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Show HN: Tape It – iOS recording app for musicians

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Re: Show HN: Tape It – iOS recording app for musicians

#61

Post by JanNash »

n_sonic wrote: post #60
JanNash wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

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.

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 :)

Re: Show HN: Tape It – iOS recording app for musicians

#62

Post by JanNash »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #55

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 s…

Hey 82-111-98 (:D).

Thanks a lot for the feedback and for trying our App. We're happy you like it :)

Re: Show HN: Tape It – iOS recording app for musicians

#63

Post by n_sonic »

JanNash wrote: post #57
JanNash wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

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 :)

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?)

Re: Show HN: Tape It – iOS recording app for musicians

#65

Post by dev_tty01 »

subhro wrote: post #39

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?

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.

Re: Show HN: Tape It – iOS recording app for musicians

#66

Post by subhro »

earthnail wrote: post #42
subhro wrote: post #39

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?

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 camera…

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.

Re: Show HN: Tape It – iOS recording app for musicians

#67

Post by earthnail »

lostgame wrote: post #58
subhro wrote: post #39

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?

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 meth…

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.

Re: Show HN: Tape It – iOS recording app for musicians

#68

Post by JoshuaEddy »

earthnail wrote: post #27
prionassembly wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should I use it over Voice Memos?

- 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,…

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".

Re: Show HN: Tape It – iOS recording app for musicians

#69

Post by chris_st »

earthnail wrote: post #49
chris_st wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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, recordi…

Very cool! Just tried my bass into my iPhone 11 Pro max, recorded okay, but Tape It identified it as keyboards.

Re: Show HN: Tape It – iOS recording app for musicians

#70

Post by lux »

lux wrote: post #50
earthnail wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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!

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.

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