A friend asked if I would check out the new Spire Studio and evaluate it. As a touring singer/songwriter, I have very little patience for tech stuff and have shied away from recording and editing software like Pro-Tools because I did not want to invest the time, but I was told the Spire was no-hassle. Here’s my first 24 hours with Spire:

On our way to a show I checked out a Spire Studio “How To” vid online, got to the gig and, during load-in, opened Spire, turned it on, hit the Soundcheck function for a level, and asked an audience member to hit “Record” when I walked on stage. Boom, that was it.

After the first set, I plugged in my ’phones for a listen and there it was! Sounded great but a little low, so I re-did the Soundcheck function (that took five seconds) and had her hit Record for the second set—all this without the Spire app, a sound person or any wires. Effortlessly, we had a great recording of the show.

Encouraged, the next morning I downloaded the Spire Studio app, which turned out super simple and intuitive, easily interfacing the app with the hardware. Using a wireless hookup between the app on my iPhone and the Spire unit was simple: no numbers to enter, just hit “Connect.”

Listening to the session, the Edit function allowed me to trim unwanted parts of the show, add effects like reverb and change volume levels. For a live room recording of the show, it was easy to set up, easy to save and share. Would I make a record out of this recording? Not necessarily, but I now have a really great and high quality recording for my own practice/review and for sharing with my bandmates, and this is incredibly valuable.

Later that day, we figured out how to record tracks directly into the on-board mic (there are also two 1/4 inch and XLR inputs which allow users to record up to three instruments at once on separate tracks). I threw down some guitar chords for a new idea, hit Stop, hit Record again on a new track, and put down a vocal line/melody idea.

We left the hotel for the next show, and because Spire can run up to four hours on battery power, we opened the session while we were in the car, added a harmony line track and percussion track by pounding on the steering wheel :-).

Adding tracks was super easy. Some people read directions, but we found the Edit and Mix functions just by exploring the app. Sitting shotgun, I listened to each track and with their very user-friendly Mix function, panned them, adjusted their volumes and relative levels, added some reverb, plugged the 1/8-inch headphone jack into the car stereo and we were all grooving. Mind you, we still had not read the directions or plugged the unit in for power.

This was easy and this was FUN. We did a simple multitrack recording and collected some spur-of-the-moment ideas. One of my bandmates also downloaded the app and I was able to export the whole session via Airdrop as an mp4 file (can do WAV files as well). End of Day One.

Since that 24-hour period, I’ve had a chance to go through the built-in effects (not a ton of choices, but enough to create a distinct vibe), use the direct line inputs for my guitar and the built-in click track. It is also worth noting that I also use a ZOOM H4N for portable recordings. While the ZOOM captures great recordings, its usability is quirky and the sessions have to be dumped into an editing software to do anything with them. Spire is more user-friendly and simply has more functions: you can multitrack record, edit, mix on the fly, and share much more easily because it can all be done from a phone and iPad.

I realized I am making high-quality recordings without feeling intimidated by recording and mixing software like Pro-Tools, nor am I beholden to a producer to do this for me. Would I put out an album using this? Probably not (even though technically I could) but I will use my Spire Studio to capture high quality audio to sync up with video. Much of what I do now ends up on social media and mostly as video, so pairing up live or simple multitrack recordings on the Spire Studio with video is simple, easy and inexpensive. You may have to edit video to make this happen, but with Spire you no longer need an audio engineer to do this type of high-quality recording. Do two or three videos this way and what you saved by not hiring an engineer just paid for your Spire.

Techie/audio gear folks may have a different opinion or a more detailed synopsis, but from a touring singer/songwriter’s perspective, the Spire Studio is my new best friend.

—Brad Cole

Award winning singer/songwriter Brad Cole tours extensively as a solo artist and with his band. Cole is a member of the jazz/blues cover project Bossa Blue and the acclaimed singer/songwriter trio Cole, Nakoa & Treacher.