Have used N-Track studio now for the last two days and must say that it has been a pleasant experience. Was sceptic at first as it looked weird at first but in the end it is not so strange.
You have the tracks at the left side and then you can open up different windows for the different functions. Have been using it on a 4.8 inch screen and were afraid that it was going to be too small but it works out good.even the smallest switch is reacting good and is not hard to use. Then for some functions like volume, pan, mute etc can easily be switched up to a bigger side screen. There is also small switches for effects, the equalizer and a spectrum analyzer. / sonogram. The layout is very nice indeed as everything is accessible from one screen and you do not have to switch screens. Just like said you have small switches to click on or off smaller screens on top off the main screen. One thing that is good is that it seems to have a fair amount of undos did not try how many but it is one more thing that makes for a nice workflow.
To be editing your wav files / recordings you can make the tracks bigger for easier viewing and also move away the side panel for more space. There is volume automation and that works really nice like on a standard DAW. There is effects that you have to buy as in-app purchase or by the Pro version directly with effects and you can load up as many as possible or at least as many as your device would allow. This on each track and master track.
The Equalizer is included...
The effects are- Reverb, echo, chorus/flanger, tremolo, pitch shift, phaser, tube-amp and compression.
They do seem decent even though I have not had time to test them out properly. They also comes with a good set of presets like for example making the compressor work as a noise gate. The effects do seem decent but it would be interesting to have some time and start to test them out a little bit more.
(Also read at the end of this review for some problems encountered).
About the recording this just like any other multi track recorder on Android it is not possible to get any professional results... So it is good for some sketches or maybe for some simpler work for sampling.
There is also the Latency problem but in the case of N-Track you have a built in latency measurer and all you have to do is to is to click the command
"Estimate Latency"in the menu in a quiet ambience and that is it... So far for me it has worked good. This is if you record without being able to hear what you are recording meaning that you will hear what is recorded but what you are recording will have to come through the headphones.
If you are recording and want to hear your voice for example directly in your headphone there is a lot of latency unless you have a Google Nexus device running 4.2 or over.
There is one way to get a little bit cleaner sound and that is to use the iRIG microphone but you are not going to get professional sound with that either, better but not really good.
The only way you can good sound with a multi track application is to use the solution that Audio Evolution Mobile have figured out by being able to use a OTG USB cable with a USB Soundcard. Here is what it gets interesting as the developer is developing it for their application to. It seems that it is going to take many a months before it happens.
(You would need a device that can use a OTG-USB cable).
So for me would not really use it for recording until that happens as I have better options.
But as it is it is good for mixing. For example to have recorded sequences from different synthesizers to use on a track, edit samples etc. as it is easy to work on many differents parts of audio on the multi track area. One thing that is helpful is that you can move parts around across different tracks. When I use my DAW of choice Reaper a lot of times I record a couple of of tracks of whatever and cut out the parts that are good and keep moving things in and out of place.
Yes of course that is easier to do on a bigger screen than the screen I am testing n-Track studio on but it is pretty impressive anyway and definitely more useful than editing on one of the “one track” editors and it comes with more effects.
The n-Track studio is the mobile version of a bigger software that is available for PC / MAC / iOS and is interchangeable with each other. Meaning that whatever you import of your mobile projects into the bigger DAW will be the same. This would not really work the other way around, but it is still something to consider. The Daw is not to expensive and can be worth taking a closer look at.
Okay now for some critique...
First would like to say that the developers seems pretty keen on making this work good
and they have already done some update and bugfixes.
Also I got my version for testing the application around ten days ago and it has been updated so it is possible that what I am talking about is fixed already...and that this has been tested on a Samsung Galaxy S3.
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When moving parts you have to be careful because if you move parts downwards it is easy that the tracks turns very small and at the same time creates a lot of extra tracks by itself...
Which is annoying as you have to drag the part of audio all the way back up again and if this happens a couple of times more you will be frustrated.
Also if you do not want all those extra tracks there it takes an annoying amount of time to go to the menu click on the delete track and think this was a bug that got encountered because in addition I had to click on the track itself afterwards to delete the track...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The effects section was very buggy for me. Say I created three four effects. What happens is that a lot of time they turn themselves off or if the parameters got changed they changed back to the default of the preset that was chosen. Think that this must be the first thing to fix...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The only way that I figured out to reach the master track was by creating an extra track go to the side panel that you can open up (and have access to bigger volume, pan controls window to access FX etc) go up on the top left corner and erase the track. In this way the master track channel showed up...
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So there is four things that would be nice if they were implemented:
To be able to reach the master channel directly.
To have the Undo button accessible directly on the main screen instead of in the pop up menu.
Low and High pass filters.
To have a glue function of different audio parts.
Also this is probably because of brain damage but could not find a way to choose more than one audio clip at the same time..?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The application is very intuitive so if you have any experience with a DAW or multi track before you will figure out the functions by yourself in ten minutes or so but if you have never used one, guess it could be confusing and right now there is not much of a manual but the developers have told me that there should be a complete manual soon.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lastly did record one acoustic song with voice...
As there was problems with the effects not working as they should the recording is only
with some compression on the guitar and a little bit of distortion on the voice...
The recording was made just with the microphone on the telephone and as you can hear it is noisy... having said that it could be less noisy choosing a very quiet ambience it could also have helped if there was a control of the input volume as I could have had the guitar closer to the microphone without the signal clipping . Having said that,
I wanted to do a recording as what would be in my mind how people would like to use the application, just to have your device handy, record and try things out.
One last thing is the boominess that I could not get rid off and blame it on the equalizer as I could not make its curve more radical meaning that either I quit too much bass or it peaks at frequencies I do not want to highlight... or maybe this is just excuses and I do not feel like spending more time on this.
You have the tracks at the left side and then you can open up different windows for the different functions. Have been using it on a 4.8 inch screen and were afraid that it was going to be too small but it works out good.even the smallest switch is reacting good and is not hard to use. Then for some functions like volume, pan, mute etc can easily be switched up to a bigger side screen. There is also small switches for effects, the equalizer and a spectrum analyzer. / sonogram. The layout is very nice indeed as everything is accessible from one screen and you do not have to switch screens. Just like said you have small switches to click on or off smaller screens on top off the main screen. One thing that is good is that it seems to have a fair amount of undos did not try how many but it is one more thing that makes for a nice workflow.
To be editing your wav files / recordings you can make the tracks bigger for easier viewing and also move away the side panel for more space. There is volume automation and that works really nice like on a standard DAW. There is effects that you have to buy as in-app purchase or by the Pro version directly with effects and you can load up as many as possible or at least as many as your device would allow. This on each track and master track.
The Equalizer is included...
The effects are- Reverb, echo, chorus/flanger, tremolo, pitch shift, phaser, tube-amp and compression.
They do seem decent even though I have not had time to test them out properly. They also comes with a good set of presets like for example making the compressor work as a noise gate. The effects do seem decent but it would be interesting to have some time and start to test them out a little bit more.
(Also read at the end of this review for some problems encountered).
About the recording this just like any other multi track recorder on Android it is not possible to get any professional results... So it is good for some sketches or maybe for some simpler work for sampling.
There is also the Latency problem but in the case of N-Track you have a built in latency measurer and all you have to do is to is to click the command
"Estimate Latency"in the menu in a quiet ambience and that is it... So far for me it has worked good. This is if you record without being able to hear what you are recording meaning that you will hear what is recorded but what you are recording will have to come through the headphones.
If you are recording and want to hear your voice for example directly in your headphone there is a lot of latency unless you have a Google Nexus device running 4.2 or over.
There is one way to get a little bit cleaner sound and that is to use the iRIG microphone but you are not going to get professional sound with that either, better but not really good.
The only way you can good sound with a multi track application is to use the solution that Audio Evolution Mobile have figured out by being able to use a OTG USB cable with a USB Soundcard. Here is what it gets interesting as the developer is developing it for their application to. It seems that it is going to take many a months before it happens.
(You would need a device that can use a OTG-USB cable).
So for me would not really use it for recording until that happens as I have better options.
But as it is it is good for mixing. For example to have recorded sequences from different synthesizers to use on a track, edit samples etc. as it is easy to work on many differents parts of audio on the multi track area. One thing that is helpful is that you can move parts around across different tracks. When I use my DAW of choice Reaper a lot of times I record a couple of of tracks of whatever and cut out the parts that are good and keep moving things in and out of place.
Yes of course that is easier to do on a bigger screen than the screen I am testing n-Track studio on but it is pretty impressive anyway and definitely more useful than editing on one of the “one track” editors and it comes with more effects.
The n-Track studio is the mobile version of a bigger software that is available for PC / MAC / iOS and is interchangeable with each other. Meaning that whatever you import of your mobile projects into the bigger DAW will be the same. This would not really work the other way around, but it is still something to consider. The Daw is not to expensive and can be worth taking a closer look at.
Okay now for some critique...
First would like to say that the developers seems pretty keen on making this work good
and they have already done some update and bugfixes.
Also I got my version for testing the application around ten days ago and it has been updated so it is possible that what I am talking about is fixed already...and that this has been tested on a Samsung Galaxy S3.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When moving parts you have to be careful because if you move parts downwards it is easy that the tracks turns very small and at the same time creates a lot of extra tracks by itself...
Which is annoying as you have to drag the part of audio all the way back up again and if this happens a couple of times more you will be frustrated.
Also if you do not want all those extra tracks there it takes an annoying amount of time to go to the menu click on the delete track and think this was a bug that got encountered because in addition I had to click on the track itself afterwards to delete the track...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The effects section was very buggy for me. Say I created three four effects. What happens is that a lot of time they turn themselves off or if the parameters got changed they changed back to the default of the preset that was chosen. Think that this must be the first thing to fix...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The only way that I figured out to reach the master track was by creating an extra track go to the side panel that you can open up (and have access to bigger volume, pan controls window to access FX etc) go up on the top left corner and erase the track. In this way the master track channel showed up...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So there is four things that would be nice if they were implemented:
To be able to reach the master channel directly.
To have the Undo button accessible directly on the main screen instead of in the pop up menu.
Low and High pass filters.
To have a glue function of different audio parts.
Also this is probably because of brain damage but could not find a way to choose more than one audio clip at the same time..?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The application is very intuitive so if you have any experience with a DAW or multi track before you will figure out the functions by yourself in ten minutes or so but if you have never used one, guess it could be confusing and right now there is not much of a manual but the developers have told me that there should be a complete manual soon.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lastly did record one acoustic song with voice...
As there was problems with the effects not working as they should the recording is only
with some compression on the guitar and a little bit of distortion on the voice...
The recording was made just with the microphone on the telephone and as you can hear it is noisy... having said that it could be less noisy choosing a very quiet ambience it could also have helped if there was a control of the input volume as I could have had the guitar closer to the microphone without the signal clipping . Having said that,
I wanted to do a recording as what would be in my mind how people would like to use the application, just to have your device handy, record and try things out.
One last thing is the boominess that I could not get rid off and blame it on the equalizer as I could not make its curve more radical meaning that either I quit too much bass or it peaks at frequencies I do not want to highlight... or maybe this is just excuses and I do not feel like spending more time on this.
It is possible that it would sound as good as in the promotional video that the company made.If you use electric guitar and amplifiers etc... but I am sceptic.
Like said before to record and get better sound you need to connect directly to the device but even then you have the built in compression of the device to deal with so depending on what you record it could mess with your recording... I am talking about longer tracks like in the example I posted.
One thing that works okay for recording with the microphone on the device can be short sounds for sampling or cut up recordings.
Like said before to record and get better sound you need to connect directly to the device but even then you have the built in compression of the device to deal with so depending on what you record it could mess with your recording... I am talking about longer tracks like in the example I posted.
One thing that works okay for recording with the microphone on the device can be short sounds for sampling or cut up recordings.
Playstore link:
n-Track Studio
Homepage if you want to check out the fully fledged DAW:
http://ntrack.com/
n-Track Studio
Homepage if you want to check out the fully fledged DAW:
http://ntrack.com/
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