Among its new features, the latest iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro integrate a new microphone array. This seemingly subtle but impactful change enables some advanced audio recording features. Among those new features is the simple multitrack recording support of Apple’s Voice Memos app.
Simple multitrack recording coming soon to Apple’s Voice Memos app
The concept of a multitrack recording is simple, but it has always been difficult to execute on smartphones due to the technical limitations of microphones. It basically consists of recording audio from multiple sources separately and combining them into the same final recording. It seems that Apple has managed to solve some of the main technical challenges that prevented seeing something like this on mobile phones.
In a short demo video, Apple showed a guitarist marking out a progression and then singing over it. Apple’s Voice Memos app multitrack recording support also includes a new UI that lets you tweak certain parameters on each recording layer. The video showed an example with two audio tracks, but it is unclear if the app will support even more layers. We’ll have to wait a bit longer for confirmation on that. What’s impressive is that the guitarist in the demo performed the entire recording without headphones. This suggests that Apple is leveraging its new AI tricks to power this feature.
More advanced audio recording capabilities on the iPhone 16 series
Apple has always focused iPhones on content creation. For a long time, the company’s mobile devices have been among the best at recording high-quality video and audio with ease. The iPhone 16 series is no exception, and Apple has boosted its content creation capabilities thanks to the power of AI. The latter works along with the new microphone array to enable Spatial Audio content recording.
Plus, the new Audio Mix lets you choose how you want your voice to sound during video recordings. Whether you prefer the device to capture all voices or just those of the people framed, both are possible. Lastly, there’s a new AI-powered wind noise reduction system for better audio quality during recordings and calls. It is possible that some of these features are exclusive to the iPhone 16 series, while others would reach more eligible devices with the iOS 18 update.
2024-09-10 15:07:40