IK Multimedia has released so many iRig devices down the years that it seems surprising that a mic built into an audio interface hasn’t been one of them, but here it is now in the shape of the iRig Stream Mic Pro. In fact, IK claims that this is pretty much “an entire studio setup in one elegant, compact design”.
Appearance wise, the iRig Stream Mic Pro looks very much like what we’ve just described. Up top there’s a condenser microphone with dual mic capsules and a choice of cardioid, figure 8, omnidirectional and stereo pickup patterns. Between them, these are designed to cover everything from recording podcasts and interviews to instruments and musical ensembles. There’s adjustable gain and a selectable high-pass filter.
The audio interface bit of the iRig Stream Mic Pro offers a 3.5mm stereo input for plugging in synths, mixers or anything else, while the monitoring mix control enables you to blend the direct and recorded signal going to the headphone output.
You also get IK’s Loopback+ technology, which could be particularly useful for live streaming. You could, for example, plug a phone into the audio input to play music, but route the mic signal to an external effects app for processing, before sending the whole lot to an app such as Instagram or TikTok.
iRig Stream Mic Pro operates at 24-bit/96kHz, and all of its features are controlled by a single knob. Holding this down temporarily mutes the microphone, and there are LED indicators for visual level monitoring.
There are two modes of operation: stereo and multichannel. By default, iRig Stream operates in stereo mode, in which all inputs (plus loopback) are mixed to - you guessed it - stereo, but in multichannel mode the two capsules are routed to channels 3 and 4, giving you four channels of audio to send to your DAW.
iRig Stream Mic Pro ships with both mini-DIN to iOS Lightning and mini-DIN to USB-C cables, so can be easily connected to iOS, Android, PC and Mac hardware. If you use the optional DC power supply, you can also charge your Lightning-connected device while you’re recording.
Supplied software includes iRig Recorder 3 LE (iPhone/iPad/Android), an audio and video recording app, and also MixBox CS (iPad) and MixBox SE (Mac/PC), an FX suite that includes dynamics, EQ, reverb processors. You get a 5/8-inch to 1/4-inch thread adapter in the box, too.
iRig Stream Mic Pro is available now priced at $170/€170. Find out more on the IK Multimedia website.
