I was making some adjustments (lowering the action) on my short-scale bass yesterday, and was again reminded of how a Snark tuner doesn't seem to be the best tool when trying to adjust the intonation on a bass.

I have a really nice tuning app on my iPhone (seems to track the fundamental better), but again, trying to pick up an un-amplified sound from a bass string is another exercise in frustration.

So I went looking for a mic that I could plug into my iPhone that might work better, and stumbled across this little item. Not a "microphone" but will allow me to plug my instruments directly into my iPhone (or iPad if I do get one) which might work better. Pretty reasonable price too. It has a TRRS plug, so I'd need to add a $10 dongle, but NBD.

Any thoughts? Alternatives?

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/iRig2--ik-multimedia-irig-2-guitar-interface-for-ios-and-mac

check out this :

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... martphones

Interesting piece of kit, but kinda overkill for what I'm trying to do!!

Just trying to get Instrument Audio=>iPhone/iPad

I don't mind adding extra features (I'm as much of a gear slut as anyone else! ) but this set of features doesn't do much for me.

I looked at this, but I'm uncertain what level the iOS apps expect. This would obviously only provide instrument- not line-level input, which might work for my purposes. Not sure. Maybe for $13 (plus $10 for the TRRS-to-Lightning dongle) I should just give it a try.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/iCable--peterson-adapter-cable

I have the Peterson app which works fantastic, and was really nice before Apple got rid of the standard mini input jack. Still works great for general tuning when amplified. For serious setups I recommend getting a good tuner. I use a Peterson Stroboflip. The tuner in Apple Logic I used for the first time with my new MacBook Pro this week and that seemed to work well.

At Interlochen a few years ago Greg Howard made his debut as a comedian at the open mic in the Karlin Inn when my Stick was out of tune and the tuner in my Helix just would not work. Someone passed me a Snark. Afterwords at home the Helix worked fine, discovered the issue was the routing was off when the tuner was selected. I don’t always trust multi effects tuners, sometimes with new strings they are not accurate.

I just bought a new MacBook M1 Pro, and was a bit put off that later a Best Buy salesman hooked me up with a nice USB hub. If you rely on Apple it seems you get guided into buying a lot of adapters, but go to Best Buy and they hook you up with third party devices that do what you need. At least Apple brought back the SD card slot.

Thanks, Steven. I have a strobe tuner app on my phone now, but I've made note of the Peterson product.

I usually rely on the built-in tuner in my amp modeler, but when I'm doing setups I'm in the shop, so still trying to find some way of interfacing the instrument to the iOS device. The simple TRS-to-lightning cable I mentioned above won't work - it's designed for line-level, not instrument-level input as I suspected. Since I'm not looking for much more than the basic ability to connect, the iRig 2 seems to be the least expensive option. It does much more than I need, but hey, you never know when those "extra" features end up getting used.

BTW - nice to see that Apple put an SD card slot on the Mac. Too bad they can't get it together to do the same on their iPads!

Just obtained a 3.5 stereo to lighting bolt cable. The Peterson app out performs the Stroboflip for my Sticks. Able to go stereo into the phone, which doesn't work on the Stroboflip, mono only.


This is what the old Stroboflip looks like:


Still works, but compared to the app, I'm thinking it's time for an upgrade if they have one. I'd like to get a better way of connecting to my iPhone, but that "harness" is now in my Stick gig bag.

Wow nice. Let us know how it works for you. Interesting.

So you’re running an instrument-level signal directly into the phone?? Interesting!! Pursuant to the discussion I started on the StroboClip, do you think this - the combination of direct input into the phone and the iStroboSoft app - to be adequate for adjusting intonation?

Well, my first attempt at doing what Steven did is a fail...

Not sure if I have one or two failure points. One for sure is the adapter cable between the instrument and the 3.5mm to lightning connector. The one I'm using is male 6.35mm TRS stereo on one end, and male 3.5mm TRS stereo on the other.

Peterson has one on their site that is female 6.35mm going to male 3.5mm TRRS. I have no idea what the configuration of the female end is, but I ordered it ($15) because my research seems to indicate getting a signal into an iOS device (that will also apparently disable the phone's microphone) has to be done using a four-conductor TRRS configuration. That may be my second failure point as my lightning adapter has God only knows what inside of the female connector. It appears that the majority of these connectors (even the "MFi Apple-certified" devices) are designed only to accommodate output devices - headphones or earbuds with a 3.5mm connector. To handle input, they must accept a four-conductor TRRS 3.5mm plug and be wired accordingly. I could find no specs indicating what my lightning adapter dongle has, so I found a specific dongle that does have a TRRS female input jack, and ordered that. It was advertised on BPH Photo's site specifically as TRRS to support microphones for use in conjunction with shooting video.

When I get the connector from Peterson, I'm going to figure out how it's wired. I'm not expecting the input to be stereo. If I'm correct, I may have to cobble up a cable to combine the Stick's stereo output into a mono signal specifically for use with the Peterson app.

Note that initially I thought I was going to be good to go, as when using the iOS Voice Memos app on the iPhone, the input seemed to work fine. However, I noticed that the phone's microphone was not muted - what I recorded was both my plunking on the Stick and any ambient noise in the room. The tuner app I already have (InsTune) didn't pick up the signal at all, nor did the primitive tuner function in a metronome app I have.

Stay tuned.

PS - Note that the Peterson app hasn't been updated for four years. In an April response to a user inquiry on this in the reviews the developers indicated that a refresh was in the works. However there seem to be no recent user reviews indicating that the app has lost any functionality from iOS updates - it's still getting 5-star reviews.

Okay - got the dongle from Peterson today.

Weird - still have no idea how this is wired. I get no continuity on any part of the circuit going through this dongle, not even what should be a "common ground" corresponding to the sleeve of the plugs.

But despite this, when I plugged the Peterson dongle into the female TRRS socket on the lightning dongle, then plugged the Stick into it, everything worked fine. Had me a bit puzzled for a minute, but then realized that I was getting some crosstalk when plugging only one channel (melody/bass) from the Stick into this rig.

What was really interesting is when I plugged a stereo cable directly into the Stick, then into the Peterson dongle, I got both sides of the Stick into the Peterson app (or any other) without having to futz with the cables. I had assumed that because the Peterson dongle looked like it was designed for mono input (based on pics on their web site) that I would have to combine the two signals before running them into the phone, but that turns out not to be the case; a 6.35mm stereo patch cable works fine.

I can't speak to its accuracy until I have something to compare it against, but it sure makes it easy to tune. It seems to pick up the signal w/out problem, and the display is quite stable.

Total cost (not including the cables that didn't work ) was $10 for the app, and $15 for the dongle. If you don't have a short 6.35mm TRS/Stereo patch cable laying around, you'll need to add one of those.