Digital DJ Tips' Phil Morse has been getting up close and personal with IK's new iRig Stream audio interface and put it through a very thorough test, particularly regarding DJ applications.

Read here why iRig Stream has become Digital DJ Tips' go-to interface and why Phil recommends it over the alternatives.

"The main use for this device for DJs would be for recording their DJ sets or recording music podcasts while mixing from their DJ gear, and it soon becomes clear that the iRig Stream’s feature set is ideally suited into this task."

"One of the issues with recording a DJ set from many controllers, especially cheaper controllers, is that it is not easy to both record and listen to your music at the same time. The reason for this is that there is often only a single “Master out” – and so if you plug this into your speakers (quite reasonably, so you and your audience can hear your performance), there is nowhere to plug in a recording device, as you’ve “used your outputs up. With the iRig Stream though, you can plug your speakers into the 1/8″ mini-jack socket for always-on direct monitoring, and because there is an audio out volume control just for that monitor output, effectively the iRig Stream is giving you the independent second output that is missing from your controller, making it possible to record your set on one “output” and listen to your music on the other. We’re actually finding this useful at Digital DJ Tips for recording tutorials, demos, and reviews with controllers of this type, and frankly, we still use it with the bigger controllers and mixers, because on once it’s all set up, it’s just super-convenient."

"While it’s absolutely fantastic for recording your DJ sets and mixtapes, it’s also capable of sitting at the heart of a small content production home studio, if for example, you’d like to get started on doing a podcast or producing higher quality live streams. It’s an easy-to-use device that just works very well."

"It’s surprising that a device like this hasn’t existed before. But as I said earlier, DJs wanting something to achieve this use case in the past have usually had to use a more expensive, more fully-featured audio interface, with features and functions they don’t need – or indeed use an adaptor cable to “hack” their phone or iPad to accept a single, mono input to record that way. Neither solution is massively satisfactory. The iRig Stream changes all that. With up to 24-bit, 48kHz sampling, the audio quality is great, and for us this is the first audio interface we’ve found that hits this sweet spot that we’ve been looking for recording DJ sets, with the possibility of direct monitoring, recording crowd noises if we wish, and having simple yet effective control over the recording volume."

"It’s a deceptively simple device, and one that we’d suggest should be a serious consideration for the DJ bag of anyone who has recording or streaming needs not fulfilled by their DJ software (or, of course, who DJs away from software altogether)."

"Overall, we loved this little interface, and the best praise we can give it is that we’ve adopted it and use it every to record performances right here at Digital DJ Tips."

Rating 5/5 stars - Awesome for recording DJ sets!

Read the full review and watch Phil's hands-on video on Digital DJ Tips
Learn more about iRig Stream