Overall best mic for phone?

[Tliea]

I'm having a hard time deciding which mic to buy. I'm gonna use it for multiple things as travel for recording ambience, talking and creating shorts for some friends of mine who sing.

Might be too much for a simple cold mounted mic with a phone. I have a Tascam X8 handheld, but it's way(!) too heavy having on top of a selfiestick. It's also very sensitive for handling noise. There are multiple small shotgun mics. But will lack the stereofield I want, specially when recording ambient sound and music. What I've yet to try is splitting a mono track to stereo in post processing? I have some stereo plugins from Melda, but haven't gotten around to try them out yet.

Budget are limited, it have to bee kinda stealthy, frequency response have to be 20-20. Dynamic range is a I don't know kinda thing. I haven't figured out what's the difference between max dynamic range and max SPL? Distortion is something to keep in mind during a concert I want to record small shorts of for my memory lane.

[morelia]

This what I have. Pretty flexible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sHIqbg3K4g

[mindnoise]

In a nutshell:
SPL is external Sound (actually Air) Pressure Level and refers to the volume level a membrane can take (microphone) or produce (speaker) without getting damaged.

dynamic range usually refers to the internal min. and max. voltage levels which an electrical device can process or produce inside. Where e.g. the professional audio industry calibrates 0 dBu at 0.7746 Volt. The topic is a bit more complicated but I guess this will do.

--

For your iPhone, you most likely need a Lighting USB-Adapter.
Only but the original Apple USB3-Lightning Camera Adapter. Everyting else is just asking for trouble. That said, current iOS 16.5 is known to break compatibility with said adapter. So don't update you iPhone to iOS 16.5. If you already have you are probably pretty screwed right now and have to wait for Apple to fix this.

Zoom mobile recorders, as the one in morelia's post, are a good choice as they are usually iOS friendly and have a "USB-Class Complient" (THE magic word for audio and iOS) audio Interface, which is required to use USB-Audio gear with the iPhone.

There is also the Zoom iQ6 XY-mic which connects directly to the Lightning port but I don't know how good that is.

hope this helped a bit

[whyterabbyt]

I have a Tascam X8 handheld, but it's way(!) too heavy having on top of a selfiestick.

seems a shame to spend that much money on a good field recorder and default to your phone.

you could try a proper mic boom that you can hold better... or use external mics, since you're considering one anyway

It's also very sensitive for handling noise.

You can use a shockproof mount. This one comes with a hand grip too, as an alternate to a boom, but most will also mount on a boom.

https://www.wexphotovideo.com/rycote-ta ... r-3061383/

or not hold the device at all. you can get adaptors to fit camera mic stands, eg trippods, monopods and gorillapods.

and/or wear gloves

and/or use external mics

There are multiple small shotgun mics. But will lack the stereofield I want

There are stereo shotgun mics out there. Though they get expensive.
But for 'ambient recordings' I'd suggest something less directional.