Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards N1X audio interface, record to iPhone video?

Before I get too invested in the setup, I wanted to see if this will work. I've just started an online piano class where I need to record a video myself playing. My hope was to plug the N1X right in to my iPhone via the audio interface and that the camera app would use the sound from the audio interface rather than the mic. Is that the case? It's not totally clear to me from the manual, which says I need a DAW to record, not sure if the iPhone works like a DAW in this case.

If not, what's my best bet? Can I hook my phone and audio interface to my phone and record them at the same time (with OBS perhaps?)

Basically what would be ideal is one step so I don't need to do any post-production to add the music to the video in the interest of time.

Thanks!

If anyone cares, the answer is yes. I was able to plug the usb with the audio interface in to my phone and record a video. The sound from the piano was picked up as the audio input. This makes it easy to record videos of myself playing with high quality sound. Yay

Wow, that’s great, so the USB audio is compatible with iOS devices! Might switch to such a setup myself since I’m a bit tired of having to combine separate audio and video and syncing them. Did you use the Apple camera connection adapter?

I’ve also had trouble ‘syncing’ audio (line-in to computer) with video. Last time I tried, I recorded audio/video into a regular camera and simultaneously recorded audio directly from the piano into my computer; I then used a program (can’t remember the name) to do the audio syncing. The best I could do was to visually/manually try to match the direct audio track with the audio track from the camera, but no matter how much I tried, the audio would end up out of sync. So basically, the first half of the audio recording would be fine (match the video), but then it would gradually start going out of sync, and by the end, my hands and the sound were completely out of sync. Needless to say, I gave up.

At some point I considered the Zoom Q8. This camera has line-in for direct audio recording, so problem solved, I thought; but then I learned that these cameras produce the so-called ‘fish eye’ effect, and decided to pass on it.

I wonder if the ‘audio’ is recorded on a separate track on the iPhone? This could come in handy for further editing/enhancement of the audio track; perhaps using a basic DAW like GarageBand?

Pete, it depends on the camera as well. I have two Fujifilm mirrorless cameras, a pretty old X-M1 and a newer one X-E3. I export the audio from my N1X on a thumb drive in WAV which is purely digital so there's no way it can get out of sync since it just digitally combines some existing internal samples into a rendered WAV file (or at least that would be the proper way of doing it). However when I sync that audio with the video from the two cameras, it gradually goes out of sync with the X-M1 and stays in sync with the X-E3. Might be due to skipped frames or bad internal clock in one of the cameras. Or probably truncation of FPS rate because on the X-M1 it's 30 FPS whereas on the X-E3 it's 24 FPS.

BTW, I always start recording with a short staccato note where I try to move my finger visually as much and quick as possible which then gives me a visual clue to sync with the note attack from the audio file and I do that in iMovie because it shows the audio peaks beneath the video track.

Awesome information, thanks!

I can't wait to get my P-515 and try it myself tonight

Good to know, CG. I never thought about that, but yes, the camera I used was a cheap Panasonic.
Still, this ‘direct’ recording into an iPhone/iPad definitely simplifies things, and eliminates (for me) the need for a more expensive camera. I already have an iPad, but I’ve been considering upgrading to the newer ‘Pro’ for a while. I assume the camera on these newer iPads would be better than the one on my old iPad. So yes, this would be a win-win for me.

Can you confirm whether the sound recorded was stereo or mono?

Stereo. In fact, I had headphones plugged in when I took the video so it's possible it's binaural, but I can't tell.

Here's the actual video I took: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWDHLDSXIBg

Forgive my mediocre sight reading skills, part of my reason for recording is a new online piano course and I wanted to capture what my sight reading ability is.

I tried it on my P-515 and it works, not so surprising but just to confirm

Also works with the various social media apps like Instagram, Snapchat etc that I tried. Really cool.

Yamaha are lucky to own Steinberg and use their audio interfaces It’s a clear advantage in the modern digital age.

I used a cheaper non-Apple version, quality seems good though: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TWTXQ51/

Are you sure the audio and video are in sync? USB audio tends to come with typically 200 ms (min 40 ms) delay...

That doesn’t matter. There’s a clocking information in the USB stream and the iPhone can correctly sync the two streams even if there’s one minute lag. It would just wait for the data to appear to merge it at the proper place.

I know it can, but have you checked if it actually does?

You can see for yourself in the above video. My left 5 is pretty clearly in time, I personally don't detect any latency (I'd notice 200ms, maybe not 40ms.)

Thanks for posting this. This will be useful with the Jazz learning site that I am using. How did you mount the iPhone?

Ahem... well, it's a little janky for now. I need to get a proper tripod and mount. For that video I had the phone in this https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01C7UYCWW/ which I then put on a nearby music stand and bent the legs so it stayed in place. It was far from ideal, especially for positioning

So, we’ve confirmed that it’s possible to record audio/video directly into an iPhone/iPad from the N1X’s audio interface (or other models with built-in audio interface). This is great.

Is it fair to assume that this can also be achieved from an external audio interface?

The idea would be to connect the piano’s line out (analog) into an external audio interface (Focusrite, Presonus, Zoom, etc...); then connect the interface’s USB to Host into the ‘Apple camera adapter’, and finally into the iPhone/iPad to record video and audio simultaneously.

I am completely new to this. When you guys said "directly into iphone" did you mean just using the lightning cable to connect the usb port with iphone? Or we still need an adapter?