As a traveling musician, I love the iPhone’s new layout for its Voice Memo program, as it allows me to make live recordings of my shows, song ideas, or just vocal cues to remember in the future, and listen to those memos in my car or on headphones. However, I’ve noticed one significant problem with the program: while small voice memos can easily be shared with my computer, memos over 8 minutes in length need to be cut up before being transferred. This isn’t too simple for me sometimes, so I set out to find a better way.
Here are a few tips for uploading large (over 8 minute) voice memos from your iPhone to your PC.
Syncing. By setting up your iPhone to sync automatically to your computer, you’ll automatically back up all of your voice memos to a special playlist in your iTunes.
Plug your iPhone into the PC that it normally syncs to, and open up iTunes. Click on the iPhone icon on the side of the screen, then select “Music.” You’ll see a checkbox that says “Include Voice Memos.” Select it, then re-sync your iPhone. Your voice memos, even the larger ones over the file limit for email transfer, will sync over to your computer for review or backup. iTunes creates a new playlist called “Voice Memos” for this app, and it’s now constant–every time you connect the iPhone to your computer, voice memos will sync, so be sure to delete any from your computer that you don’t really want to store.
Better Programs. If you’re dead set on getting iPhone voice memos to your computer wirelessly, and you regularly record voice memos over eight minutes long, it’s time to look at some other iPhone apps that better suit your purposes.
FourTrack is an iPhone App designed for musicians, as it provides the basic functionality of an old four track recorder, but even if you’re not a musician you’ll find it convenient to transfer files through a wireless connection straight from FourTrack’s main interface. It also allows you to add panning or even adjust the volume of certain memos, and at $10 it’s well worth it, though it’s worth noting that it’s a bit more of a hassle to start a new memo than it is with the iPhone’s Voice Memo app, as the design is more for complex recording.
Do you have any other tips for loading large iPhone voice memos to a PC? Post in our comments section below.