iPod Garbled Piano Recording

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I finally made a dock connector for my third generation iPod that I’ve been making experimental recordings on with Linux and an AT822 stereo mic. Prior to making the dock connector I was only able to make mono recordings via the headphone jack. Since the dock connector only accepts a line level signal, I am pre-amping the AT822 with my ailing Sony PCM-M1 DAT recorder (it eats tapes, so it’s a useful retirement).

With this setup I am able to use the otherwise useless DAT recorder by connecting the stereo mic to the mic input, putting the device in record mode, adjusting the levels, and then taking the line out to the dock connector on the iPod as shown in the photograph. The recordings are relatively clean except for a tiny bit of high frequency interference that I haven’t tracked down yet.

The only other problem is that recording in stereo seems to tax the resources of the iPod. When I try to record at a sampling rate higher than 44.1kHz the audio is likely to suffer from a bizarre digital jitter effect. Here’s an example of a piano recording at 88kHz that I played and edited together to illustrate the jitter problem. I wouldn’t use this rate for anything I want to record well, but I kind of like the stuttering sound it creates as the iPod fails to process the audio quickly enough to store it accurately.

iPod Garbled Piano Recording

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About John CS Keston

John CS Keston is an award winning transdisciplinary artist reimagining how music, video art, and computer science intersect. His work both questions and embraces his backgrounds in music technology, software development, and improvisation leading him toward unconventional compositions that convey a spirit of discovery and exploration through the use of graphic scores, chance and generative techniques, analog and digital synthesis, experimental sound design, signal processing, and acoustic piano. Performers are empowered to use their phonomnesis, or sonic imaginations, while contributing to his collaborative work. Originally from the United Kingdom, John currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he is a professor of Digital Media Arts at the University of St Thomas. He founded the sound design resource, AudioCookbook.org, where you will find articles and documentation about his projects and research. John has spoken, performed, or exhibited original work at New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2022), the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2022), the International Digital Media Arts Conference (iDMAa 2022), International Sound in Science Technology and the Arts (ISSTA 2017-2019), Northern Spark (2011-2017), the Weisman Art Museum, the Montreal Jazz Festival, the Walker Art Center, the Minnesota Institute of Art, the Eyeo Festival, INST-INT, Echofluxx (Prague), and Moogfest. He produced and performed in the piece Instant Cinema: Teleportation Platform X, a featured project at Northern Spark 2013. He composed and performed the music for In Habit: Life in Patterns (2012) and Words to Dead Lips (2011) in collaboration with the dance company Aniccha Arts. In 2017 he was commissioned by the Walker Art Center to compose music for former Merce Cunningham dancers during the Common Time performance series. His music appears in The Jeffrey Dahmer Files (2012) and he composed the music for the short Familiar Pavement (2015). He has appeared on more than a dozen albums including two solo albums on UnearthedMusic.com.

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