Tablets | Dave Courvoisier's Blog

SOMEONE keeps coming up with this stuff, and I can’t resist!

MultiTrack DAW by Harmonic Dog is available on the iTunes appstore for $10.

Here’s the specs:

* Per track EQ (2 bands parametric, 2 bands shelving, 18db boost and cut) (3GS or later).
* Per track Compressor (3GS or later).
* Ability to monitor the input signal with effects (3GS or later).
* Fade in and out per region (editable fade points).
* Open/copy email attachments (mp3, m4a, AAC, wav, aif, ogg).
* Improved input selection allows spitting stereo input onto 2 mono tracks.
* Retina display for iPhone 4 and iPod 4th gen.
* New Hotbox ‘Slice’ tool splits a region at hotbox location or playhead location.
* Increased control of sliders and handles.
* Restore in-app purchases onto other devices.
* Hotbox ‘Trim’ and ‘Move’ buttons unified to single ‘Edit’ button.
* Fader controls now accurately use decibel scale and allow a real +12db of gain boost.
* Track download on wifi webpage has option to include effects in track rendering.

For some reason, all that doesn’t mention that you can do a mixdown of all the channels, and you can export to email, SoundCloud and via WiFi to your computer.

Aside from all that official verbiage, I can tell you from personal experience that this is an easy-to-use, intuitive interface. Help files are a cinch to find and use, but I didn’t need them. I pretty much found everything I needed by exploring. It has the feel of any of a numer of desktop DAW’s that allow you to add channels, mute, arm, set volume levels, add effects and more.

I will say that editing a wave form is not quite easy as Twisted Wave. Not terrible. Just not as easy. The multi-track capabilities of this app are a no-brainer…and the graphics interface is pretty slick.

One more thing…. the MultiTrack DAW by Harmonic Dog works just great with the Alesis iODock…the recording quality is at least as good as Twisted Wave.

CourVO

Mobile Recording on Droid

When LA-based Voice Talent pro and iPad recording apostle Beau Weaver was explaining the finer points of Twisted Wave last night on VoiceOverXtra, I was probably in a newscast somewhere and missed it. I hope to see the re-run.

Quality audio recordings on tablet computers are likely to steal a sizeable niche of the recording market in the not-too-distant future. I’ve been doing quite nicely with the original iPad, using a USB adapter, the AT2020 mic and the Twisted Wave app. It requires only a little rigamarole and sounds great.

Recently, though, I acquired another tablet…an upstart contender by Motorola, called the XOOM, using the new Android Honeycomb operating system. What’s nice about the XOOM is that it comes with a USB port (and HDMI), an SD card slot, and stereo speakers (to name a few features).

Android has the potential to be a serious challenger to iPad, and may take over the lead in the tablet market in a couple of years for various reasons that are beyond the scope of this article. (and I could be totally wrong).

Comparing the two, I find that the Android OS is maybe not as elegant in it’s presentation as the iPad, and the smaller sample of quality apps doesn’t quite match the offering in Steve Job’s app store, but Android is quickly gaining a devoted cadre of fans at least as enthusiastic as iPad followers.

For instance, the screen shot above is from the “Tape Machine” app for the XOOM. It records in 44100Hz .wav files, and lets you convert to .mp3, OGG, FLAC, or AIFF. The app also lets you choose from a sliding scale of 32kbps to 320kbps quality, allows editing of the wave form, and provides Normalizing, Gain, and fade-in/fade-out effects.

The resulting file can then be exported or shared in a number of ways. Send to a Bluetooth device, to DropBox, by email, to Evernote, Gmail, or upload to SoundCloud.

I promise, I’ll provide a sample of the sound of the recording yet this week.

Overall, though…that’s not a shabby feature-set.

SoundCloud screenshot on XOOM

BTW, the SoundCloud app on the XOOM works like a champ, and allows for sharing also.

One final word about the XOOM and then I’ll stop.

If you read my blog yesterday, you can see how Google is moving. Its pace is not likely to stop anytime soon. Integration of Google functionality and apps will be integrated throughout their galaxy of products, many of them free (and that’s hard to resist).

Android is an open-source Google product, and already the Google+ app on the XOOM outshines any web-based app you can call up on the iPad or iPhone system (duh!…they’re competitors).

Look for the big G-Machine to continue to up the ante in this way.

CourVO