Hollyland Lark A1 - Review - How to Access Mono & Stereo Control

0:00 You can choose between mono and stereos. Light off. This is the Holland A1, a wireless lavalere combo microphone from Holland. It is really small, compact. This is for anyone who is shooting content on their mobile device. If you are shooting on your phone, if you're shooting on the Pocket 3, if you're shooting on your Android device, this is something that you may want to pick up. Especially if you're recording content for social media and you just want to have better audio, you want to have crisper audio, you want to have clear audio, you can judge how the audio is sounding right now because I'm shooting this video on the iPhone and I am using the Lark A1. What I really like about it is the form factor. It's super

0:47 light. It's super small. And it comes in a really nice clam contained unit where all you need is the device itself. You put it in your pocket. you're good to go for content creation, for iPhone shoots, for shooting social media content. Get the set, pop this bad boy out, pop it on the phone, you're good to go. So, that's one thing that I really like about it. And it's just one USBC port on the back to charge everything in the unit. The only negative so far is that, and it's not really a negative, is that it might be easy to lose because of how small it is. Um, I know that for the Hollyland, um, this unit here, I did lose the microphone on the back and it's a little

1:32 tricky to get just a replacement microphone. So, I might have to just buy one from Amazon. But with small size comes big responsibilities, I guess. So, you just have to be mindful of where it is um, so that you don't lose it. So, yeah. Again, who is this for? This is anyone who's creating content and just wants to have better audio and uh just wants to prioritize that to make sure that they good they have good sound. People always say the sound is more important than the video actually. Like I can have crappy images. Nobody would care. You just want to be able to hear the person and hear them clearly. So this is going to help you to do that. It has noise cancellation. It has a really long battery life over 24 hours of run time once you use the cage the case to charge it up. And um yeah, it's just really cute and petite. It also has the

2:19 a windscreen as well that you can put on it. So, if I had to give it a rating of out of 10, I would give it I think I would give it a eight out of 10. Here's why. One is that you can't, as far as I know, there isn't a way to turn off that light. So, if you are filming with someone, maybe even in a dark place, you might not want to see the light or you may not want to see the branding. Yes, you could put some gaff tape on and cover that up. So, that is one option. And the last thing is that the audio is recorded as like a dual mono. So, if I use two separate mics on two separate people, I can't isolate one person's audio from the other. It just gets all mixed in when it comes into the iPhone. So, editor Christine here with an

3:04 update. So, I actually did a little bit of digging around and you actually can record in stereo, meaning that you can have one mic go to the left and the other go to the right. So, there's actually an app, the Lark uh sound app that you can use to set up how you want the mics to be used. So, that is super cool. So, I'll change my rating from an 8 out of a 10 to a nine out of a 10. And let me show you a little bit about uh what the app looks like and how it works and how you can use it to control the settings on the mic, which is super cool. So maybe 9.5 because you know you could you can put some tape on the light and you know call it a day. So let's take a look at that app. As you can see I have the LAR sound app here and you can see the levels moving because I have

3:51 the microphone on me. Now here's where it gets really wonderful. where it says channel mode, you can choose between mono and stereo. So, I can hit stereo and now there are two separate audio channels and you can now connect this to an audio recorder like the F3 and record each mic separately. That is amazing for a mobile phone microphone to be able to do that and give you that level of control. That is great. So, I update my rating to a 9.5 out of 10. I just wish there was option to turn off that light. And maybe maybe there is or maybe that will pop up in the app. I'm actually looking now to see if maybe um I missed

4:38 that. So, the app does give you the ability to uh identify the microphones with different colors. That's really cool. Let me show you. That's called mic identification. You know, you can schedule it to power off. Oh, wait. Indicator light switch. Look at that. Right in front of my face. Let's see that. Wow. Look at the mic. All right. Here we go. Light on, light off. Wow. Wow. Shame on me. I have to update my review. I think No, I still 9.5, maybe 9.7. It's really close to a 10. We'll see how the magnets hold up over time. In the past, you know, if you like accidentally tap it, it might

5:25 Oh, well, it's it's it's it's jiggling, but it's not moving. So, I'm using the DJI mic because I'm using the Pocket 3, but I'm also using this mic. All right. So, I mean, it's passing the flick test. I just made up Okay, that looked a little strange. I just made up the flick test. It just passed the flick test. So, I I think I'm going to have to give it like a 10 out of 10 because it is a it does what it's supposed to do and it exceeds. So, it gives you the ability to connect to an an iPhone, an Android phone, or a phone with a lightning connector. It all comes in one package. You can choose mono or stereo. You can turn the light indicator off.

6:11 It's small. It's petite. This is great, y'all. I mean, 9.9 just because of the branding. So, maybe if they gave little stickers to cover that up, that would be great. But it's not it's not like it's it's bright or it's like jumping out at you. It's like a nice monotone gray. So, Holly Land, y'all did the thing with this. So, I'mma round up. I'mma round up and give it a 10. I'mma give I'mma give it a 10. it it's great as a phone microphone. It does it perfect and executes it great. Um, as I use it over the course of a few weeks, we'll see how the magnet holds up. We'll see how the connectivity holds up. We'll see how everything holds up. But right now, out the gate, this is for people who are shooting with their phone. This ar This isn't for people who

6:56 are, you know, shooting with the FX3 or mirrorless camera. For something like this, I would definitely say go with the M2S because it does have a receiver with a 3.5 that you can use to connect directly to your camera. So, for someone like me, I'm doing a little bit of everything. Both of these things are helpful. If I'm shooting with the FX3, then I'll use the M2S because this is really great to throw on the talent, mic them up, and boom, great audio. if I'm shooting social media content for someone. Boom. I'll grab the A1, throw that on the person as such and shoot some content. So, you have a lot of options with the Hollyland lineup. This is one of their latest microphones, the A1. Let me know your thoughts. Um, so far, um, I'm really loving it. I am the

7:43 chef girl, and you just got the recipe. [Music]