How to Record Vocals into Your iPhone

Use the built-in mic for speed, and a real mic through an interface for quality. The built-in mic is genuinely useful for catching ideas and scratch vocals, while a dedicated microphone into a class-compliant interface is what you reach for when the vocal matters.

Both record straight into an app on the phone. The difference is the front end, and the front end is where vocal quality mostly lives.

The phone's own mic is ready the instant you open a recording app, which makes it perfect for capturing a melody, a lyric or a scratch vocal before it slips away. Some apps add noise reduction to tidy up a room, like Reel's Studio Vocal Mode.

It will not match a proper microphone, but it is far more usable than people expect for demos and ideas, and it is always with you.

For a real vocal, plug a microphone into a class-compliant interface and the interface into the phone. A dynamic mic needs no phantom power and is forgiving of untreated rooms. A condenser mic captures more detail but needs phantom power and a quieter space.

Nothing else you buy moves the needle this much. A decent mic and interface will transform a vocal far more than any app setting.

For most home and mobile setups a dynamic mic is the easier win. It rejects more of the room, forgives a noisy space, and needs no phantom power, which is why so many podcasts and untreated-room vocals use one.

A condenser gives more air and detail, but it hears everything, so it wants a quiet, fairly treated room and phantom power from the interface. If your space is noisy, a dynamic will usually sound better in practice.

Keep the mic about a hand's width away, and use a pop filter or sing slightly across the mic to tame plosives. Record somewhere quiet with soft furnishings to cut reflections. Record in 32-bit float so a belted note does not clip, and leave a little headroom.

Small things add up: a stable mic position, a consistent distance and a quiet room will do more for the vocal than anything you fix afterwards.

Reel records vocals both ways, the built-in mic with Studio Vocal Mode for a fast take, or any class-compliant interface for a quality one, in clean 32-bit float. And because it is a four-track, you can stack a lead vocal and harmonies without leaving the app, with every overdub latency compensated so the harmony sits exactly where you sang it. If stacking harmonies on wired headphones ever felt broken, it was: every Play press used to swallow the first half-second of the backing and clip the transient off the new take. We traced it to an iOS route cascade and removed it. Worth knowing that Studio Vocal Mode turns itself off while AirPods or any Bluetooth headphones are connected, so use wired headphones if you want it. If you are singing rather than standing at the phone, arm the take and let your first note start it.

See the Reel workflow.