Cardioid microphones are perhaps the most common microphones you would want to connect to an iPhone and they are workhorses for many people working in audio. If your mic has a TRS jack you’ll also need a TRS to TRRS adapter between the mic jack and the Apple headphone adapter.
Then plug the adapter into the lightning socket. One of the initial challenges to overcome is that smartphones, including the iPhone, rely on 3.5mm TRRS audio connections instead of the standard TRS connection. The stereo cable produces no audio so it won’t work.

The iPhone’s native camera app will allow you to use an external microphone, but it won’t tell you whether it is using the external microphone signal or reverting to your internal microphone. Three contacts = TRS jack (three letters). That’s great if you don’t have a dedicated studio space with sound treatment, but still want a high quality audio recording.

Also beware that when using this setup, you have three different points where you control audio levels: the audio mixer input for the microphone, the master audio output of the audio mixer and the iPhone recording level. For this example, we’re going to connect a Shure SM-58 XLR cardioid microphone to an iPhone with a fairly simple set of adapters.

It worked perfectly with my my previous iPhone 6, and I believe it worked fine with my iPhone X, when I used it with a lightning-to-TRRS adapter. With a TRS connector, there’s no way audio can travel in both directions. Some people report that their iPhone external microphone is not working, and I can sympathize. You can plug the microphone’s jack straight into the iPhone’s headphone socket. Audio quality varies and you get what you pay for, but depending on your needs, some of these microphones can offer an easy solution for your use case. You can use pretty much any microphone with your iPhone, provided you have the correct adapter or adapters. In those situations, the sound recorded by the iPhone automatically makes your project seem amateurish. However, by making the Ground connector smaller a Microphone connector can be added, creating the TRRS connector.
If you are plugging a TRS microphone into the iPhone’s lightning socket, plug the microphone’s jack into a TRS to TRRS adapter, then plug that adapter into a Lightning to 3.5 mm Headphone Jack Adapter. Have you tried that sequences lately? Our setup of adapters looks like this: Sony wireless receiver with XLR output > XLR to TRRS adapter > Lightning headphone adapter. Connecting a Rode NTG-2 condenser shotgun microphone to an iPhone using an audio mixer. So, TRS jacks have three metal parts but TRRS jacks have four metal parts. O que é um ARDUINO e o que ele pode fazer por você! In most cases, you’ll only need one of these connectors. TIP: How to identify TRS and TRRS jacks.