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I'm looking to have a highly portable setup for binaural field recordings, and since I take my phone everywhere, it would be nice to use my iPhone as a recorder.

It isn't possible to have stereo mic input through the 3.5mm jack due to the fact that the three channels are divided up using two for output and only one for input, so I'd imagine this would only be possible with some sort of Lightning adapter.

I've looked around some, and I've found a number of stereo Lightning microphones, but no adapters. Does such a product exist? Is there another way to solve my problem?

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  • One way (assuming no simpler Lightning product exists) is to get the Lightning Camera Connection Kit (the USB port) and a small 2in2out class-compliment/iOS compatible USB audio interface like the TASCAM 2x2, and just do that.
    – Linuxios
    Oct 1, 2016 at 16:13
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    There are a lot of iDevice external pre-amp setups... this is a selection - sweetwater.com/c1058--iPad_iPhone_Interfaces - from 40 to 1500 USD.
    – Tetsujin
    Oct 1, 2016 at 18:10
  • Thanks for the suggestions! unfortunately it looks like nearly all of those aren't very portable. The Line 6 Sonic Port might do the trick, though...
    – Tuesday
    Oct 1, 2016 at 22:39

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NO. The TRRS connector on an iPhone (or any other brand of phone, for that matter) supports only MONO microphones.

If you want to record stereo (or more channels) then you must use an external sound interface. There are some rather small ones that are suitable for use with a phone. For example the "IK Multimedia iRig Pro DUO 2-Channel Audio and MIDI Interface for iOS, Android and Mac/PC"

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  • A few years have passed. Has anyone figured out a way to record stereo mic into an iPhone? :) Thanks!
    – Hugo H
    Jan 27, 2022 at 15:55

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