iphone as zoom alternative?

I'd say no. It would be great and useful… if you didn't need additional hardware and if the phone recorded better quality than 16/44k. But investing in and carrying around special adapters in order to use your iPhone as a recorder is, to me, not as simple, reliable, or high-quality as carrying a small dedicated recorder.

For scratch recordings or quick unanticipated stuff in the field the phone itself can be good, and it's nice that you can edit and upload in the device. But if you want quality and are willing to make the effort to carry extra stuff around, carry a recorder.
 
I would rather use a $30-50 voice recorder than spend an equivalent amount to pimp-up an iGadget for recording audio.

All of the audio recording software for iGadgets (and for Android, for that matter) is terrible IMHO. None of it was designed by anybody who understands audio recording. All the UIs were apparently created by game designers. Long on whiz and short on functionality. Not a single one features such basic things as a functional record level control with a record level meter on the same screen. That is a complete show-stopper IMHO. And the mic input was designed for making phone calls.

It is an interesting article, although the author is woefully ignorant of basic audio and electronic principles. Somebody has to keep fiddling with these kinds of things to keep the wheel of progress turning, but I think we are still several generations away from decent production audio recording performance. Give it a few years.
 
I got one of the Alesis record adapter for Iphone as a gift from my girlfriend a while back, its a neat Idea as it has XLR's with phantom, however the workflow seems rather silly since you arent recording to removable media, forcing you to sync with Itunes in order to retrieve your sound files. not to mention it cost her more than a Tascam dr-07, I played with it for a while but the work flow was too cumbersome, and now it sits on a shelf gathering dust.

I guess now Ill keep it as a back up since I just switched from my old Iphone to the HTC Vivid, therefore leaving the Iphone gathering dust as well.
 
I tend to take audio articles written in photo or video magazines and website with a grain of salt. I've yet to read one that has been in any way accurate. Using your iphone to record audio as a primary recorder is not a good idea. I like plugging in something like the Tascam iM2 to make the audio on my videos I record of my kids sound less crappy, but that's about it.
 
I actually have, and have used, the Blue Mikey 2.0 and free version of the BlueFire app with my 3rd Gen iPod.
The recording is pretty good. It could be a nice back-up recorder or a decent stereo/ambient recorder, but there are some drawbacks.
As previously mentioned, the need to save and send files to the web to store/retrieve is a stone drag. Also, if you were going to use this
as your main recording unit (not recommended for lots of reasons, many already mentioned), you'd probably be better served by having an iPod
dedicated to that task; your music and video files, and other apps and programs severely limit the free space needed to record and save large audio
files. By the time you invest in the largest GB iPod and the mike and app, you could already have purchased a Zoom or a Tascam.

GJ
 
At present, the devices for iPhone and iPad are not ready for prime time. The Alesis device has promise, maybe it will be ready on version 2 or 3. Note that the iPad is creeping into pro productions; Sound Devices has iPad control on 7 series Sound Devices for example. The new Canon C300 cam will have some yet to be seen factory integration as well. I am waiting for shipment of a iPad midi converter so I can use it as a control surface for a Traveler Mk3 and also for mixing in Logic and STPro. I keep telling myself to be patient.

Grant
 
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