KVR Audio

bmanic · Post by **bmanic** » Mon Feb 07, 2011 1:21 pm

It's really impressive. The only problem I have had so far is quite a bit of crashing. It also doesn't support the Akai synthstation 25 nor any other kind of midi input device. Sonoma audio copy/paste is also lacking which is a shame. It'd have been nice to have both the iOS pasteboard and the Sonoma way of doing things in this powerful app. Perhaps future updates will add these features?

Anyhow, I feel it is well worth the money even at it's present state. It's amazing how much bang for the buck you get with these small apps for the iOS. Crazy stuff.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/beatmake ... 20234?mt=8

Cheers!
bManic

Grain Bastard · Post by **Grain Bastard** » Mon Feb 07, 2011 7:26 pm

Looks very interesting.

Just watched a youtube vid from in the instrument forum about it and I will probably grab it a some point as its pretty cheap.

What I really want to see happen though is some apps that integrate more with an existing studio - For example, imagine if this app had some kind of 'rewifi-er' so when you got back to the 'real' studio, whatever you created would link into your existing studio and imo would be a much more serious tool. I know you can bounce stuff out but if it takes too long I honestly think that you could probably recreate these simple sketch pad idea's pretty quickly in a DAW, so they kinda get passed off as toys to amuse oneself with - nothing wrong with that (I'm diggin the Korg apps, Reactable & Babyscratch

) but if the developers thought a bit more about 'studios' rather than standalone (in a wood/park/garden etc) things could get very interesting.

Rather than go way way off I'll start a new thread with some idea's I think might be cool and hopefully some dev's will take note

bmanic · Post by **bmanic** » Tue Feb 08, 2011 12:36 pm

I agree. Another reason why these kind of software are considered "toys" is because, frankly, they are exactly that. You can scetch out some ideas and such with them but I would most likely never use the actual audio data coming from them in a commercial project. It's just too much of a hassle.

I have to say that after spending a bit more time with beatmaker 2 I have come to realize some of the limitations and bad design decisions. For instance, the thing they call AUX effects is not really a real auxiliary effect, just an fx group/buss where you can route things. You can not send a variable amount of signal to the aux efffects from anywhere.. you either route the whole mixer track and/or sound from the drum machine to the AUX track. This is extremely frustrating and shows pretty clearly that the programmers do not know very much about audio/mixing in general.

Also, all knobs in the software are moved with a side to side motion instead of the typical linear up/down motion. This is mostly a matter of getting used to but again the bad design shines through when in the drum machine, most knobs end up close to the left border of the phone, making the side to side movement annoyingly tricky!

Finally the way knobs/sliders move is quite silly.. they simply move too coarsely. There are plenty of places where you'd want to fine tune values (like the attack of an ADSR or the gain slider of the overdrive effect) but you can't. You always end up with too small or too big values.. never getting what you actually want. Extremely frustrating.

At the moment, I have to retract my recommendation to a "Warning! Not very polished but lots of potential" status.

Cheers!
bManic

shanecgriffo · Post by **shanecgriffo** » Tue Feb 08, 2011 1:19 pm

yes, a most of the ios music apps i have, have their limitations and i dont use them as much as i thought i would
(then again i use certain photography apps all the time!)
Still, i can say i'll never get bored on the bus!
(have the synthstation25 keys

)

distraub · Post by **distraub** » Thu Feb 10, 2011 12:17 pm

I reviewed Beatmaker 2 for http://instrum3ntal.com if you want more information.

Dewaine · Post by **Dewaine** » Thu Feb 10, 2011 1:26 pm

This is the first music app on iOS that I think I will actually use. Nano studio is okay, but STILL does not have iPad support, and the track limits are.... Well...... Limiting,

Have now messed with B2 for a few hours, and find I can actuall make music with it.... Looking forward to the iPad update soon

IncarnateX · Post by **IncarnateX** » Fri Feb 11, 2011 7:36 am

bmanic wrote:I agree. Another reason why these kind of software are considered "toys" is because, frankly, they are exactly that. You can scetch out some ideas and such with them but I would most likely never use the actual audio data coming from them in a commercial project. It's just too much of a hassle...

....At the moment, I have to retract my recommendation to a "Warning! Not very polished but lots of potential" status.

Cheers!
bManic

Design wise and functionally speaking you are right IMO, unfortunately! But fortunately creativity and inspiration do not always arise from the most rational circumstances. I am for the time being totally lost in iPod touch music. Technically it IS a hazzle but for some reason much much more fun for me than making music on PC.

As far as I can see, the devs are getting closer and closer to serious music making. Beatmaker 2 is not perfect but you can use it for very fine productions in electronic music soundwise.

It has also been announced that Nanostudio will get a nice update. Among other things there will be mixer inserts effects.

Music Studio is announced to be updated with audio tracks.

What is not here today, might be here tomorrow. And compared to PC sofware, the apps are ridiculously cheap. Perfect if you suffer from GAS. I

it.

Best Regards

putte · Post by **putte** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 11:51 am

Hi there.

I'll make it short and will explain what i'd need in order to become a happy BM2-user. (I never tried it before and don't have an iPad or iPhone so far.)

1. I am used to use 2 Roland SP808-Samplers on Stage. These are loaded with Banks filled with home-made samples.
Each song covers about 64 Samples on 4 Banks. (16 Samples per bank.) --> how many banks does the BM2 feature?

2. I then "shoot" these samples live and improvise with them, with my drummer playing on it. So: no sequencer involved, it's all manually shot by hand. --> Is this possible with BM2, is there a "hold"-button that loops samples?

3. I make use of the onboard cuttoff and resonance filters of the machines. --> is this possible with BM2?

That's about it. So: will BM2 be the right replacement to these old machines of mine?

Cheers and thanks in advance for any help. Well appreciated.

putte

IncarnateX · Post by **IncarnateX** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 12:20 pm

putte wrote:Hi there.

I'll make it short and will explain what i'd need in order to become a happy BM2-user. (I never tried it before and don't have an iPad or iPhone so far.)

1. I am used to use 2 Roland SP808-Samplers on Stage. These are loaded with Banks filled with home-made samples.
Each song covers about 64 Samples on 4 Banks. (16 Samples per bank.) --> how many banks does the BM2 feature?

The drummachine has 16 pads. There are no limits regarding banks. You can create and manage your own sample folders.

putte wrote: 2. I then "shoot" these samples live and improvise with them, with my drummer playing on it. So: no sequencer involved, it's all manually shot by hand. --> Is this possible with BM2, is there a "hold"-button that loops samples?

Yes, there are "one shot", "hold" and "hold + loop"

putte wrote: 3. I make use of the onboard cuttoff and resonance filters of the machines. --> is this possible with BM2?

Unfortunately no. There are no individual outs pr. pad, so you can only add overall effects, including filters, to each drummachine as a whole. You can however create all the drum units your processor power can handle.

putte wrote: That's about it. So: will BM2 be the right replacement to these old machines of mine?

Nope!

It is far from a live tool IMO and barely a selfcontained studio at the present state of the art. I use it in conjunction with other apps like Nanostudio and iSequnece to reach an acceptable amount of basic functions.

best regards

BeatMaker 2 is out