Should you use Airplane Mode on your iPhone when recording with an Edutige microphone

In this video you’ll learn about whether you should use Airplane Mode when recording audio with your iPhone. This is a test that was inspired by all the people who record bird sounds with their iPhones, as I keep telling people to use Airplane Mode. But what if you don’t use Airplane Mode? What’s the difference?

So I put the microphone that’s been popular among birders, the Edutige EIM-003, onto my iPhone 6 and tried recording some audio using the native Voice Memos app.

The results were surprising, to say the least!

What I found is that under the conditions of the test, which were recording audio only, outside with the mic connected directly to the iPhone, I couldn’t tell the difference between having the iPhone in Airplane Mode vs having everything on normally.

However, in previous tests using an ESL series cable like the ESL-001, ESL-002 or ESL-006, there was a definite buzz heard in the recording. Mind you that was in video mode and not audio only, so further testing is needed.

Recommendation

So, should you use Airplane Mode on your iPhone when recording audio or video with your iPhone? Well, yes, kind of.

In spite of the results of this simple test, I always recommend using Airplane Mode because it ensures that no interference from cellular, wifi or Bluetooth could muck up your recordings. The bigger benefit to using Airplane Mode when recording audio or video with your iPhone is that you won’t have your recording stopped by a phone call or you won’t get a notification when a text message arrives.

Next steps

Another test or two are definitely in order to see if using the cables makes a difference, or if video vs audio is the reason for interference, or lack thereof. Maybe it’s better shielding or hardware in the iPhone 6 because I have encountered interference when using an iPhone 4 and iPhone 5.

Anyway, check out what happens and let me know your thoughts about using Airplane Mode vs not using Airplane Mode when recording audio or video with your iPhone or iPad.