In 2015, iZotope launched their Spire smartphone recording app. In no time at all, musicians were recording and editing their own music — from their own sofas. “Can it get any better than this?!” they asked. With the recent release of their new Spire Studio, iZotope has replied, “Yes. Yes it can.”
Not much bigger than a large coffee mug, Spire Studio is an attractive, portable device with a built-in pro-level mic and two XLR/TS combo jacks with extremely quiet Grace Design preamps. It even has 48-volt phantom power, ready for any mic you own ranging from dynamic mics to even your expensive condenser mics. From the basement to the beach, Spire Studio can record anything, in any setting.
Spire Studio starts each session with Spire Soundcheck. With this nifty feature you can play at your normal volume for a few minutes, and the Spire Studio automatically sets ideal levels to give you the clearest sound. That’s it. You’re ready to play.
The super-cool part is that you can control the Spire Studio with your smartphone and the Spire app. This free app, available in Apple’s App Store, lets you record, edit, mix, and share your songs. You can layer up to eight tracks, remove noise with audio correction, tighten up recordings, create seamless loops — there’s even a library of studio-level effects, including reverb and delays.
So what can you do with Spire Studio and the Spire app? iZotope is currently on tour with several artists. Here are just a few of the samples they’ve sent from the road. All of these were created using the Spire system.
Not bad, right? iZotope’s Spire Studio and Spire app are rewriting the rules for recording. Artists who don’t have the space, and honestly the budget, to invest in a conventional personal studio now have access to studio-quality recording virtually anywhere. That’s how you change the game.
