I've been looking for an app like this for ages. Thanks! It's 98% of what I always wanted.

What's great:

- I really love the simplicity of the interface, and the visual design is just perfect.
- It's so cheap! I want to buy it twice.
- Auto-quantize works just like I always imagined a looper should work.
- I'm glad it preserves everything when I quit and re-start the app.

Suggested fixes:

- There's a short delay in the recording. If you hold an earbud right next to the microphone and record a click track into another track, you can see that one is shifted maybe 50 milliseconds relative to the other. It'd be excellent if this could be compensated for by auto-shifting the track after recording it. (Probably the delay would be different on different models of iPhone/touch...)
- It took me a while to discover how to delete saved files (by swiping them in the Save screen). I was looking for an always-visible delete button in the Load screen.
- Double-swiping to empty out a track is not always recognized.

Ideas for new features:

- Merging tracks together
- Loops of different lengths. Maybe I could I tap a track while it's in the middle of recording and it would stop there and just loop what it has so far. It could snap the stopping point to 25%, 33%, 50%, or 100% of the total length (or 66% or 75% for some nice polyrhythms).

Thanks!

Hi David !

Great you enjoy the app and that it fits a big part of your needs .

There is no latency compensation, so you are totally right ! The shift is around 20 ms (10 ms output latency and 10 ms input latency, depending on the device). I was wondering if it was worth the dev, as it was almost unnoticeable. Now I have my answer, so I will work on that !

For the "delete saved loop" function, I simply re-use the iPhone way of doing. You either swipe on a track or tap the Edit button on top right corner. I stick it to the save page as I wanted the load page to stay 100% safe regarding to erasing/overwriting a saved loop.

The conditions for the track erase swipe to work are :
- 2 fingers on the same track, without ever sliding on another track, even briefly.
- the 2 fingers have to cross 60% of the screen each.
Maybe one of the conditions is too harsh, but, as there is no undo, I preferred it to be harder than easier to do.

Merging tracks together is definitely my next step. I will begin the dev in few weeks.

Loop of different lengths will be done too. But not immediately, it's a mid-term feature in my mind.

Don't hesitate to vote on the AppStore for the app if you enjoy it !

Agreed that this is a very cool app. I would like to see an assignable pre-roll for those times when I want say a 16 or 32 beat loop. Then you wouldn't have to wait so long to start recording.

Also, not sure if this is at all possible, but some sort of ext control would be so cool too. Kind if like how you can use the iPhone headset to remotely control volume and pause. Would be awesome to control core features with some sort of footpedal.
When is somebody going to come out with a midi io cable that plugs into the iPod connector? Bam!

Thanks for the feedback Ringleader !

I totally agree with you that for long loops "quantized to loop" is a little bit frustrating. I'll share my thoughts with you.

The first option I have think of is simply making it "RC20" style. At some point in the dev, I'll implement overdub recording. This way, you simply let the track in "overdub recording" mode, start/stop playing when you want, and when finished, stop the recording. The only drawbacks I see is that you have to stay as quiet as possible before and after the useful played parts. But overall it's a strategy that has prove itself in the guitar loop pedals.

The second option would be to make a "Quantize to ..." option in which you could choose the unit of quantization. i.e. loop, half loop, quarter loop, third loop, ... .

I personally prefer the overdub solution, because the second option would require you to go back to the menu to change the unit of quantization in the middle of a song.

What do you think ?

Totally agree with you that an external pedal would be top notch ! It's not possible to use play/pause button of the headset as we don't have access to this in the API. And even if we had access to it, the way it works would make it inefficient (it shortcuts the mic input :p).

The only way to have something like this would be a "certified for iPod/iPhone" device dedicated to this function... Unlikely to happend, because I think only a big manufacturer can be certified, and I presume the demand would be too low to be profitable. That's the big drawback of the iPhone, it's not an open platform. But if it becomes a growing need, shared by a big number of apps, I will definitely take part in the "lobbying" ^^.

I just had a blast today making loops while waiting for my daughter at swimteam! Wow this app is fun! Best app I have bought yet. By pre-roll all I meant is to have a series of count in clicks so you don't have to wait 16-32 clicks before starting recording. But, I agree the overdub is a great feature too.

I also thought that a Bluetooth footpedal would be the best solution for remote access but I assume this would be restricted by the same limitations you mentioned.

Another thing I noticed is that when audio playing without a headset connected the sound is coming from the earpiece of the phone and not the speakers on the bottom. Is this intentional?

I forgot to mention why a classical pre-roll would be tricky in my previous post .

In fact, the loop is not necessarily tempo-driven by a click track. So in these cases, I would have to guess the tempo, which is quite tricky. I could invalidate the behaviour for non tempo-driven loops, but I try to keep the app as intuitive as possible, so a loop is always considered as "time driven" and not "tempo driven".


Bluetooth is even worst ^^ ! I think an iPhone can only be paired with bluetooth headset/headphones and nothing else.

I thought about the ext control again after your question, and I think I may have find a way to emulate a switch pedal. But don't expect anything about it soon, and it's a 100% tricky DIY thing anyway.

For the earpiece, there is an option for that. In "Options", in the last category named "Output", the "Favor Speaker Over Receiver" switch do just that. If you enable it, sound will go out through the Speaker at the bottom of the phone. So it'll be louder, but sensible to feedback.
Maybe the word Receiver is not clear enough. Earpiece make more sense to you ? I'm not a native english speaker, so if you are, I'm interested in your opinion !

I'm really glad that you had fun with the app ! It's my main goal, so it's really appreciated !

Don't hesitate to rate and comment it on the app store by the way, it helps me a lot .

I guess receiver is the more correct term but for some reason it just didn't register in my brain.
I am just used to the audio coming from the speaker as a default (ipod music and videos etc.) so I thought something was wrong when I heard it coming from the receiver.

I will definately rate and spread the word about this app as I think it is truly fun and functional. Awesome job and thanks for creating it!

Hi Raphaël and Thanks for creating such a great app. UI just works and lets me concentrate on music, which I think is the most important thing for any music app.

In future versions I'd like to see a possibility to record loops longer than 45 seconds. Every now and then when arranging, I'd like to loop the whole song, jam along and be able to add and replace parts on the fly. Of course there are multitrackers which can do it, but I much prefer working with simple UI that stays out of the way.

Hi Pekko !

Thanks for the kudos, I'm always happy when someone and I share the same vision of music apps through Everyday Looper !

For the 45 sec question, it'll be impossible to extend this on iPhone Edge, 3G, iPod Touch 1G and 2G, because the tracks are stored in main RAM and they have only a few dozen of MB available for non-system apps.

On 3GS and iPod Touch 3G, it'll be possible to extend it to a greater value, but maybe not up to a whole song length. What duration would you need ?

This is something planned, but it will have to wait until I can buy a 3GS anyway ^^ !

By the way, wouldn't it be annoying for you, in such use, to not being able to move the play cursor directly ?