A posting of Richard Crowley, back in July 2015, led me to the Instamic campaign on Indiegogo. Neat concept, I thought, and after weighing the pros and cons decided to throw some of my money into the ring and see what would result. The campaign was doing well, and had already surpassed its fundraising goal, and ended up being funding 539% over its original target...but in these campaigns there are no guarantees.
The product reached several of its stretch goals, which saw boosts to the internal memory capacity (2GB>4GB>8GB), recording capability (48kHz>96kHz) and with some technological upgrades, streaming audio capability was added, and MEMS technology brought along upgrades to the microphone capabilities; increased frequency response (50 to 18kHz>45 to 20kHz), sensitivity (-26dBFS>-46dBFS), maximum SPL (120dB>133dB), dynamic range, total harmonic distortion, and signal to noise ratio.
There was some controversy, as Michele Baggio decided to add in Apple MFI (Made for iDevice) certification to the initial release of the Instamic, and shipping dates started slipping. Many backers complained that they did not use Apple devices and didn't need the streaming capability, and finally, as of a month+ ago, Michele finally offered to produce a Non-MFI version of the Instamic and ship those devices. But here we are a month + later and the latest update is that the Apple MFI certification has been received, and production of the Instamic will start up with delivery of the recording devices to be completed before year end.
There have been plenty of challenges along the way (you can read about those on the Indiegogo site), but Michele Baggio and his team have surmounted all and I'm looking forward to receiving my two Instamic Pro devices...which are waterproof to 3.2 feet for 30 minues (IP67), and can record in mono, dual mono, and stereo. The regular Instamic is 'splash proof' and cannot record in stereo. The microphones have Bluetooth 4.0 and can be controlled with iPhone and Android applications (yet to be released).
I think these will be useful to have in my audio toolbox collection...and will share my experiences after I get a chance to put them to work.
The product reached several of its stretch goals, which saw boosts to the internal memory capacity (2GB>4GB>8GB), recording capability (48kHz>96kHz) and with some technological upgrades, streaming audio capability was added, and MEMS technology brought along upgrades to the microphone capabilities; increased frequency response (50 to 18kHz>45 to 20kHz), sensitivity (-26dBFS>-46dBFS), maximum SPL (120dB>133dB), dynamic range, total harmonic distortion, and signal to noise ratio.
There was some controversy, as Michele Baggio decided to add in Apple MFI (Made for iDevice) certification to the initial release of the Instamic, and shipping dates started slipping. Many backers complained that they did not use Apple devices and didn't need the streaming capability, and finally, as of a month+ ago, Michele finally offered to produce a Non-MFI version of the Instamic and ship those devices. But here we are a month + later and the latest update is that the Apple MFI certification has been received, and production of the Instamic will start up with delivery of the recording devices to be completed before year end.
There have been plenty of challenges along the way (you can read about those on the Indiegogo site), but Michele Baggio and his team have surmounted all and I'm looking forward to receiving my two Instamic Pro devices...which are waterproof to 3.2 feet for 30 minues (IP67), and can record in mono, dual mono, and stereo. The regular Instamic is 'splash proof' and cannot record in stereo. The microphones have Bluetooth 4.0 and can be controlled with iPhone and Android applications (yet to be released).
I think these will be useful to have in my audio toolbox collection...and will share my experiences after I get a chance to put them to work.
