NAMM: Bias’ iPro Recorder For iPhone / iPod Touch
Jan 19th, 2009 | By Elisabeth Lewin | Category: Audio Podcasting, Mobile Podcasting, Podcasting 
This week at the Winter 2009 NAMM Show, Podcasting News has been looking at bushels of different products for creating, editing, and publishing audio and video podcasts. One of the standouts of the show, however, wasn’t a brand new device. Berkley Integrated Audio Software (BIAS)) added its iProRecorder (App Store Link) application to the zillions of apps available for the iPhone and iPod Touch late last fall.
Bias’ Cory Stuck was “blown away” by attendee response to demonstrations of the app during this year’s show. “We didn’t plan on doing a big deal about the iPro Recorder. But when people here have seen it, they get really excited by what they can do with it. It’s been the dark horse of the show for us.”
Alesis’ ProTrack recorder was using the app (on an iPod Touch) at the NAMM Show and in its promotional materials, further fueling interest in the software.*
iProRecorder, $4.99 at the App Store, uses the iPhone and iPod Touch’s Multi-Touch user interface so users can quickly record without shuttling through a lot of setup menus.
The app display includes a counter, progress indicator, available record time, and so on. Since the iPhone’s mic is at the bottom of the phone, and so that you don’t have to look at the display upside down while you point the mic at an interview subject, the app uses the iPhone built-in accelerometer to flip the screen image accordingly.
iProRecorder lets the user choose from three audio fidelity settings, letting you balance quality vs. available recording time (up to 13 hours per GB) while maintaining higher audio resolution than in compressed formats.
iProRecorder utilizes the iPhone’s location services and camera, providing support for geographic tagging and photos—ideal for associating a recording subject with the exact recording location, for future reference.
Recordings can be easily emailed, transferred to a Mac or PC via Bonjour sharing, or launched directly to BIAS’ Peak Pro 6 professional audio editing application—exclusively for the Mac.
More information about the recording software can be found at http://www.iprorecorder.com/
*A caveat: The Alesis rep, Bob, said that for some reason, the iPhone version of the iPro Recorder does not currently work with the ProTrack digital recorder, but the iPod Touch version works perfectly. Both companies are working toward making the software and iPhone and ProTrack all work together.
Last year I got Peak Pro at the New Media Expo and promptly put it on my MBP. So when I saw that iProRecorder was designed to integrate with Peak Pro, I was so excited that I promptly purchased it and installed it on my iPhone so that I could utilize both.
Not long after Apple announced their new MBP line last fall, I purchased one and installed Peak Pro on it. I thought that I had deauthorized the software from my old machine. But within a week my new MBP had indicated some problems. A Genius told me that my new MBP had factory defects and had the unit replaced but not before he helped me deactivate Peak Pro and other items on the new machine as well. Turns out this was all wrong and all my licenses have been used up!
I have to say I was pretty dang sure I deactivated the software from my previous machines the first time. And after working with the Genius, I was confident that we were doing everything correctly the second time. So the fact that I can no longer use my new Peak Pro software is disappointing and disheartening. I’ve since then attempted to contact the folks at BIAS on three different occasions to ask for some help and even opened a ticket but have not heard from them and it has been a few months now. Apparently they don’t care about customer service.
At this point, all I can do now is use iProRecorder to record my disappointment with it and then upload the file to share with my Twitter friends. It’s unfortunate because I got the iProRecorder to work with Peak and have been unable to use them together as expected. I’m sorry this experience has been a complete fail due to my own user error but I’m more disappointed that there was no communication, care, or support for my problem from BIAS. Needless to say Podcasting News has turned me on to other great tools besides this one. I’ve also discovered on my own that there are dozens of other excellent iPhone recorders that work just as well and many of which are FREE.
This looks great. What are some recommendations for a quality microphone that’s compatible with the iPod Touch?
This is in response to Unhappy Camper’s post:
I am sorry to hear about your experience but we are more than happy to replace the authorizations lost by the computer repairs. We understand that sometimes computers will stop working and you don’t get the chance to de-authorize, or sometimes you might forget, it happens to the best of us.
As far as you not receiving a response from us, I don’t know what to say. We answer every email that we receive. It could be that spam filtering stopped our response from getting through to you. Please email me directly and I will make sure you are taken care of – cory@bias-inc.com
We try to make sure that every peak user can use their software, we do not ignore user emails and we care very much about Customer Service.
Howdy all,
wondering if any of you had a chance to check out Retro Recorder by McDSP?
Some of you know us as the high end audio signal processing software company making awarding winning plug-ins for Pro Tools for the last ten years. Well, now we’re making iPhone applications too.
First out of the chute – Retro Recorder – Enhanced Mobile Recording – with Style!
Retro Recorder has patent pending technology called Audio Level eXtension (ALX) that maximizes audio levels without causing distortion – i.e. the recordings can be enhanced! You can actually hear what you’ve recorded!
You can get more information from http://www.retrorecorder.com. Or check us out in the Apple iPhone App store. Thanks for your attention!
Colin McDowell