Android audio apps

[muzicphiles]

Hi
i am running android on my HTC
the music apps seem to be picking up on the marketplace
some of the apps i like ..
1.electrum [ it is a beat box with 5 sec sample trigger facility for 16 pads]
2.chordbot lite[excellent app to sequence chords while working out tunes etc.]
3.RD3 BEAT BOX really nice beatbox and tb 303 sequencer.
4.reloop - same team that developed electrum, a bit cumbersome..none the less
a loop sequencer
5.Rhythmax another steq sequencer

some good stuff rolling out from the droid enthus.. looking forward to some more action!!

[futurefields]

The reason why you will never see apps on Android that are as good as iPhone apps, is because iPhone apps can be programmed for a single device.

There are a variety of Android phones using all sorts of different cpus and ram of varying speeds and amount. So, the app developer must code his app for the "lowest common denominator" to ensure that all Android users will be able to use the app.

This is why something like the Moog app (which looks so cool and made me wish I had an iPhone instead of a Motorola Droid) would never work as an Android app.

It sucks :\

[bmot]

The reason why you will never see apps on Android that are as good as iPhone apps, is because iPhone apps can be programmed for a single device.

i hear what you're saying, and of course it's easier for programmers to just aim at one device. But Android phones are getting good at last, like the Galaxy S, the newest Motorola and HTC phones. They all hit 1ghz. I think from now on developers of specialist software like audio apps could easily set Android 2.2/1ghz as a benchmark. There's no point trying to make audio apps work on all phones. Loads of recent audio apps for PC won't work on old PCs, that's just the way it goes.

Apologies if this was mentioned already, but everyone with Android should try fingerplay midi (midi control your DAW over wifi):

http://thesundancekid.net/blog/fingerplay-midi/

Tested with Ableton Live, excellent results.

[RPH]

I wonder if the availability of App Inventor will mean that more music related apps are released on Android?

Nope, because App inventor is still very basic.
I've got access to the application, nice toy ( using puzzle pieces representing the code bits ), have built a simple sample player but that's all that can be done basicly. There is no multitouch, no control over the sound.. just play / stop / pause / trigger phone vibration.

And the latency between triggering a button and hearing audio is about 100ms,. which sucks bigtime! ( i may be able to improve it a bit, haven't checked the .wav files used for silence at the startpoint..but that will only improve maybe a couple of milliseconds ).

Cheers,
Rob.

[whyterabbyt]

The reason why you will never see apps on Android that are as good as iPhone apps, is because iPhone apps can be programmed for a single device.

Doesnt make sense. (a) the iPhone/iPod/iPad family isnt a single device and (b) that's like claiming all Wii games are better than all PC games because the Wii is 'a single device'. Its a logical fallacy; plenty of software for 'non-monolithic' platforms is better than alternatives targeted at 'single device' platforms. Its not the device specification that defines the software, and hardware abstraction is more than possible.

[ezelkow1]

As probably stated somewhere before, it has nothing to do with the different devices, its all about the crappy sdk implementation of audio. If you want to be able to do anything like synthesis and good sample playback you have to get down to the nitty gritty of the NDK, which the majority of programmers out there wont want to do because its not as easy to use as the regular SDK and also requires them go into C instead of java. Until the android sdk is updated with better audio features you wont see a flood of great high performance audio apps.

The different devices isnt a major issue, when creating an android app you can specify the minimum base OS that must be on the phone, and for audio apps if you specify the latest version of android you are pretty much assured that its on a relatively newer and fast phone as the older ones did not receive the upgrade to the latest os.

[futurefields]

The reason why you will never see apps on Android that are as good as iPhone apps, is because iPhone apps can be programmed for a single device.

Doesnt make sense. (a) the iPhone/iPod/iPad family isnt a single device and (b) that's like claiming all Wii games are better than all PC games because the Wii is 'a single device'. Its a logical fallacy; plenty of software for 'non-monolithic' platforms is better than alternatives targeted at 'single device' platforms. Its not the device specification that defines the software, and hardware abstraction is more than possible.

You miss the point entirely. Android devices have a range of specs, from really slow crappy clamshell devices aimed at teens etc... to the more high end droid line. In order for an app developer to maximize his audience, he must code his app so that it runs on the powerful droids, but also the crappy clamshell teen phones running Android.

Somebody coding apps for Apple only has to target the iPhone and iPad. And the minimum iPhone specs are a great deal faster than the minimum Android specs, thus you have developers who have a lot more freedom to code more processor intensive apps.

But, as has been mentioned, it's a moot point anyways as the Android's audio kit is definitely not setup for real time audio manipulation.

[Looperstar]

I have been using Etherophone (theremin type of app) on my HTC desire and is a great little instrument. I am going to connect the the headphone out to a mixer in and see how well it works in a track I am working on.

Check it out here or download on the market its free.

http://www.androidzoom.com/android_appl ... _gvpn.html

[ericj23]

The reason why you will never see apps on Android that are as good as iPhone apps, is because iPhone apps can be programmed for a single device.

Doesnt make sense. (a) the iPhone/iPod/iPad family isnt a single device and (b) that's like claiming all Wii games are better than all PC games because the Wii is 'a single device'. Its a logical fallacy; plenty of software for 'non-monolithic' platforms is better than alternatives targeted at 'single device' platforms. Its not the device specification that defines the software, and hardware abstraction is more than possible.

You miss the point entirely. Android devices have a range of specs, from really slow crappy clamshell devices aimed at teens etc... to the more high end droid line. In order for an app developer to maximize his audience, he must code his app so that it runs on the powerful droids, but also the crappy clamshell teen phones running Android.

Somebody coding apps for Apple only has to target the iPhone and iPad. And the minimum iPhone specs are a great deal faster than the minimum Android specs, thus you have developers who have a lot more freedom to code more processor intensive apps.

But, as has been mentioned, it's a moot point anyways as the Android's audio kit is definitely not setup for real time audio manipulation.

calling bullshot here

The developer does not have to make it run on little clamshell phones - the samsung galaxy s is selling 2/3rds as much as the iphone 4, and when you throw in all the other similairly specced phones there is almost as big a market as there is for iphone.

As was mentioned there also is not 1 iphone, so if developers have to consider lesser specs do they write their software so it works on iphone 1, 3g, 3gs,4 or ipad - all of which have different cpu and definitely are not as powerful as each other.

Ultimately the bottom line is there are returns allowed on the android store, so developers can write for those 1 gig phones and if they don't work on someone's lesser phone no biggie - they just return the software

[deastman]

I have been using Etherophone (theremin type of app) on my HTC desire and is a great little instrument. I am going to connect the the headphone out to a mixer in and see how well it works in a track I am working on.

Check it out here or download on the market its free.

http://www.androidzoom.com/android_appl ... _gvpn.html

You must have missed my previous posts where I was discussing the fact that my brother wrote Etherophone. If you do use it in any tracks, send me a link and I'll pass them along to my brother. I'm sure he'd be thrilled to hear it being used in an actual song!

[Looperstar]

Sorry deastman I did miss your previous posts. Your brother has done a great job with Etherophone. I'll let you know when I upload a track which uses it.

[drjohnny79]

Argh do I hate Apple. Still, I bought an iphone 3gs because of the audio apps. When the android phones start having better apps for music making, I'll sell my iphone any day.

/Johnny

[sameer]

i don't think if sdk is a road block if you have seen re-loop , RD3 ,electrum and jasuto ..in action, you will agree that its not true.
these apps are tremendously responsive and have great interactive features .
i am sure it might not be easy but surely doesn't mean it is impossible to write good apps for droid.
Any audio enthusiast will know you can't run good applications without speedy processors . Each developers has to just provide minimum config to run their application just like all the game and audio software do.

[The Chase]

i don't think if sdk is a road block if you have seen re-loop , RD3 ,electrum and jasuto ..in action, you will agree that its not true.

These are great apps but they are mostly sequence-based... I am self-confessedly in love with android but it's a very real drawback that low-latency audio interaction is difficult in android, even on higher performance models.

You can read in detail here:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=3434

[Peter - IK Multimedia]

Thanks for posting that link, The Chase. This is to what we are referring when we state that we cannot, at the present moment, technically implement AmpliTube on these devices. Well, we could but it would really suck.