8:29 pm
Fixed.
January 14th, 2013 at 4:23 pm
Thanks for your posting!
I have tried the iRig on my EOS 6D.
It sounds very clean without noise.
buuut. I use a Sennheiser MKH 416 XLR microfon, which I love for the bass-sounds.
I can’t here the bass! It sounds like mic on the camera, but with the characteristics of my Sennheiser.
Does a JuicedLink record nice bass-Sound?
January 14th, 2013 at 5:58 pm
I would guess the unit has a roll off around 70hz or 80hz as do many devices like this. I general use my microphones so record speech so bass hasn’t been an issue for me. Juicedlink publishes the Freq response curves on all of their amps if you want to check on the bass response. As for the iRig pre, try running some test tones through it to see where the roll off is, maybe it’s an issue with another device.
March 22nd, 2013 at 3:58 pm
I tested audio with a SoundDevice MixPre and could compare the sound quality to the irig…and yes, there is a big difference.
Sound with irig and Canon 6D, Sennheiser MKH 416:
-less Bass, MKH 416 oversized
Sound with SoundDevice MixPre:
-great Bass, MKH 416 full performance, great combination
Greetings from Berlin
🙂
March 22nd, 2013 at 7:10 pm
That makes sense. I just looked up the specs for the iRig pre.
iRig Pre listed at 20 Hz to 20 kHz +/- 1.5dB which means there may or may not be a bass roll off depending on the response curve of the unit you get. This is basically the result of using mid range resistors and capacitors.
SoundDevice MixPre is listed at 20Hz – 30kHz, +0.2, -0.5dB I would guess the bass response difference is largely due to that +.02db gain at 20Hz.
If you were able to run a freq response test on both units, I would guess the SoundDevice MixPre would be basically flat (at $900 it should be) and the freq response of the iRig Pre would be a bit more hill shaped. Still the iRig Pre does a great job for a device under $40.
March 24th, 2013 at 6:46 pm
Thank you for your technical explanation!
Yes, the iRig does a great job!
I used it at the moment.
It’s not worth for me to spend so much money for a SoundDevice.
I will test the beachtek soon. 😉
Greetings!
March 24th, 2013 at 7:44 pm
I just received a Juicedlink Riggy RM333 for testing. I’ll try and get some audio samples up in the next week or so.
February 14th, 2013 at 10:00 pm
Love this article. Exactly what I needed. However, I feel like I’m missing something. Why is it necessary to use the adapter? Why not just run the iRig into the camera and use the camera’s headphone jack to monitor the output?
March 23rd, 2013 at 10:11 am
Because it is like plugging headphones directly into the camera, you can do the test, there is no sound. I did the test with and without adapter, and I confirmed that it does not work without it.
March 23rd, 2013 at 10:02 am
I did the test with a Canon 550D and a Sennheiser MKH 416, and the sound is recorded in mono only. Do you have a solution? Thank you
March 23rd, 2013 at 10:50 am
Are you using the hack or the adapter cable?
March 23rd, 2013 at 11:28 am
The adapter cable
March 23rd, 2013 at 11:40 am
The adapter cable only provides a single channel. If you perform the hack, you’ll have the channel duplicated on both the left and right channel. You might be able to rewire a custom cable, but if you do that you might as well perform the hack.
March 23rd, 2013 at 11:52 am
ok thank you. and if I duplicate the sound on my editing software for stereo sound, is that it is equivalent to the hack?
March 23rd, 2013 at 12:06 pm
Pretty much.
March 23rd, 2013 at 12:11 pm
okay. thank you for all the information!
March 23rd, 2013 at 3:40 pm
Is it possible to use the input headphone iRig Pre instead of having to buy an adapter and connect to the wire? Headphone with iRig Pre usually 3.5 mm or iPhone type? Will the sound of the same quality when connected to a headphone input, and not the wire?
March 23rd, 2013 at 6:07 pm
Not sure I understand your question.
September 29th, 2013 at 10:19 pm
So why can’t we use the output of the unit rather than using the headphone output. Surly this would have less noise. Think I am missing something here too! Why are we joining the wires together in the hack ?
September 30th, 2013 at 10:00 am
The headphone jack doesn’t actually connect to any of the electronics in the iRig pre. It’s wired so that you get audio from a phone or ipad. The hack allows you to use the headphone jack as an audio output for your camera and removes the need for a bunch of funky adapters.
October 2nd, 2013 at 1:52 pm
OK got mine today, hack took all of 1 min, I’m somewhat of a solder old timer. Works great on the GH3 and to top it off I have zero gain on both camera and irig -my flipping mic has -28db of sensitivity!!! Now to mount on top of camera somehow – there we go XLR audio for GH3 for $34 dollars.
October 2nd, 2013 at 2:05 pm
Nice!
October 13th, 2013 at 6:40 pm
Hi Deejay,
From your recommendations I bough Irig and an adapter, it worked for a short while and now all I get is hiss, I connected the green cable to the microphone input of the camera and the orange/pink one to the irig headphone output and it worked for the first day. Today I was about to record and suddenly the sound became only hiss. What’s interesting is that if I quickly switch from phantom to ON the mic comes back to life but only for a second. I’m using a phantom powered mic (NTG1) and a Canon T3i. I tested with two adapters (same results) a computer and a portable sound recorder (same results). I’m temped to the hack the device myself but I would prefer not to if that’s possible. Your thoughts?
October 13th, 2013 at 7:56 pm
From your description, it sounds like some of your wires might not have been soldered quite right. If you don’t have a good ground connection it can cause all kinds of problems. The only other thing it could be is that the color code is incorrect. Since I posted the hack they’ve changed the color code a few times which could also cause problems.
April 1st, 2015 at 11:34 am
Hey DeeJay! I hope you still see this comment. I have two scenarios I’d like to accomplish. If you don’t mind, walk through this with me and see if this will work right.
First off, I have a Canon C100 Mark II & a Panasonic AC130A (i.e., video cameras with XLR input). I have an Audio Technica AT875r shotgun mic that needs phantom power. I have a Sennheiser G3 with the body pack transmitter with lav mic or mic/ line input. And I have the K-Tec boom pole with the internal XLR cable.
First scenario– I want to make my boom pole wireless. So my audio guy can walk around without both of us being worried about being tethered/ knocking something over with the cable/ someone falling over cable. The easiest way would be to get the transmitter that just plugs into the bottom of an XLR mic. But the one with phantom power is $500+, and I need phantom power to the AT shotgun mic. I’d be better off buying the cheaper TX without phantom out, and get one of the new Rode NTG mics that are chargeable via micro USB.
So, I’m thinking AT shotgun mic > boom pole XLR line> 3 to 6 ft. XLR cable > iRig PRE (or the TASCAM iXZ?) with +48 on > Headset buddy adapter > Sennheiser G3 TX. Does that sound right?
Second scenario– plugging the Sennheiser TX into a mixing board. I did this at a college graduation. The theatre/ audio guy who works there had a cable that took care of preamps and everything that he let me borrow. I didn’t really understand that then. I understand a bit better now… the difference is mic vs. line in.
Obviously I don’t need the phantom here. Here’s where I need to know if the iRig is better for me, or the Tascam. On the iRig, does the gain control take care of that stuff? On the Tascam, is the guitar setting the same as line in?
So this would be:
Mixing board w/ 1/4″ output > 1/4″ to XLR cable > iRig or Tascam > Headset buddy adapter > Sennheiser G3 TX.
I’d really appreciate if you could help me out with this when you get a chance. I could have a project I need the boom for any day now, and will definitely need the mixing board situation soon. Thank you!!!