[HN Gopher] Show HN: Tape It - iOS recording app for musicians
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Show HN: Tape It - iOS recording app for musicians
Hello HN, Over the last 15 months, two friends and I developed the
music recording app we felt we wanted based on our own needs as
musicians. It's called Tape It [1] and has just recently hit the
Apple App Store [2]. We put a lot of effort into a good UX to help
musicians really focus on playing their instrument instead of
pretending to be a recording engineer. The app records in stereo on
newer iPhones (although that's a premium feature; the free version
only records in standard mono audio quality). I would be really
grateful for advice from this community on how to best approach
marketing. We had a great TechCrunch article covering our launch
[3], and we posted it on various music websites. Turns out
advertising on Google or Apple Search is a dark art, though. We
have some good ideas for developing a good social media presence,
but they will take time. Please hit us with feedback, opinions and
advice that you think a young indie company like us can use at this
point :). And of course, please go and try the app! Best, Thomas
[1] https://tape.it [2] https://get.tape.it [3]
https://tcrn.ch/3nbODHD
Author : earthnail
Score : 98 points
Date : 2021-09-27 11:23 UTC (11 hours ago)
| comboy wrote:
| It would be great if you stated right away what's advantage of
| using it over say GarageBand. Is it just about cleaner UI?
| earthnail wrote:
| Hi Comboy,
|
| It's not trying to compete with GarageBand. GarageBand itself
| is an instrument in a way; it comes with lots of built-in
| sounds, loops and more. You should rather think of it as a
| replacement for Voice Memos :-).
| prionassembly wrote:
| Why should I use it over Voice Memos?
| [deleted]
| earthnail wrote:
| - You can actually find things again. I personally have so
| many recordings that are all named after my home address,
| and it's almost impossible to find anything older than a
| week.
|
| - You can take notes, both text and photo notes. For
| example, you can just take a picture of your amp settings
| to remember them. Many musicians already do that with their
| camera, but now you can keep it together with your
| recording
|
| - Much, MUCH better handling of long recording sessions
| with the Time Paragraph (see website for screenshots).
| Voice Memos becomes practically unusable once your
| recording is longer than three minutes.
|
| - Small things like when you play a recording, it will
| automatically play the next one after it - like Apple Music
| or Spotify. It is _super_ handy when you just want to
| review past ideas. We know a lot of musicians who use Box
| instead of Dropbox for storing their recordings simply
| because Box will always play the whole folder, whereas
| Dropbox just plays a single file.
|
| - And of course, much better recording quality by using two
| microphones on your iPhone instead of one - although that
| is actually our premium feature. Everything else I listed
| you get for free :-).
|
| If you're using Voice Memos to record music today, I
| recommend you give the app a try. And please let me know
| your thoughts here once you tried it!
| JoshuaEddy wrote:
| I currently use Voice Memos to record multi-hour
| rehearsals as a single recording.
|
| I assume recording with Tape It would prevent/interfere
| with recording with Voice Memo. So before I try recording
| a rehearsal with Tape It, I'd like to load existing Voice
| Memo recordings to see how Tape It would add value.
|
| Right now after rehearsal I manually extract each full
| run-through of a song (or important excerpts) into a
| separate file (then I put it into dropbox for sharing). I
| would find it useful if Tape It automatically creates a
| separate "file" for a play-through of a song, so that I
| don't have to manually do it. But I can't tell from the
| Tape It website whether something like that is possible
| or not. So I'd like to load an existing recording and see
| whether that happens.
|
| It would be extra useful if Tape It would automatically
| determine and label the name of the song to each "file".
| I don't plan to put down my instrument and unlock my
| phone to label each song before/after the run-through --
| I am paying attention to the rehearsal leader and don't
| want distraction, don't have time, etc. If it doesn't
| happen automatically, then Tape It's usefulness depends
| on how easy it is to go back and label each song --
| again, I want try it with existing recordings to see how
| easy that would be. (It would be even better if it could
| identify a whole song play-through versus just an
| excerpt/segment. Scenario being "We made a small change
| and only practiced that part without a full run-
| through.")
|
| For promoting the app, consider advertising on
| /r/bandmembers and /r/WeAreTheMusicMakers and other
| super-relevant subreddits. Or you can encourage some Tape
| It users to create/participate in threads in those
| subreddits about "how do you record your rehearsals".
| earthnail wrote:
| Thank you so much for your advice on /r/bandmembers and
| /r/WeAreTheMusicMakers. We'll post it on Reddit tomorrow;
| today we focused on HN :). I'm not a regular Reddit user
| myself, so I truly appreciate pointers to relevant
| subreddits.
|
| Regarding your use case: Unfortunately, we don't yet have
| support for importing recordings, but I think it's safe
| to give it a try on a regular practice session. You can
| export from Tape It the same way that you export from
| Voice Memos, so your existing workflow will work just
| fine. To export, open the detail view (either by tapping
| on the mini player or by long-pressing a tape in the
| list), then tap the three dots in the top-right corner
| and choose Share from the menu.
|
| We've also been using the app ourselves for our own music
| making during the entire development, and we have
| absolutely zero tolerance for crashes or data loss. Even
| in cases like a sudden termination of the app, say
| because of your device overheating or battery issues,
| Tape It will recover your partial recording on the next
| launch.
|
| Currently, Tape It only supports markers for individual
| points in a recording, not for marking a time range. You
| can add a marker during the rehearsal as well as add or
| edit them afterwards. While you record, Tape It keeps the
| screen on and prevents the phone from being locked, so
| that adding a marker is always just a single tap away. We
| were originally worried about the always-on screen
| draining your battery, but to our pleasant surprise those
| worries were really unnecessary.
|
| One of the features on our todo list is some kind of
| text-marker that allows you to select interesting regions
| in your recording. Our current thinking is that once you
| start selecting regions in a text, the regions will show
| up in the list instead of the whole tape (although
| probably grouped by tape - it's a bit unclear yet). There
| won't be any destructive editing, though, so you can
| never cut and accidentally delete a part of a recording.
| Once we have that, we hope that you don't have to do the
| manual extraction anymore.
|
| Regarding labelling a song: try recording speech and
| recording music. You'll notice that non-music regions are
| rendered in grey in the waveform. That way, you can
| easily spot the gaps between the different pieces you
| practiced.
|
| I'd also be curious about your use of Dropbox: who do you
| share these recordings with? I'm asking because sharing
| (within a closed circle) is really high on our priority
| list, and we'd love to learn more about every use case
| :).
|
| Please also feel free to also email me directly at
| thomas@tape.it for a continued discussion :). I'll
| continue to check this thread, too, but in the long run
| email might be easier.
|
| And again, thanks for your reddit suggestions!
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Read the description in their store page?
| https://get.tape.it
| n_sonic wrote:
| Hello! So I was very excited to hear that this app made stereo
| recordings. I make field recordings to use in my own
| compositions, so the idea of an app that does this was intriguing
| (and there seem to be none currently on the app store, unless I'm
| missing them?)
|
| I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, but it's not recording
| in stereo? I verified by opening the file in Audacity (sent via
| AirDrop).
|
| I tried holding my phone (iPhone 12 Pro) in both portrait and
| horizontal orientations (because I'm not sure if you needed to do
| this to make it work?)
|
| Is there a way to make the stereo recording work (at least, can I
| verify it somehow before committing to a purchase?)
| JanNash wrote:
| High quality stereo recording is only available in our premium
| subscription (20$/year). The subscription comes with a one
| month free trial, which should give you some time to try it and
| see if you like it :)
| sneak wrote:
| > _High quality stereo recording is only available in our
| premium subscription (20$ /year)._
|
| Is this the world you want to live in?
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Do you expect them to provide it for free?
| JanNash wrote:
| Oh, sorry, my bad. Currently, you can do one recording in
| high quality stereo without having to subscribe or commit to
| anything. To do that, tap the "Try Stereo HD" button. It
| should then say "Trying Stereo HD" and the resulting
| recording should be in stereo.
|
| Sorry for the misunderstanding, I hope I could clarify :)
| n_sonic wrote:
| Hi. Sorry, I missed this reply. That's exactly what I did
| do actually. So, maybe I've done something wrong? I'll
| double check Audacity again.
| JanNash wrote:
| I don't think you missed the reply, it just took me a
| while :D
|
| If, while recording, the button said "Trying Stereo HD",
| it should have recorded in Stereo. Thanks for double
| checking :)
| n_sonic wrote:
| So, I'm now on the trial and I'm trying it out again! :)
|
| I have a silly question - does stereo recording work in
| both portrait and landscape orientations? I'll do more
| tests, but I'm hearing less stereo separation than I do
| when I shoot video (and I'm wondering if it needs to be
| held in landscape or something?)
| earthnail wrote:
| We designed it to be used in portrait mode so that you
| don't have to rotate the app. Whether one should hold it
| in portrait or landscape can be configured in code.
|
| Landscape mode would of course have much better
| microphone arrangement, with one being on the left and
| one on the right.
|
| I will test this out myself to compare the difference
| again. Thank you so much for your feedback, it's super
| valuable!
| n_sonic wrote:
| So, I don't mind trials and subscriptions. And I will give
| this another go, however..
|
| When I went to make my initial recording, the app asked me if
| I wanted to "try [Stereo HD]". I did this thinking that I
| could verify that stereo worked.
|
| If you're not going to let me try it without committing, you
| may want to rethink the onboarding flow a bit?
|
| But still, personally I'd consider giving users a proper
| taste of the power of the app, without commitment. Allowing
| them to try stereo for just the first recording would be a
| great introduction to the app. You could even time limit it
| to 10 seconds or something.
|
| If you imply that the app is recording in "stereo" / "HD",
| but then exporting the audio results in a mono audio file,
| just makes me think it doesn't work. (The app even adds a
| [HD] label under the recording, which makes it even more
| confusing when you export it and it's mono.)
|
| Apart from the above (hopefully constructive criticism) I'm
| looking forward to seeing this develop :)
| earthnail wrote:
| Interesting. That is actually how the app works today: you
| actually have to tap try Stereo HD, then make a stereo
| recording that is at least 10 seconds long before pressing
| "try Stereo HD" again presents you with the paywall.
|
| We got a lot of feedback from users (and from Apple in
| their App Review -.-) that that was confusing; they wanted
| to see the paywall straight away. So now we're considering
| removing that try-it-once-without-starting-a-trial mode.
|
| Regarding exporting to mono: no, that shouldn't happen. It
| should _definitely_ export to stereo. The exporting process
| doesn 't touch the file. Would you mind sending me that
| audio file to thomas@tape.it if it's not a very private
| recording (of course we'll treat it privately; just for
| internal debugging)?
| jorgesborges wrote:
| I assumed the parent was using the "try stereo" option. Does
| that button not record in stereo?
| n_sonic wrote:
| It didn't for me. The app does seem to imply that it will /
| did record in stereo. But, it didn't.
| earthnail wrote:
| That might be a design problem - sorry for that.
|
| The app has to say "trying Stereo HD" to record in
| stereo, and the background of the rectangle will change
| to solid blue. If it just says "try Stereo HD", it's
| meant as an encouragement to tap on it to enable that
| mode.
|
| Clearly, if this is confusing, that's of course our
| fault, and we'll work on improving the UX to avoid this
| misunderstanding. I'd just be interested - did I describe
| the misunderstanding correctly?
| bezieio wrote:
| Nice work! I like the option to annotate with photos and notes!
| Have you guys checked out Spire? It's a free app, but could be
| paired with their hardware. It's different in that it's a really
| simple app for multitrack recording and editing, but I've also
| been using it for a similar function as Tape It. Not to take away
| from your work though, I will give the app a go :)
| earthnail wrote:
| Thanks a lot for your nice words :-).
|
| Yeah, we checked out Spire, and I actually have their hardware
| at home, too - but I rarely ever use it. Spire's sales were
| significantly below iZotope's expectations, too. I think it's a
| great attempt, but IMHO they didn't quite get it right - they
| focused too much on multitracking and sacrificed basic
| usability.
|
| We're hoping that we don't make that same mistake, but of
| course only time will tell. And as always, different people
| have different needs - maybe Spire fits your workflow much
| better!
|
| It would be fantastic if you could leave another comment once
| you tried the app - really looking forward to hearing what you
| think of it!
| ronjouch wrote:
| Note: requires iOS 14. I would have liked to give it a try, and
| pay if it proves superior to Apple's "Music Memos", but I can't,
| as I run an iPhone 6 / iOS 12 that is still very functional and
| security-patched by Apple (iOS 12.5.5 shipped last week).
|
| As a developer, I can for sure understand you're limiting to the
| "latest and greatest" for API usage simplicity, but I urge you to
| reconsider requiring iOS 14. Two arguments for you to consider,
| one ethical, and one business:
|
| 1. I've met plenty of people sensitive ecologically and willing
| to keep their phone as long as possible. As a result, they run
| old iOSes.
|
| 2. Musicians are rarely making millions, and thus cautious with
| tech spending. By restricting to iOS 14, you're leaving money on
| the table.
| earthnail wrote:
| Thank you very much for your feedback. I very much understand
| where you're coming from, and I think you make a very good
| point outlining that in particular musicians are usually quite
| short on cash and can't afford the latest and greatest iPhone.
|
| We need at least iOS 14 for the stereo recording functionality.
| Even then, not all devices that support iOS 14 also support
| stereo recording, and we don't even offer the in-app purchase
| option on those devices that don't support it.
|
| We also make heavy use of CoreML, for which we require at least
| iOS 13. So in theory, we could go one version lower, but since
| all devices that support iOS 13 also support 14 and 15, we will
| likely increase the minimum version to iOS 15 once it has
| reached significant adoption, because of the improvements to
| CoreML iOS 15 ships with.
|
| I know it's not the answer you wanted. I hope you understand
| that this choice wasn't made out of ignorance, but simply due
| to hard technical limitations.
| ronjouch wrote:
| Okay, thanks for the precise reply; makes sense for CoreML.
| Bookmarking your site, will give your app a try when my
| trusty iPhone 6 breaks and I get a newer one. Take care.
| tigeba wrote:
| I write and record music and this seems pretty useful as a
| tool for songwriting. I can think of some cases where the
| notes and photo notes for gear and the markers are useful.
| The instrument detection is I guess neat, but I can tell what
| I'm playing by listening. Stereo is also not really
| particularly appealing or interesting, especially if it has
| weird ML processing on it. One pain point I frequently hit
| when doing actual recording is saving settings from external
| analog devices if I want to recall them in a future session
| via notes. This seems like this could be close to covering
| this scenario as well. Congrats on launching.
| abalaji wrote:
| With how many musicians use voice memos on iOS, this hits the
| right niche--somewhere between voice memos and garage band.
| JanNash wrote:
| > somewhere between voice memos and garage band
|
| Nicely put :)
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| As mentioned, Apple launched an app just for that, Music Memos,
| and it was a great idea but fairly niche and not updated much
| over the nearly five years it was out. Apple discontinued it in
| December 2020.
|
| Fun (well, maybe not fun, but interesting) fact: when Apple was
| doing press briefings for the app, they managed to get me a
| quote from now-disgraced musical artist Ryan Adams (who was in
| the middle of a career renaissance of sorts after his acclaimed
| cover album of Taylor Swift's acclaimed 1989), in part because
| they knew I was a big fan of his. It just feels awkward nearly
| six years later, but at the time, Apple was leaning really hard
| on the respected establishment community of musicians to push
| the app.
|
| It's a shame it never seemed to have much life or uptick after
| its release because as a 1.0/MVP it was really good. And with
| just a few more features, it could hack been an insanely useful
| app for lots of musicians who naturally use Voice Memos to
| capture lyrics or riffs or other content.
|
| Alas.
| kall wrote:
| Interestingly, apple at one point made an app just like this
| called "Music Memos" but dropped it pretty soon. I think it has
| been partly rolled into garageband.
| _red wrote:
| "Music Memos" was the perfect 'recording snippet app' for me.
| I honestly think they let a diamond in the rough escape them.
| The tempo detection and ability to overlay basic drum / bass
| backing was brilliant.
| jamilbk wrote:
| Nice work! Congrats on hitting the app store. I'm excited to use
| this for our next hours-long jam session.
|
| How does the instrument detection work? Does it do anything else
| besides change the icon for a tape?
|
| It would be so cool to just show up at a jam session, hit record
| on my iphone, and get all that multitrack goodness without having
| to mic everything separately. But I realize that's asking a lot
| from the AI gods :-).
| earthnail wrote:
| Yep, you're asking a lot of the AI gods, but then again if you
| don't have big dreams, how is big change ever going to happen?
| :D
|
| Yes, right now it only changes the icon for a tape, even though
| we actually track and save it at a per-second level. Obviously
| there is quite a bit room for more use of this in the future,
| but the icon is a start :-). Also notice, by the way, that the
| waveform is black for music and grey for speech - particularly
| handy in a jam session. You can see exactly when a take started
| and when it ended.
|
| So called "blind source separation" (i.e. get multitracks from
| just one mic) is possible today, but with fairly audible
| artifacts. The most popular library in use today is Spleeter
| [1], which is based on Andreas Jansson et al.'s work at Spotify
| [2]. There are newer algorithms in academia, a good overview is
| provided at [3]. If you want to do something today, iZotope's
| RX is very good, and a great example that demonstrates how good
| old DSP engineering can dramatically reduce the unwanted
| artifacts even in new ML-based approaches.
|
| Then again, my real question would be: why would you want a
| multitrack recording from your jam session? Is it to be able to
| further adjust the mix afterwards? Do you need the individual
| instrument tracks for practicing? Would be really interested in
| hearing your use case :-).
|
| [1] https://github.com/deezer/spleeter
|
| [2]
| https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...
|
| [3] https://sigsep.github.io
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| This is cool. I use Voice Memos regularly to jot down ideas and
| it has its limitations, so work in this space is really welcome!
|
| I don't have anything to contribute on the marketing front, so
| all I can say add is just keep it up! I really enjoy seeing
| useful cross-sections of music and software.
|
| edit: Just downloaded it and gave it a try. Even on my iPhone 8
| it's nice and snappy. Love the markers and the ability to set
| them _while_ recording. Great work! If I ever get around to
| upgrading my phone I'll definitely consider the stereo HD!
| JanNash wrote:
| Hey 82-111-98 (:D).
|
| Thanks a lot for the feedback and for trying our App. We're
| happy you like it :)
| lux wrote:
| Just downloaded to play with later, but one feature all these
| apps are missing is an easy import + loop feature. I want to
| quickly import a clip and loop it seamlessly so I can riff on it.
| I don't care about overdubbing or having a DAW on my phone, but I
| want to be able to easily iterate on an idea and struggle to do
| that on the go with any iOS app I've tried.
| earthnail wrote:
| Thanks so much for your feedback. Import, looping and
| overdubbing is definitely something we will support in the
| future. We're just really mindful about not cluttering the UI,
| so we're taking it one step at a time.
|
| You should try the Capture app by Soundtrap. It basically has
| exactly that functionality you describe. It's quite limited
| beyond that, IMHO, but give it a go and let me know what you
| think.
| lux wrote:
| Awesome to hear! And thanks for the suggestion too, will try
| that today as well.
|
| Looping for my use case can be as simple as a toggle button
| (even in a hamburger menu somewhere :). I also know the
| challenges of looping mp3s seamlessly and am only thinking of
| wavs.
|
| Cheers!
| lux wrote:
| Follow up assessment of Soundtrap Capture (and Soundtrap
| Studio):
|
| - Capture: Import was super easy but I see no way to loop,
| so that's out. - Studio: Full-blown collaborative DAW
| (overkill) but importing your own loops is gone (wtf?!).
|
| Looks like I'll wait for you guys to hopefully add
| importing audio files and looping.
| earthnail wrote:
| Thanks for your feedback. I'll promise you we'll add it.
| No promise on the timeline, though (sorry, hope you
| understand that). But we'll add it. We always planned to.
|
| If you sign up to our email newsletter on our website,
| you will also hear from us when the feature is out. There
| will likely be a few emails before that I'm afraid, as we
| have a few other features in the pipeline worth
| communicating, but I promise that we'll treat your inbox
| with respect.
| lux wrote:
| Awesome, just signed up!
| plainOldText wrote:
| I like the minimalism and thoughtfulness of the interface.
|
| Something is not clear however. Where do recordings get stored?
| On device, iCloud?
|
| I think it would be nice to know where your data gets stored, and
| maybe have a choice or two.
| earthnail wrote:
| Currently, all recordings are stored on device. If you have
| iCloud backup enabled, they will also be backed up to iCloud as
| part of your regular backup. See also our privacy policy (ours
| is actually readable!):
|
| https://tape.it/privacy
|
| We're thinking a lot about how we will do this in the future
| when we start adding collaboration and sharing. Not FB or
| insta-like sharing, but rather within a close circle of friends
| (like your band our your choir). For that, we'll need to
| introduce accounts, and cloud storage.
|
| It's not complicated on a technical level (or at least not
| rocket science), but we're very aware that not everyone wants
| their data scattered throughout the internet. We're currently
| contemplating whether we leave most data on-device and only put
| shared tapes on our cloud, or whether we just sync everything
| by default.
|
| If we were to add some kind of Dropbox-like storage (on our own
| servers) that would make it trivial to share your recordings
| with friends, would that be something you'd welcome or would
| you rather be put off by having your recordings in yet another
| cloud?
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Bug report: iOS 14.8 iPhone X
|
| Install from app store, open app, tap red circle to create first
| recording. Confirm/yes when prompted to allow TapeIt to access
| mic. Tap red circle again to create first recording. App crash.
| Relaunch, try again a few times. Every time, red circle record
| button -> immediate crash.
|
| :(
|
| UPDATE: Removed TapeIt and reinstalled it: now it works as
| expected.
| JanNash wrote:
| Hey Chris, thanks for the quick report.
|
| Yeah, I've just seen the crashes appear in Sentry. Glad to hear
| that it does work as expected after the reinstall (although
| it's definitely unfortunate that it crashed before, sorry for
| the inconvenience).
|
| Did you experience any other weird behaviour before the crash?
|
| Best, Jan (from Tape It :)
| YLYvYkHeB2NRNT wrote:
| Very creepy.
| [deleted]
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Why? I'm sure the usage is low enough that a user hitting
| the same issue, likely similar in time to their post,
| stands out quite well and can be linked to a public report.
| JanNash wrote:
| Well put, thanks. Also, (I know I'm possibly jinxing it
| by writing it out loud) we currently have a pretty decent
| crash-free rate, thus, there weren't that many (fatal)
| issues to choose from :)
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Yeah I assumed you made sure of that before doing a Show
| HN ;)
| import wrote:
| Looks great. BPM and key/scale detection would be awesome.
| JanNash wrote:
| Thanks :)
|
| Yes, I also think that BPM detection would be amazing and we
| are likely going to implement it in a future version.
|
| Scale detection does also sound like an interesting feature.
|
| However, I can't think of many use cases for key detection
| since (at least for me) it's quite common to just transpose a
| lick or some chords as necessary (e.g. joining them together
| with a different lick or melody or chord progression which I
| had maybe recorded on another day in another key). So when I'm
| searching for elements to use in a song, I don't find myself
| checking the key of each of those elements often or even
| searching them by key.
|
| Still, I'd be interested to know what use cases you see for key
| detection :)
| nerdite wrote:
| Key detection would help me remember what chords I'm using.
| If it's in B I'm probably capo 2/A or Capo 4/G for instance.
| JanNash wrote:
| That's an interesting point. Currently, you could write
| that down in the Notes of that recording or take a photo of
| your Capo position for example.
| 41209 wrote:
| Will this work with a USB audio interface ?
| earthnail wrote:
| I'm afraid not, no. But you're not the first one asking this
| question - if it keeps on popping up, we might reconsider that
| decision.
| KuiN wrote:
| Can this record the output of other audio/music creation apps
| (thinking like synths, instruments or AUM) or is it just the
| microphone?
| JanNash wrote:
| Currently, it's just recording the via the built in microphone.
| capableweb wrote:
| I'm sad to hear, was thinking of using it with a headset jack
| adapter splitter (allows you to plug in a microphone/whatever
| as source) but seems I'll continue using the built in camera
| for my recordings instead.
| sneak wrote:
| I'm in the target market for this app, but I don't download or
| use apps that transmit my usage data off the device without my
| consent.
| Malp wrote:
| Going to test this later, I really like the time paragraph
| feature from a cursory glance. Very intuitive.
| JanNash wrote:
| Thanks. Have fun taping it :)
| avisser wrote:
| Is the paragraph width adjustable? I love the idea of "one
| screen width == 4 bars" or similar. If it could detect and
| automatically set width to align with measures, even better.
| earthnail wrote:
| Thanks for that idea. The paragraph width is currently fixed
| to three minutes, but a pinch-to-zoom gesture would
| definitely be very intuitive.
|
| Automatic beat, downbeat and onset detection is on our
| roadmap, too - not just for adjusting the paragraph width,
| but also for placing markers and dropping the playhead so
| that it doesn't cut the onset. It's actually not trivial to
| implement a good beat tracker for these "loose" recording
| scenarios - you might fluctuate in your tempo, start and stop
| again without pausing the recording process, etc.. We won't
| ship it this year, but I promise it's high on our priority
| list for next year :).
| FigurativeVoid wrote:
| I have been using voice memos for field recording and recording
| different ideas. I am excited to give this a try!
| adrianpthomas wrote:
| Looks really nice - simple design, clear focus, looks like a
| great music memos replacement!
| JanNash wrote:
| Thanks :)
| akarma wrote:
| I love this!
|
| My one request that would enable me to recommend this to my
| musician friends is an export feature, along with a promise of
| adequate notice before a shutdown of the app, to allow people to
| export their recordings in a worst-case scenario.
|
| The one thing that may keep musicians using Apple Voice Memos
| despite your app seeming much better is that they often make a
| _lot_ of recordings, and losing them all would be unimaginably
| tragic.
| highdevtalk wrote:
| Looks promising! Congrats on the launch. Any plans to incorporate
| the ability to work with backing tracks?
| earthnail wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| The next thing we're working on right now is sharing - but not
| social-media like sharing, but rather sharing with friends and
| giving feedback. There are many ways of giving feedback, but
| one way is to record over someone else's track. Which means
| that at that point, we'll have to introduce multitracking and
| will automatically also support the ability to work with
| backing tracks.
|
| We're also thinking a lot about how to incorporate this with
| workflows with existing studio software. Say, for example, that
| your drummer and your recording engineer are stuck tweaking the
| snare drum sound for the next five hours (chances are it will
| sound the same afterwards anyway), then you should just be able
| to take the track in its current form out of the DAW and use
| Tape It to play some new ideas over it.
|
| Which is probably a very long anser for: yes, we'll definitely
| incorporate the ability to work with backing tracks. But it
| might take us a bit of time to find out how to get the UX right
| :-).
| [deleted]
| subhro wrote:
| I am probably one of the few that use my iPhone more or less like
| a dumb phone, so pardon my ignorance.
|
| Is the iPhone mic able to pick the entire audible spectrum (and
| then some)? Does this mean companies like Neumann, Shure, Rode
| should feel someone is coming for their lunch?
| chris_st wrote:
| Anecdata, but a number of people in the online guitar group I'm
| in report that their iDevice can't really hear their bass
| guitar. My iPad Pro can, indeed, hear my bass fairly well, but
| I don't use it for recording the bass (long story).
|
| The microphone is, as I understand it, optimized for voice
| communication, since its main original job is to be a
| telephone.
| kall wrote:
| Aren't there two types of microphone in the apple world? You
| have "studio grade microphones" on, I think, the iPad Pro and
| MacBook Pro, and just plain microphones on anything else.
| It's a marketing term like Retina display but I assume that
| it means entirely different classes of mic hardware in terms
| of frequency response etc. If that's the case, they should
| definitely put it in the iPhone Pro as well.
| earthnail wrote:
| Apple has fairly strong incentives to improve recording
| quality overall, including just better audio quality for the
| videos you shoot. Given the form factor of the iPhones, I'm
| frankly blown away by the sound quality you get from them.
| The SPL they can handle is absurd.
|
| Admittedly, your comment made me curious - I think I might
| have to annoy my neighbours with some bass playing this
| evening. In my experience, recording with my iPhone Xs, the
| bass frequencies of my synth are picked up extremely well.
|
| If the bass is indeed lacking, maybe we can recover some of
| it algorithmically. I'm not thinking about EQing, more like
| having a fantastic paper idea for some good academic work
| :-).
| chris_st wrote:
| Very cool! Just tried my bass into my iPhone 11 Pro max,
| recorded okay, but Tape It identified it as keyboards.
| earthnail wrote:
| Ooops :D.
|
| I'll take the version 1.0 excuse card if I may :D. All
| kidding aside, we know our instrument detection has room
| for improvement. But you gotta start somewhere :).
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| In a word, no. First, it isn't just a matter of "picking up"
| frequencies. There is noise, transient response, overload and
| harmonics, etc... You might be able to mimic some of that with
| signal processing, but microphones are also designed with
| different directional responses for different situations. That
| has a big impact on the eventual signal that is recorded and
| will not be recreated with a built-in cell phone mic.
| earthnail wrote:
| Yes, they should. And they are already very worried about it.
| Only know that with certainty about Shure but I'd be surprised
| if the other companies weren't thinking in the same direction.
|
| My assumption is that we'll see the same development in the
| audio recording space as we saw it in the camera space. It's
| not 1:1 exactly the same - microphones have always been a lot
| more in the (semi-) professional area than cameras have been,
| and stage mics etc. aren't going anywhere. But for home
| recording, be that audio-only or the audio for your video,
| dedicated microphones (and audio interfaces) will see their
| market shrink significantly.
| subhro wrote:
| Again, very little knowledge about audio, but some knowledge
| about photography..
|
| From what I have read, it is important to have a physically
| large condenser/diphragm for a mic to have high fidelity.
| Could you educate me a bit please?
|
| At least for photography, I can tell you with certainty, an
| iphone camera is basically a toy when you are talking of
| challenging scenes being put on large fine art prints. It is
| nowhere _near_ creating same "fidelity" images as even a
| micro 4/3rd camera, and there are medium format digital
| cameras out there.
| earthnail wrote:
| You're absolutely right, and your photography analogy holds
| for audio, too.
|
| However, if you look at the sales of consumer grade cameras
| as well as DSLRs, you'll see that smartphones ate a lot of
| their market. A quick Google gives you this continuously
| declining graph of DSLR sales, for example:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/799526/shipments-of-
| digi...
|
| A phone will _never_ replace a serious camera for large
| fine art prints. And the same is true for audio. But
| already, you have cases like Kanye claiming that 20% of the
| vocals from his last album were recorded in voice memos:
|
| https://www.gq.com/story/inside-kanye-west-vision-for-the-
| fu...
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| Anything can happen.
|
| Guitar pedal and amp modelling of some real quality and
| portability hit the market over a decade ago, but in that
| time the boutique analogue market for effects and amplifiers
| has exploded.
|
| It'll be hard to model the variations possible in microphone
| configuration. There are some techniques that will just plain
| require multiple dedicated microphones--no matter the
| environment.
|
| But other solutions like Zoom handhelds will definitely
| diminish in number. I used to rent something like that to
| direct from the soundboard so a former band could record our
| live sets. Now all you need is a line-in to your phone.
|
| Same with just being able to jot down ideas--I'm totally
| excited to have recordings to my phone not end up compressed
| garbled messes--even possibly usable? Yes please!
|
| That said, if everyone is done with their Neumann's, you can
| kindly deposit them with me for free!
| lostgame wrote:
| I think a few people here are forgetting, importantly - that
| iOS supports external audio interfaces via the Lightning cable.
|
| Anyone looking for solid semi-pro audio quality from their
| iPhone/iPad can spend around $100 and get a quite nice audio
| capture card with traditional XLR / 1/4" cable support;
| allowing them to directly plug a guitar, amp; or microphone
| into the device.
|
| I have had a lot of success with this method - I wouldn't
| really suggest recording with the internal microphones on the
| iPhone if you are looking for any sort of notable quality.
|
| I'm not sure how you could even effectively sing into it with a
| sense of actual response from the mic like I get with even a
| basic Shure SM58.
|
| Not really a comparable tool. More for whole room recording,
| maybe; but even then you'll of course be missing a lot of the
| bass frequencies and get a bunch of garbage you don't want.
| earthnail wrote:
| Yep, fair point. Agree with everything you write. Also, if
| the EU actually sees their USB-C power charging standard
| through, I'm hopeful that it will be much, much easier to
| connect audio interfaces and other accessories to an iPhone.
|
| For recording singing voice, the microphone itself is part of
| the instrument set up, and trained singers react to the
| behaviour of the mic instantly as they sing. I agree that
| it'll be borderline impossible to replace an SM58 for that.
|
| That being said, room recordings are a very common use case.
| Tape It isn't designed to replace a professional recording
| environment; it's rather there to help you in the stages
| before you get to recording at professional quality.
|
| Looking a bit into the future, though, I think it's
| reasonable to assume that the quality will steadily increase,
| and such will its applications. Just compare video capture on
| the iPhone today vs ten years ago.
| _red wrote:
| Thanks for entering this space. One thing I would love for you to
| add is the concept of "Folders" (or projects / songs / whatever
| you want to call it).
|
| Here is the point: Sometimes I will record 14 different versions
| of a lick, chord progression, etc for a song idea. Typically its
| over the course of several days.
|
| It does me no good to have 14 different files date named XX-YY-
| ZZZZ, etc. What I want is to group those into "Ideas / Songs /
| Projects"
|
| So should have
|
| "Song Idea 1" - 09-27-21 14:24 -
| 09-25-21 11:24 - 09-23-21 10:42 - 09-23-21
| 09:17
|
| etc
| earthnail wrote:
| That is definitely on our todo list. The next update will
| introduce mixtapes, which are basically playlists (unlike
| folders, a tape can be in several mixtapes).
|
| We're also thinking a lot about how we can further group
| things, like projects/ideas - exactly how you mention it. It's
| gonna take a few design iterations, but it'll definitely come
| :-).
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| When I was in a band, we used a simple digital audio recorder to
| document our sessions. The annotations look helpful for trying to
| remember what you were working on in the previous session. How
| did you perform the instrument detection?
| earthnail wrote:
| We collected existing recording data from musicians (that
| website is still online: https://tape.it/needsyourhelp),
| annotated it manually with Prodi.gy, and then trained a YAMnet
| model for the classification.
|
| Granted, had we known that Apple would ship a much improved
| version of their own sound classifier in iOS 15, we probably
| wouldn't have invested so much work in it - their new
| pretrained model is truly outstanding (although it only works
| on iOS >= 15). But I don't regret doing it; we learned a lot
| about mobile deployment of ML models, which will come in very
| handy when we deploy our next ML features for audio quality
| improvements.
| fagerhult wrote:
| This looks brilliant, I've been recording scraps of music with
| voice memos for years and I've been missing exactly the features
| you have. Great work!
|
| I'd love a way to import my existing voice memo library into Tape
| It!
| earthnail wrote:
| Glad you like it :).
|
| Regarding import: Unfortunately, Apple doesn't provide access
| to the Voice Memos library. If you have a suggestion on how to
| overcome that (in a way that passes the App Store review),
| please let us know. We'd be super grateful.
| coldwaraaron wrote:
| This looks great. Sharing it with my musician friends. Will
| follow up with feedback after putting it through the paces.
| JanNash wrote:
| Thanks a bunch :)
| dmje wrote:
| Like the look of it, will try later (working on assumption it'll
| be ok on iPad...?) (if not: any Android version incoming...?!)
| JanNash wrote:
| Thanks :). Yes, it works on iPad, although currently only using
| the normal "iPhone App on iPad" compatibility mode.
|
| Make sure to start the App while the iPad is in Portrait mode,
| we have a bug there that might else prevent you from tapping
| "Next" in the onboarding. This bug is fixed in 1.0.1, of which
| we're currently, let's say, experiencing [...] the App Store
| Review process (which is not always an easy one as some of you
| might know as well :). We hope to release 1.0.1 in a few days,
| as it includes some other bugfixes as well.
|
| At the moment, an Android version is not planned.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
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