One reason I even tried this was because I have a very cheap mic, cannot afford a better one, but have a beautiful iPhone (work paid for) and that records MUCH better than my mic ever did. The quality and consistency are tremendous improvements. One catch though is that it took up several megabytes of space on my phone, but you could always work it in smaller sections if needed.
Here's how I did it:
1. Record the session as a voice memo. I simply did this by holding my iphone near my mouth. I did a little bit of a test run, playing it back and it did well with not having to hold it real close and still not picking up many ambient sounds.
2. Sync my phone with my computer. iTunes does have a glitch with the iPhone 4 with voice memos not always showing up. I did resolve this, not sure exactly how I did but I did.
3. Convert the file from .aac to .wav. I found this website that converts for free: http://media.io/?0.36158052409729635
I'm sure there is software as well, but I love free and the quality, again, seemed to be fine.
4. Open in Audacity and edit. Mind you it is stereo and you need to change it to mono. I am not sure if there is a setting in voice memos to change this from the start (probably take up less space) but its as simple as clicking tracks, stereo track to mono and then deleting one of the tracks.
This whole process turned out a much better recording than I ever did with my mic and I enjoyed it so much better it is partially responsible for bringing me back to recording after a year hiatus. The other reason was I finally got used to life as a homeowner
I hope this helps! If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I have only done this once (just signed up for another chapter though) so I may not know the answer. Lastly if you have questions about the voice memo glitch I can tell you what I did and see if that helps you.
. I changed the step in the original post in case anyone else reads it and tries it. Thank you!