intermorphic.com Blog

Overall Summary: In my view, well worth the £5.99 ($9.99) upgrade price.

Well, I just managed to upgrade my iPod touch 2g to iPhone OS 3.0. It all went smoothly, although there were some niggles in the purchase process (I had to go through a loop 3 times for some reason). Here are some initial observations:

Bluetooth stereo: The first thing I checked was how it worked with Bluetooth stereo, as I wanted to use it in my (old) car and a newish Sony MEX-BT 3600 radio. The good news is that it paired fine, and the results were good! I initially forgot to turn off my WiFi connection and was finding that the stereo signal broke up or glitched every 15 – 20 seconds or so. Then I turned off the WiFi, and all was fine. The only thing to report is that it is LOUD. I have to turn the car radio down very low, and have not yet figure out how to adjust the volume on the device. If it is not possible to adjust the volume on the iPod touch or iPhone, and you are using a Bluetooth headset, then watch your ears!

Onscreen keyboard: With the car stopped/stationary and engine off (!), I tried typing whilst playing music over the bluetooth connection. I figure this would be a good stress test. Although the audio clicks for key presses were all over the place, typing speed was very very good – much much better than before – even with bluetooth going. And, the landscape keyboard is great!

Just these 2 features make it worth the £5.99 upgrade for me, so good one Apple!

Calendar woes: However, I do admit to being very disappointed that Calendar STILL does not show To Do items from iCal, at least as far as I can see. I just cannot understand why Apple have not fixed that, as there have been plenty of posts I have seen about it. The only thing I can think of is that it is not included for business reasons. I am really surprised by its glaring omission because it makes paying good money for the MobileMe offering seem a lot less interesting – and all the more so seeing as Apple are pushing MobileMe hard these days. If anyone from Apple reads this, please get out a point release fast that fixes that, thanks! My guess is you will sell more MobileMe subscriptions if you do that, so there is a real financial reason for doing it.

TeckNet iPhone composite AV and USB cable: This used to work fine under 2.2.1 but has stopped working under iPhone OS 3.0. I just get a message that this hardware is not supported. That is a bummer, too!

Apple bluetooth keyboard: I did try seeing if the iPod touch would discover a Wireless Apple keyboard (in a vain hope!), but it does not. I seems to keep trying to discover devices, but it never shows up. However, now the onscreen keyboard is so much more responsive, it lessens the desire for that. However, it would still be handy, as you can still type faster on a real keyboard.

Other bluetooth device: I dunno why , but I also tried to see if it would Bluetooth connect to my old N95. Well, it did, but as soon as it got connected the connection was terminated. Happened every time I tried to pair it. This does tend to indicate, though, that it should be possible to pair with other Bluetooth devices and developers could have a lot of fun there!

Voice Memos app and external mic: Just to confirm, this works fine with my external mic and cable system as noted earlier. You still don’t hear what you are saying in the headphones (no input monitoring – what was I hoping for ), and the volume level seems a bit low with the mic.

In-app purchasing: I am looking forward to seeing how in-app purchasing pans out, as this is something Intermorphic really wants to get into, as it would be ideal for getting add-on content for Mixtikl.

That’s it folks, hope it was of interest!

Having posted about JoikuSpot yesterday, I now reckon that JoikuSpot is probably the best app I have ever come across , as it has set me free in a (mobile) way I have always wanted, but never been able to figure out how to do.

I am doing this update from a cafe, and connecting my MacBook Pro to my S60 Nokia N95 wirelessly; no cable required. This morning I even had a googlechat session on my iPod touch (via N95) whilst on a walk and listening to music. JoikuSpot lets you see how much data you are using up, which is handy as I can see that doing chat etc uses very little, whilst normal browsing via the iPod touch uses quite bit as there is no way of turning images off.

Anyhow, with this kind of set up, all you need is a (suitable for your needs) data plan from your operator, and a suitable S60 device and a computer/laptop (or iPod touch) with WiFi. Provided you are not wanting to do too much, you don’t ever need to consider a mobile hotspot plan like with BT Openzone or The Cloud etc (well, I don’t now, anyhow).

Sorted, and big thanks Joiku!

PS: I would expect that operators without an iPhone offering would be jumping at the chance to partner with Joikusoft Oy. The reason being that instead of losing customers who wanted an iPhone, they could suggest instead maybe getting an iPod touch with an S60 device and it would be nearly the same (well, customers could use the iPod touch instead ). Maybe the operator would even want to offer customers a bundle of S60 phone, iPod touch and JoikuSpot, and bring their purchasing power to bear. Now that could make sense!

A while back we decided we needed a Windows Mobile phone on which to do testing of our mobile music mixing system Mixtikl, and that we needed a touch only version. We were not sure at that time on our iPhone plans otherwise we would have gone for an iPhone instead. We got a good deal on an HTC Touch HD from Orange, and so that was that. However, I have at long last retired the HTC Touch HD as my working phone, and none too soon as it drove me potty.

Why I got fed up with the HTC Touch HD is a long story, but I had a devil of a job accepting calls with the front slider, making calls by mistake, it being so very slow to do anything on and a host of other reasons. Besides which, having now got an iPhone Touch for testing out Mixtikl, I realised just how poorly the touch screen UI on the HTC Touch HD was implemented. Everything to do with it seems to happen in slow motion compared to the iPod touch.

Anyhow, enough said on that. I was always a big fan of my Nokia N95, as it just worked and always gave good service, so I decided to go back to using that (bliss!). There was one big but, though. Although I liked it as a phone, I was not so keen on going back to keyboard only control, especially for browsing, having experienced the iPhone Touch. What I wanted to do was to find a way to connect my iPod touch to the N95 so I could use that for browsing on, but then use the N95 as my phone.

As luck would have it, I came across a fabulous little app for S60 / N95 called JoikuSpot Premium. For around 15 euros this allows my N95 to become a WiFi hot spot that my iPod touch can connect to wirelessly (and with WEP encryption)! This means that when I am out and about I can browse on the iPod touch, connecting wirelessly to my N95 which in turn is connected to my network. I can also use chat etc on the iPod touch. I had being tempted to consider getting a monthly subscription to a hotspot network like The Cloud etc, but it always seemed so expensive when I was on a contract with a data plan sufficient for when I was not at home. So, all in all, a result!

NB: I did have a little problem running the app, once installed, but I took my heart in my hands and upgraded my N95 Firmware to the latest version, and that seemed to fix that.

What I am waiting for next is for iPhone OS 3.0 to be released, because I _hope_ the there will be drivers in it to allow me to connect my Apple Wireless (bluetooth) keyboard to the iPod touch. Great for making notes on the go etc. I also just hope Safari in iPhone OS 3.0 can be configured to turn off images so as to save bandwidth – goodness knows why that option was never included in the first place.

Finally, I figure I will be really sorted once I can also figure out how to connect up iTM Keys so that I can use MIDI to control (and input to) Sonar in Parallels. But I am a bit stuck on that right now…

I spent a bit of time in the last day or so trying to figure out the easiest way, for me, to get an external microphone and guitar audio input into my 2nd gen iPod touch. This was by way of a break from playing with (oops, working on skins for) Mixtikl for iPhone.

As I live not far from a Maplins, I was hoping I could do it with some standard connectors. It turns out I could, but I wanted to make sure I used the minimum number of them so as to keep it as simple as possible. Here is what I found worked for me (item 4 being the adaptor to connect to my guitar jack input, and item 5 the adaptor to connect to my condenser mic).

Here is a picture of the layout:

1) 4-pole 3.5mm Sony “Camcorder” style audio lead, part L53BA for £7.99

2) Two phono to 3.5mm stereo adaptor, part JK14Q for £2.29

3) metal 3.5mm stereo coupler, part JK05F for £1.89

4) 1/4 inch mono to phono adaptor, part RW01B for £1.79

5) 3 pole XLR female to RCA / phono socket, part number N27GB for £8.29

Notes:

I found that the black 3.5mm plug casing on item 1 was a bit too chunky to allow for the iPod touch connector to plug in along side it; so I trimmed a tiny bit of the black plastic off the plug casing where it butted up against the iPod connector, and then tried it again to make sure it was OK (I did not touch the iPod connector of course!) .

My electric guitar connected a treat, and I had a lot of fun with StompVox (what a cool app that is and excellent value!). The input monitoring (i.e. you can hear through headphones the effected signal) was very effective as the audio latency was surprisingly good! I had a lot of fun with the Looper unit in this app, and would recommend it highly to anyone. Although it is billed as a vocal app, I had a lot of fun with it with my guitar.

I then used my Sennheiser E835 mic and got that to be recognised by, and recorded by the QuickVoice app, so that worked OK, too. I then also tried my Takamine steel guitar with line out, but it just did not get detected by QuickVoice, so I need to check into that.

The iPod touch does not have the usual red, white, yellow RCA cable assignments, as I read on the net, but no worry. I found that the yellow and white leads (on the item 1 cable) were for the left and right channels for the headphone output, and the red one worked for mono audio input.

Maplins also do a Panasonic Camcorder lead, which seems to do the same thing, but with different wiring. It looks like the 4-pole plug casing on this one is a bit smaller, but it was not in stock when I went along.

Maplins is a retail electronic component outlet in the UK, probably a bit like Tandy, Radio Shack or Circuit City etc elsewhere.

Hoping this helps some people, as I could not find anything like this when I searched. This may or may not work for you, so I am making no claims to that here! Errors and omissions excepted and use the info at your own risk etc!

Further comment:

Electric guitar not being detected as input: One thing I have found is that some times my electric guitar is not detected sometimes, and by this i mean that when i run one of the above apps you seem to get no input. However, my microphone is always detected – so go figure. Now, it could simply be a loose connection on my side, but I don’t think so. It seems that I have to have the guitar plugged in, and being strummed so it generates a decent signal, before I start the app in order for the guitar input to be detected and the app work (and I can never seem to get it detected if not initially detected). But, I am not even sure of that as there seems to be something temperamental going on. I will investigate further and see if I can get to the bottom of it.

It is always something of a relief to hit major project milestones. We have already passed a major one: Mixtikl is midway through its Alpha testing phase and now has people other than Tim and me using it! The Beta release is now only weeks away.

What is Mixtikl, and why are we so excited by it?

Mixtikl is the first mobile music creativity app that does not ignore the importance of the ‘full-on’ desktop music sequencer. Mixtikl embraces it: with both plug-in and standalone versions. Mixtikl is for both PC (Windows and Mac) & Mobile!

• Mixtikl is open: Use your own content, or from in add-on Tiklpaks.
• Capture / mix / work on content on the move on your mobile.
• Finesse your mixes on PC using the Mixtikl plugin.
• Move your mixes between mobile and PC and back again.
• ‘Performer’ app – Perform music on your mobile.
• ‘Remixer’ app – Create quick mixes, and mix and match sounds.
• ‘Partikl’ app – Sound and FX design, exporting mix files
• ‘Player’ app – Play lists of Ogg, MIDI and generative music.
• Use audio loops, MIDI, generative music & modular synthesis.
• Integrated Noatikl generative music engine for generative music.
• Pitch shift your loops and apply realtime FX.
• Act as VST or AU plugin in your VST/AU enabled sequencer.

There is also a whole lot of other stuff in there that we’ll let you all know about when we release it!

What is Noatikl, and why is it in Mixtikl ?

For those who don’t know, Noatikl is a Generative Music tool. This is an easy-to-use program (with great depth!) which helps you make music; by composing the music for you, in real time, while you give it direction in what to do!

Mixtikl contains a run-time version of Noatikl . That is to say, it Mixtikl lets you play your Noatikl compositions on whatever device you happen to have Mixtikl . You can use Mixtikl ’s built-in synth designer (called Partikl) to attach sounds to your Noatikl compositions, to really bring them to life in a cross-platform way.

This lets you, for example, create playlists of Noatikl Generative Music pieces that you or your friends can listen to on the train, where the music changes every time you hear it; as a change from listening to the exact same notes in your MP3 collection time-after-time!

Releasing software is hard work!

It never ceases to amaze me exactly how much work is required to get software out of the door. We’ve been creating products since the early 1990s, so we’ve got a feel for how long things will take now and what order things need to be done in.

Our prediction “way back” when we started creating Mixtikl out of the ashes of miniMIXA has actually been pretty good; we figured it’d be out sometime this month (October) but it now looks like it’ll be November. As always, the delays are due mainly to discovering new things along the way, and adding them in to make the product more interesting!

The software is now pretty much in a Beta state, give or take a few items. We’ll let it out of the door when it feels ready!

Looking back, to look forward

It is interesting to reflect that we actually created the first version of miniMIXA back in 2004; and that we won a BAFTA award for miniMIXA back in 2005 – more than three years ago! If our then employers (Tao) had had the vision and resources to back miniMIXA, I wonder where we’d have got the product by now… Still, we’re making up for lost time and are having a blast bringing Mixtikl to life.

It feels amazing to sit on a train and sculpt music in real-time on my mobile. And, when I want, just kick-back and listen to a generative music playlist courtesy of the built-in Noatikl Generative Music engine. And I still can’t quite believe it when I use the exact same software as an Audio Unit under Logic, a VSTi under Kore 2 or Sonar … or even standalone on my Mac/Desktop.

This is been such a long road; we started writing the code that is within the Intermorphic Sound System, which underpins Mixtikl , more than 6 years ago. We started writing the 2d engine that the Mixtikl UI sits on, well over a year ago. minMIXA itself took around 3 years to write, including three major releases. The port from miniMIXA to Mixtikl has been a long, hard slog through 2008, but it is great to be so close now to releasing the product that reaches our vision from nearly a decade ago!

And that product is an extendable, trans-platform music/media mixer and “box of tricks”. And it includes a runtime of the Noatikl Generative Music engine. The first Mixtikl versions are for Windows (Standalone, VSTi), Mac (Standalone, Audio Unit, VSTi), Windows Mobile Pocket PC/Smartphone (Standalone). Once those are finally released, Symbian Series 60 looks to be our next target. And hopefully iPhone after that, if Apple ever solve the problems with their SDK.

We have lots and lots of ideas of ways to extend Mixtikl – and the prices are going to be amazing. I can’t wait for the first full release … not long now!

Pete

Two apps that I regularly use on my S60V3 N95 are:

Projekt by Kylom – a neat outliner and list making app, and;

Mobbler – a really simple looking but fantastic LastFM client (meaning I can WiFi play LastFM radio stations on my mobile around the house). LastFM really comes into its own for me, when it is on my mobile. Sure, for cost reasons I would not use it over my operator network, but if it could be priced right, it would be a killer service. To give this a chance of happening LastFM should really allow a user to decide the streaming quality they prefer (i.e. on mobile 64kbps would be fine).

Anyhow, I would really hope that one day we can get apps into Mixtikl that do these kind of things. But, we have to get Mixtikl out first, and there are a ton of things we would like to add down the road. Ultimately, it will all come down to what users want the most (and what we have the time and resources to build).

Do check out the apps above, they are cool!

I was having problems recording the output of my sequencer to a file. I could hear it fine through the headphones, but could just not get Sonar to record it. It was likely another one of those problems related to using the Sigmatel sound chip in the laptop. Paul Weir of Earcom came to rescue and suggested a neat little VST “Recorder” plugin from Voxengo. It is free, and it works a treat – thanks Paul!

Last week I came across an excellent piece of software – Asio4All. I was beginning to completely despair of ever finding anything that would give me low latency operation on my laptops, without having to resort to an external input box (MIDI or audio).

Then, in a last ditch websearch I somehow stumbled across asio4all. It seemed to good to be true, an asio driver that would work with my sigmatel chip, when sigmatel itself had not deigned to provide one (goodness knows why), nor did there appear to be one in site.

Well, it is a biggup for the developer behind asio4all (Michael Tippach) – qudos and respect! It works great…

I had a bit of a struggle getting it going with Sonar, but I got it working in the end – and I still don’t know what got it going in the end (but i think it was something to do with disabling the Windows Wavetable Synth – which is detailed in the FAQ notes somewhere). It works fine on both my Dell/WinXP and Macbook running bootcamp/XP.

Sonar is a bit quirky when it comes to WDM or MME or ASIO driver changes. Certainly, when I was using the MME drivers (the only other ones that would work on the Sigmatel before asio4all came to the rescue), getting MIDI into Sonar (played on an external keyboard) was so sluggish as to be completely unusable. Now, with asio4all it works like a dream and latency is fab. I have found, though, that when it comes to exporting audio from Sonar, I seem to need to revert back to the old MME drivers, but at least I have (thankfully) found a low latency solution now.

My next problem is finding a way to record the output of Sonar to an audio file – and I can hear it on headphones, but just not record it. This is not a normal problem, it is something to do with driving virtual instruments without triggering them with a MIDI track (noatikl generates MIDI on the fly). When I find a solution I will follow up this note with that.