Critics frequently attach the phrase “lock-in” to Apple’s iTunes Store – iTunes – iPod/iPhone combination. But, in the post-DRM age, what does that mean, exactly?

First, you have to recall that while for many of us the manual drag-and-drop music management is appealing, it isn’t so for many average consumers. They want sync. That means that music will be stored in iTunes and synced to Apple devices and nothing else. Apple is serious about locking you to their store and their devices, enough so that they frequently update their software with special keys that prevent the use of devices. iTunes is “free,” but Apple determines which mobile devices you can use and which you can’t. And Apple has gone after anyone who dares give you the ability to use your own music software or own devices, including efforts (ironically) to make their iPhone and iPod work with Linux and open source players.

These efforts don’t protect the music or prevent privacy – they protect users of Apple’s software and mobile devices from using anything but Apple’s tools. Yet Apple has used the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to take legal action over anyone who dares to even talk about how to use legally-purchased music and hardware:

OdioWorks v Apple

Perhaps suspecting their case was too thin to defend, Apple eventually backed off that particular claim — after, says the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “7 months of censorship and a lawsuit.”

Apple Withdraws Threats Against Wiki Site

But the software and hardware locks are unchanged. And Apple has won, in my view, an even more important battle: they have a monopoly over mindshare.

Here’s an example from a recent review by Gizmodo of the Android 2.0 mobile operating system from Google, as implemented on the Verizon-distributed Motorola Droid. They have some fair points about Android’s maturity and strong and weak points. But note what they say about music sync:

The only way to get your music and videos on the phone is to manually drag and drop the files. There is no syncing, no easy way to get your music library onto your phone. How are normal people supposed to figure this out? Verizon reps actually joked about how putting music on the Droid is sure to make for a lovely Saturday afternoon. What. The. Shit.

In fact, this is technically accurate, to my knowledge, only if you’re using iTunes. That incompatibility is engineered specifically by Apple. It’s a “feature”: other vendors could make other devices sync with iTunes, but Apple engineers regular updates to prevent them from doing so. In fact, while Apple was conceding defeat in its efforts to censor the Web over its iTunes lock, it was simultaneously busy blocking the Palm Pre from working with iTunes. This should be especially sad to long-time Mac watchers, who saw a Mac community railing against Microsoft’s effective office software and operating system monopolies in the 90s. Those Mac historians should also recall the early development of iTunes and shareware predecessor SoundJam, both of which worked with a variety of hardware. Now, some members of the same Mac community cheer market share numbers and anti-competitive practices by Apple.

But, engineering aside, it’s really the mindshare battle that’s most impressive. Gizmodo, in saying the Android “doesn’t sync,” really means that it “doesn’t sync with iTunes.” And given iTunes’ massive market share, Gizmodo is not alone – I’ve seen similar complaints from other press outlets and, anecdotally, many, many users.

In fact, Android sync is supported by a variety of applications. In my tests, it works with the open-source players Songbird (Mac, Windows, Linux), Banshee (Mac, Linux), Rhythmbox (Linux), Winamp (Windows), Media Monkey (Windows), and yes, even Microsoft’s own Windows Media Player. Microsoft may restrict the use of its Zune media player, but ironically its music playback software is far more open than Apple’s.

By “sync,” incidentally, I mean automatically – it’s no harder to use these applications with Google Android than Apple’s iTunes and iPhone/iPod. I personally find most of them more flexible and intuitive than iTunes. And I can show someone in a couple of minutes how to manage their device via the file system, too – even “normal people.” (I definitely don’t count as “normal,” so no argument there. But presumably “normal people” can learn to use the Mac Finder, right? Apple certainly argues they can – then locks users out of that tool when they connect an Apple mobile player.)

This is not a pro-Android argument, despite the screenshot. Any music player or phone that supports normal disk mounting will work the same way.

Why should all of this matter to musicians? The reasons monopolies are a concern in the first place has to do with pricing, and media monopolies add to that control of culture and speech. Even if your music isn’t distributed through iTunes, pricing and consumption patterns, and even the kinds of music people listen to and where they discover it are now being deeply impacted by Apple. Apple, in turn, by convincing users that there are no other options and engineering interoperability out of their products protect that control, just as digital music is growing by leaps and bounds. (For statistical evidence of the resulting trends, see today’s other story, linked below.)

I spoke to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann in April about the paper-thin (literally) arguments from Apple, when Apple was trying to prevent websites from talking about the database lock between iTunes and mobile devices:

All Apple has told us about this is in the letter they sent to us in December, as posted on the website as an exhibit to our complaint. Apple simply cites the fact that the iTunesDB page authors said that the obfuscation mechanisms used to create the iTunesDB has “may reside” in the FairPlay DRM code.

…The important thing here is that the iTunesDB pages were simply discussions about what might need to be done to reverse engineer the iTunesDB hashing. There was nothing to indicate that the efforts had succeeded. So even if understanding the iTunesDB hashing mechanism somehow magically unlocked all of FairPlay (which would seem to be far fetched), nothing on the pages suggests that the authors were anywhere near that goal.

Note that at the time, the EFF did not claim Apple lacked the right to make these kind of locks. The EFF told CDM at the time, “They have every right to do – to try to block it. Apple can certainly try to block it. What they can’t do is use inapplicable federal law to use legal threats to get them to stop.” And Apple backed off those claims.

The issue is whether you should invest in a product that limits your freedoms to use it. And the issue for musicians is whether this kind of a behavior from a company with an effective monopoly is limiting the potential power of digital music listeners in the future.

This is not to say that there aren’t reasons to choose to use an Apple device or its iTunes software. As reader “low resolution sunset” says in comments on the previous story:

This is pure conjecture: but I tend to think that slick interface design, trust, and loyalty for the Apple brand identity is what’s winning them the dominant market share of downloads.

Indeed. So, why not rely on that design, trust, and natural loyalty? Why force loyalty through engineering? And even given these qualities, isn’t there a danger when one company becomes so dominant that people don’t so much as consider alternatives? What’s to keep Apple competitive on good design if they have no competitors?

I certainly can’t answer those questions. And in the meantime, I’m looking to other alternatives, alternatives that have made me quite happy.

More on what this can actually mean:

Digital Sales Up, But is Apple Monopoly the Price? NPD, Mint Data, Editorial Analysis

Mint.com, the online financial management tool, has put its numbers together with market researchers NPD Group to analyze music spending. The results: when it comes to consuming recorded music, digital music continues to rise. At the same time, so does Apple’s grip on the music consumption market, a combination that includes proprietary control of a music store, a music player, and the leading mobile device.

The NPD data should look familiar. Digital music is growing, and clearly it’s at the root of the record industry’s loss of revenue as consumers shift from physical to digital media. Also, Apple’s iTunes remains the lion’s share of the market – enough so that they effectively control distribution, pricing, and consumption patterns, the very definition of monopoly by most measures. (That’s even before you get to Apple’s effective monopoly over the computer player and mobile device, though my suspicion is that an all-out attack on the portable device could start to chisel away at all three.)

Even in the NPD data, though, there’s an interesting indicator: note that the “Other” category is roughly the same size as Apple’s main competitors. That suggests that there’s a plurality minority. And oddly enough, it’s right in the middle of this mysterious “Other” category that a lot of unknown music artists make their dollars, selling direct to listeners or going through niche sites. Artists I’ve talked to in the electronic genre have almost universally said they make nothing on Apple, while they do very well on a site like electronic-specific Beatport. And unlike physical media, it’s not a big deal for someone who loves electronic music to drop their favorite tunes manually from the Beatport store into iTunes and an iPhone.

Dig into the Mint.com numbers, and you see just how different stores can be. Per-transaction spending differs by an enormous margin. Brick-and-mortar retailers sell a lot more per transaction. True, this could include accessories like headphones at stores like Sam Goody, but it’s also interesting to note the gap between stores like eMusic, Rhapsody, and CD Baby, and the smaller per-transaction buy at iTunes.

While Apple buyers aren’t spending as much per visit, they’re visiting more often, and Apple’s move to variable has made a big difference. Buyers have gone from purchasing an average of 2-2.5 transactions to well over 3, coinciding with the introduction of variable pricing.

If you’re not a fan of monopolies, there’s just not much to be done to spin this data. As digital consumption has grown by an order of magnitude, nothing has happened – thus far – to change Apple’s dominant share of the market. And as you can see in pricing statistics, within the Apple ecosystem, Apple has been enormously effective in controlling the pricing of the product and spending habits of the consumers.

On the other hand, looking at the inverse situation, a lot of the most interesting activity is happening outside either the former brick-and-mortar or new digital iTunes economies. We don’t have data on a lot of these niche stores (Dancetracks, Beatport, Bleep, and so on), which grow in number and variety. We don’t have data on direct-to-consumer sales by artists. And we don’t have much data on legal free music consumption, music released as Creative Commons or pay-what-you-will. Just criticizing Apple for their popularity could miss out on what’s happening in these alternative channels.

Many of these channels have no obligation to share their statistics, but to any who are interested, I’d love to talk to you. (And I think CD Baby winds up being the most interesting stat here.)

This is also an excellent illustration of what online analytics can do with financial data. It certainly won’t ease anyone who prefers that this data remain private, but fans of analytics might also see potential for collective learning experiences from shared data. Data like this had long been privileged only to banks and credit cards; a service like Mint allows users to share such data with one another.

So, how are you spending on music?

And would you find it useful – or disturbing – to have that kind of data shared anonymously with other consumers?

The iPhone’s glass touchscreen may be a thing of beauty, but despite its multi-touch capabilities, it would seem this device is incapable of responding to how hard you tap it. But the developers at Wave Machines Labs apparently didn’t want to take no for an answer.

The iGOG drum suite for iPhone provides drum pads and sample triggering in unique ways, most notably in its velocity-sensitive VelAUcity. How do you get velocity response from a device that’s supposedly not pressure-sensitive? Presumably there’s additional data in the touch events that makes this possible, but for now Wave Labs aren’t saying:

iGOG’s proprietary VelAUcity technology does the unthinkable and turns the iPhone’s screen into touch sensitive drum pads. Play loud, play soft, or play a full-blown crescendo on a crash cymbal, iGOG will capture every nuance of your performance. Just plug in your headphones and start playing.

Here’s the interesting twist: generally, when any of us say “iPhone,” what we really mean is “iPhone or iPod touch.” That’s not true in this case: “NOTE: VelAUcity is only available on iPhone devices. if you’re using an iPod Touch, VelAUcity is disabled.” That seems to suggest that the trick is the built-in mic, or at the very least some private API that’s iPhone-specific. (Audio triggering is most likely, as this app comes from a developer with drum replacement experience.) That would also suggest to me that you might be able to pull this off with non-Apple mobile devices and controllers in the future.

As a result, though, I can’t test it – I have only the iPod touch.

Unconvinced or uninterested? iGOG has some other approaches to how the small Apple handheld can be made more useful as a set of pads:

• Multi-positional pads that assign articulation based on location
• A mic trigger mode — which may be more useful than the VelAUcity. This mode assigns any nearby sound (like rapping a table) as a trigger. (That’s possible, of course, with a variety of software, but having the device itself be portable could be handy, so to speak.)
• Multi-samples, file management, and sequencing for doing more with the samples.
• No, real multi-sampling — 384 multisamples per drum!

Even if you’re skeptical of yet another iPhone app, I think there are some great ideas here for music software (mobile and otherwise). Here’s a look at the mic trigger mode in action:

Oh yes, and speaking of all this audio triggering, the same developer makes the superb Drumagog drum replacing plug-in. With pricing at US$199-379, you have to be pretty serious about drum replacement, but I know people who are who swear by it. There’s really nothing stopping you from whipping up your own solution, but Drumagog has a lot of niceties that make the process easier, quicker, and more powerful.

http://www.drumagog.com

If you are a Drumagog user, you can bring those files into iGOG. That makes this app all the more interesting – it can be both a fun toy for someone new to the idea, and a companion to a more serious (and more expensive tool).

More on iGOG:
http://www.wavemachinelabs.com/igog/

Part of the beauty of the iPhone from its launch date was the notion of a Mac you could fit in the palm of your hand. That makes it ironic that, for so many developers, mobile platforms in general have turned into a way to fragment software, to make it run fewer places instead of more. There’s something to be said for designing to a specific mobile device, but on the other hand, how many developers would want to restrict where their creations run? And particularly in music, isn’t the appeal of mobile creation the ability to have your tools work in more places? Maybe targeting just one gadget is the right choice for a given tool, but it shouldn’t be the only choice.

On the iPhone, the application Thump has plenty in common with a range of mobile music making tools. It’s simple but fun, a groove box with sequencing, subtractive synths, drums, and a set of basic effects, plus the ability to load your own samples and export songs.

Thump also demonstrates how simplifying sonic capabilities can produce musically-beautiful results, by focusing on the essentials and creating something with personality. Here’s a track by its creator showing off its sounds:
thump soundreel by mazbox

Well worth checking out the app on your platform of choice:
http://www.mrkbrz.com/thump/

What might not be immediately apparent is that under the hood, Thump makes use of the open source environment openFrameworks. As a result, the same code runs on iPhone, Mac, and Windows, as well as Linux. (It’s not distributed for Linux, but it could be. Hint, hint.) Creator Marek Bereza gives back, too – he ported the openFrameworks audio library to the iPhone, where it’s available to anyone.

Updated Marek notes in comments just what this means. The video below is, essentially, the same app. In place of the iPod screen, he has used a massive lattice of physical controls. A separate installation at the same show used a large touchscreen and simplified interface. And this really demonstrates what cross-platform means. Guy Kawasaki in the 80s mocked “ports” as a cheap wine. The idea is not to simply dump your code on a different platform and hope for the best – in fact, in this case, the changes from one platform to another were radical. The key is maximizing what’s essential, what really is not specific to a single device.

Physical Sequencer from Marek Bereza on Vimeo.

Creative Applications has a detailed write-up of the installation with more documentation.

If you’re interested in creating your own projects, oF has an elegant syntax based on Processing, but adapted to C/C++ coding paradigms and libraries.

I would recommend trying desktop development first as you’re learning, but when you do want to go mobile, setup is absurdly easy:

Setup instructions for iPhone

Having this as a foundation means more freedom for users and developers alike, the ability to run where you want, and a shared community of artists helping one another out. It does not mean sacrificing revenue, either – which is important, because revenue is often what enables (and encourages) developers to make new things. Here, we see a commercial mobile tool and distribution via the iTunes store, with free-as-in-beer distribution of desktop apps. But even the Free Software Foundation actually encourages charging for distribution – and to many people, the FSF is the most extreme example.

The bottom line is, you’re free to create what you want, where you want – and it doesn’t even have to have a price of free.

The use of openFrameworks is possible because the iPhone allows the execution of native code. Apple does not allow the Java virtual machine, which locks out many useful platforms and tools — including Processing. Naturally, that should not be the case with forthcoming non-Apple platforms based on Linux; more on that soon.

Thanks to Memo Akten for the tip — and for his exceptional documentation of iPhone openFrameworks development.

GPU-tiful and Cross-Platform

Updated Another framework I left out is the lovely libnui. The tagline says it all: “C++ API, multiplatform (Mac OS X, iPhone, Win32, Win64, Linux), 3D hardware accelerated GUI and more…”

On the iPhone, Intua’s elaborate Beatmaker software and David Wallin’s bleep!box have both been made with libnui. I want to single out bleep!box because of its UI – note how UI elements are simplified and scaled to the size of your fingertip. That’s something that, speaking of multiple platforms, could be equally important with touch hardware coming to Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms (some of it here already). I saw a huge fan of Windows tablets loving Propellerhead Reason on a tablet. He probably would be less enthused running Reason or Record on a touch interface; the UI elements are way too small.

bleep!box is also worth a look for the same reason as Thump: elegant UI, simple functions, and a lot of fun.

Pd, too

Pure Data, the open source patching cousin of Max/MSP, can also run on mobile devices. It’s currently powering the application RjDj, but because Pd is free, that could be just the beginning. In May, I wrote about the work being done by Hans-Christoph Steiner, who has been porting Pd even to ancient PDAs and iPods – including those, notably, without native floating-point capabilities (the kind of number crunching usually associated with sound).

Well, now Hans-Christoph is looking toward other, current-generation devices, too, kicking off with a workshop on making interactive sound on the iPhone using Pure Data. Here’s a taste:

OK, kids, you won’t believe how easy this is. Once you have Pure Data installed on your your iPhone or iPod-Touch, creating and uploading your own sound-processing and sound-generating patches is as trivial as copying a text file to your device! You’ll still need an Apple Developer License, but because Pd patches are treated as media files, they don’t have to go thru Apple’s elaborate code review — so, you can just dive right in, turning your phone into a pocket synth within minutes. In this 3-hour hands-on workshop, interactive sound whiz and Pure Data developer Hans-Christoph Steiner will lead you through all the steps.

Hans-Christoph will be talking Pd on the iPhone at a conference next month at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. That will also include Memo Akten and Zach Gage talking about openFrameworks. And for nearly-entirely open source hardware, there’s a tantalizing-looking workshop combining Android with Arduino, too.

http://artandcode.ning.com/

There’s quite a lot more to say about this, but I hope this whets your appetite.

And, of course, riding the train to Pittsburgh or your nearest university or open source workshop, now you’ll have Thump which which to make some thumping tracks on your iPhone.

Look out: Behringer, already a notorious rip-off artist, is taking the “first step in [the] company’s reinvention of online presence.” I shudder to think what the coming steps will look like. But yes, the new site looks a wee bit familiar. It actually gets worse as you dig into the layout.

In fairness, for over a decade now, Apple’s site has perhaps the most ripped-off Website design on the Internet. But then, Behringer is special.

Back when the blog Music Thing was publishing, it was able to do an annual series on cloned Mackie and Roland/BOSS gear, some down to colors, typography, and control layouts. (Check out the MT archives for some of this hall of shame, or lack thereof.)

And Behringer doesn’t just copy the Apple layout like other sites. They actually send out a breathless press release that brags about their pixel-perfect, color-perfect clone.

Update: Apparently, you can thank readers of the Behringer Website for the choice. Mr. Tunes notes via Twitter that this design was chosen in a survey among other mock-ups, for which you could win a blatant rip-off of the Line 6 Pod. I could comment on that, but the things I might say would not make me a team player for “Team Behringer.”

After months of hard work from a 9-person development team, BEHRINGER launched a dramatically upgraded website today. Sporting an elegant, efficient aesthetic and an intuitive interface, the new site boasts a feature-rich series of upgrades…

Indeed, an inspection of image assets and CSS reveals that the development team really did re-create the design from scratch using their own images and code. (There’s 81 months of human development time the planet will never get back.)

Here’s the great irony: Behringer’s Terms of Use for their site.

This Site is provided for your personal and non-commercial use only. The purpose of this Site is to provide information on BEHRINGER and its products. All content included in this Site, including but not limited to any text, graphics, images, logos, button icons, data compilations, software, audio and video (collectively, "Materials"), is the property of BEHRINGER or its content suppliers, and you may not distribute, exchange, modify, reproduce, perform, sell or transmit the Materials for any business, commercial or public purposes. The Materials are protected by applicable laws and international copyright and trademark laws, and any unauthorized use of any Materials may violate copyright, trademark, and other applicable laws. You may not frame or utilize framing techniques to enclose any portion of this Site or any Materials without express written consent of BEHRINGER. You are granted a revocable and nonexclusive right to create a hyperlink to this Site so long as the link does not portray BEHRINGER, its affiliates, or their products/services in a false, misleading, derogatory, or otherwise offensive manner. You may not use any BEHRINGER trademark, logo or other Materials as part of the link without express written consent of BEHRINGER or as provided herein. If you breach any of these Terms, your authorization to use this Site automatically terminates and you must immediately destroy any downloaded or printed Materials herefrom.

Of course, the idea of Behringer’s proprietary intellectual property in this case is more than a bit absurd. Here’s Apple’s Terms of Use:

All text, graphics, user interfaces, visual interfaces, photographs, trademarks, logos, sounds, music, artwork and computer code (collectively, “Content”), including but not limited to the design, structure, selection, coordination, expression, “look and feel” and arrangement of such Content, contained on the Site is owned, controlled or licensed by or to Apple, and is protected by trade dress, copyright, patent and trademark laws, and various other intellectual property rights and unfair competition laws.

Indeed.

By the way, wasn’t “Seeing is Believing” the tag on one of the images on Apple’s site at some point? (Why would I not be surprised if that was, you know – nine months ago?)

Logic has been a big box of sound toys for some time, but I think what decides whether you really build a working relationship with software like Logic is whether you like editing in it. And that makes Logic Studio 9 worth a new look – and a must-upgrade for fans of the tool. Its combination of subtle tweaks to the editing interface, the ability to edit inside takes, the incredible Flex Time for squishing around audio like Play-Doh, and easy conversion to sampler tracks makes it really fun to edit audio in Logic. You can read the full, detailed review I wrote for Macworld:

Logic Studio: Music workstation suite adds flexible audio, improved editing and live performance, simulated amps and effects [Macworld.com]

The amps and such are fun, but to me the other banner feature in Logic 9 is the vastly improved MainStage, which adds backing tracks, ReWire hosting, and other features that could make it more powerful for live performance. Apparently MainStage has crept into some big-name live shows; I’m going to work on getting more reports from the field. (Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out how I can rework my own live set so it requires less software, but that’s me.)

Oh, and one little improvement I didn’t fit in the review: there are some amazing special effect convolution impulses Apple threw in with Space Designer, which should give you more fodder for sound design experimentation.

The record industry may be dying, the planetary economy failing, and music technology elusively complex to most average musicians, yet competition in the DAW space just continues to heat up. I find it amusing that some claim Apple’s aggressive pricing is only possible because they sell hardware. I’d buy that, except for some of Apple’s own competitors. Digidesign will add a pretty powerful version of Pro Tools to a hardware bundle. Cakewalk’s SONAR, once a little more bare-bones in the extras department than Logic, now offers a lot of the same sorts of goodies to Windows users in its own (underrated, I think) DAW. And Reaper is a powerful, cross-platform option that costs just US$60, even for most commercial work (now that they’ve made the individual license more open). In fact, various tools are so good that I think it’s really hard to give people advice. Personal taste is more likely to dictate which you prefer, because the ineffable feeling of using these tools – as similar as they may look on paper – is very different. If I ever work out a good way to describe that in words – which does happen to be my job, whether I’m up to it or not – I’ll let you know.

Any tool you’re using is a tool that matters. And I know we have a number of readers using Logic. Later this week, I’m planning a Logic Q&A to fit some of the technical revelations that didn’t fit in the review, so feel free to ask more questions or comment however you like on the Macworld review.

Updated: See http://createdigitalmusic.com/snowleopard for a running report.

Apple’s “Snow Leopard” 10.6 ships Friday, which means it’s time to start compiling information about the new OS flavor. Just don’t upgrade too fast, as always.

Want to push an operating system to the breaking point? Ask a musician. Between the demands of real-time performance and the complex ecosystem of mix-and-match hardware, software, and plug-ins, odds are your local audio geek will break an OS faster than anyone else. Not every operating system upgrade is going to have a big impact on music software, but keep in mind that even subtle changes can cause issues that may interfere with your work.

Of course, all of this means music users should treat any OS update with caution. :

• If you’ve got a critical, primary production machine, your best bet is often simply to wait. Confirm that software works before you upgrade rather than after.
• If you’ve got some time to invest in an upgrade or have more than one machine, be sure to do a full backup and system image so you can revert to the previous, known working OS.
• Best solution: Boot off an external hard drive. Don’t commit to installing internally until you’re sure everything is working. Once you are, go enjoy. (as noted in comments, and yes, I should have said this initially… still, the latest 10.5 build is still the preferred OS for now.)

So, sit back. Enjoy life. Go for a walk on a beach. Recline in your favorite chair with your MacBook running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Isn’t it great? Need to waste time? Plants vs. Zombies is out for Mac.

What? Still want to upgrade?

Fair enough. We’ll be tracking changes to Snow Leopard and which of them may impact audio.

The short version: Snow Leopard introduces only small changes, but if a developer hasn’t been on top of those changes, you could see issues. And as for the 64-bit mode that’s attracting most of the attention, the short answer is, you can’t use it for music yet.

Native Instruments and Plogue have each responded to CDM with information on their software.

Executive Summary

• NI and Plogue have tested their software as functioning on 10.6
• Neither NI nor Plogue recommends you upgrade your OS yet – Plogue uses stronger language to discourage you
• 64-bit support, expanded in Mac OS 10.6, is not yet relevant to music use because nothing (not even from Apple) supports it yet, but don’t worry – you can get more RAM through other methods
• Audio MIDI Setup gets a tune-up, and built-in audio support appears to be improved

Native Instruments

If you’re a Mac user who uses NI products on any version of the operating system, you should stay tuned to this URL:

http://www.native-instruments.com/en/support/compatibility/mac-os-x-compatibility/

NI tells CDM they’ve just updated it today with Snow Leopard information:

Native Instruments has conducted initial compatibility tests with Mac OS X 10.6, which have shown all current NI products to work without any specific issues under standard installations of this operating system.

However, users involved in professional audio production or live performance should be cautious about upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6 until compatibility with third-party audio software and hardware has been widely confirmed by the relevant manufacturers.

Native Instruments is currently conducting further systematic compatibility and performance tests with Snow Leopard, and will provide additional information on this page as it becomes available.

The second paragraph sounds like what I just wrote, huh?

Plogue

Plogue, an independent developer of a variety of software ranging from the awesome modular environment Bidule to sampling engines for Garritan’s orchestra and piano products and an upcoming library of vintage chip sounds have been doing their own work. Privately, I talked with them about some of the work they had to do after Apple rewrote underlying operating system plumbing with Objective-C (from C and Carbon). Here’s their official statement to CDM on Snow Leopard and, in the parallel Windows dimension, Windows 7:

10.6 and W7 each caused only minor modifications to our code base, however these mods are necessary for proper functioning of our products on those platforms. Most of our transition efforts as a company will be of a user support nature.

Any musician foolish enough to jump on new OSes without a hint of caution, inevitably makes me wish for a new kind of Darwin Award prize.

(Emphasis mine. Consider yourself warned.)

Ableton (Unofficial) and a Plug-in Warning

From the Ableton forums, via comments:

It’s currently being tested internally over here, so the current version is not officially compatible yet – on the other hand this does not mean that it doesn’t run.

We will release an update after the tests during the next weeks that will be officially compatible, but we don’t recommend upgrading yet if stability is your main concern.

It’s likely that a few new third party plugin problems will show up due to the changes under the hood in 10.6 and experiences show that the latest 10.5 versions now are the way to go after the gfx performance problems with earlier 10.5 and 10.4 versions.

So, in other words, now is a great time to upgrade to 10.5!

More in the thread here:

Ableton Forums

Now, note, mostly what this extensive discussion reveals is that Snow Leopard is poorly understood, partly thanks to a very successful hype campaign on Apple’s part. (Ahem.)

There are not magical performance and speed improvements found by installing Snow Leopard – or, most likely, any OS. (Would that such things were true.) The presence of a set of multithreading tools, for instance, is specific only to developers for whom that set of tools is useful. Audio software already has finely-tuned multithreading implementations specific to real-time applications, and in the case of something like Ableton Live, it really needs to work across platforms.

If you install a new OS with the expectation that it’ll be “faster,” you’ll almost certainly be disappointed. If you install a new OS hoping you’ll “break things,” then you probably won’t be disappointed. I don’t mean to suggest don’t ever upgrade or live in fear of all software, just that you should imagine that, like redoing the plumbing in your basement, long-term advantages will come, but with significant effort and time.

PreSonus Hardware

See a separate post: at Snow Leopard launch, PreSonus audio interfaces are likely to be entirely incompatible.

About 64-bit (Nothing to see here…)

NI notes that the 10.6 offers significant changes to 64-bit support, including a new 64-bit kernel mode – this being the rough equivalent of the “x64” 64-bit versions of Windows (and Linux) that have been available for some time.

Here’s the bottom line: 64-bit support on Mac OS isn’t yet relevant to audio users, period. It’s not supported by Apple’s own Logic Studio, or any other major host at this time. This is a situation we’ll be watching, as it is something developers appear to be investigating.

But before we get too far into that issue, you should consider why you’re asking about 64-bit in the first place. 64-bit computing offers two potential advantage. First, running processor computation natively at 64 bits offers a marginal improvement. Second – the issue most people care about for music – 64-bit memory addressing offers access to massive amounts of memory, beyond the approximate 4 GB barrier that applies to 32-bit applications.

More memory is a very good thing. But you probably don’t want to sacrifice compatibility just to get it. Fortunately, you don’t need the 64-bit OS to get beyond that 4 GB barrier. On the Mac, some workarounds have extended the practical life of 32-bit memory addressing for music applications – thus avoiding the need to get a 64-bit native version of every driver and every piece of software you want to use.

On Windows and Linux, you can indeed get a number of audio applications (like SONAR on Windows, for instance) that have excellent 64-bit support, and a number of the drivers have followed suit. Even, then, though, many users choose to stick with 32-bit versions in order to have superior compatibility.

Note that processing “64-bit audio” – that is, digital audio represented using 64-bit data – is a completely different issues. A 32-bit processor and 32-bit operating system and 32-bit software can all do 64-bit audio processing. Whether you really need 64 bits for audio production is a whole other can of worms I won’t open here.

Getting More Memory – Without Any 64-bit Snow Leopards

When I spoke to Apple earlier this month, they downplayed the 64-bit issue and pointed out that their own EXS24 sampler in Logic Studio can access additional installed memory just fine with 32-bit – that means if you have Logic 8 or later, Pro or Express, Tiger or Leopard or Snow Leopard, you can use additional RAM. Each EXS24 sampler instance has its own memory space, so you can use as much memory as you want.

Apple even has a support doc on the subject:

Logic Pro/Express 8: How the EXS24 sampler addresses RAM in Logic 8

Last month, we looked at the situation for Native Instruments’ Kontakt. Again, using some of the flexibility of the memory architecture unique to the Mac, they’ve managed to access bigger amounts of RAM even on 32-bit OS.

Kontakt, Battery: Enhanced, More Compatible, 64-bit Memory

Kontakt is able to get up to a whopping 32 GB thanks to something called the Kontakt Memory Server. Again, you can get still more than 32 GB using 64-bit Windows, but for most users, that’s overkill.

All of this is to say, 64-bit is not a reason to upgrade to Snow Leopard for audio work – at least, not yet. Some of the built-in applications (like the Finder and Safari) get performance boosts from 64-bit optimization on 10.6, but none of that is critical to audio and music – and it’s certainly not worth upgrading too soon only to find some compatibility wrinkle we haven’t yet found.

Updates to Audio MIDI Setup

A reader tips us off to some small changes to Apple’s centralized Core Audio settings panel, Audio MIDI Setup. Audio and MIDI are now separated into separate windows, and Audio gets some nice improvements.

Note the per-app settings and adjustments for sample rate, bit depth, and Format. As in previous recent versions of Mac OS, you can also aggregate multiple physical audio interfaces into one – one of a number of reasons we really love Core Audio as a sound system.

The reader also notes that the update seems to improve support for his built-in hardware:

It’s now possible to choose a higher sample rate and resolution for all inputs/outputs on the built-in sound card of my MacBook Pro early ‘08, which is pretty cool. Before there was clearly hearable, annoying digital fragments when playing back any sounds, especially on low volume – all magically gone, i don’t hear anymore noise.

Got More Information?

Help us continue our “More Than You Wanted to Know,” obsessive series of coverage on CDM and tip us off!

Corrections and clarifications are welcome, too – that’s why I enjoy the maleable nature of the Web.

I have to say I think Express is a model of what a more entry-level edition of a product could be. (I know Apple competitors reading this are shaking their heads and pointing out that Apple is in the comfortable position of selling pricey computers with big margins, but I think Apple still provides incentive to buy the Studio version without feeling the need to cripple Express.)

Nearly everything new in Logic Studio 9 is also in Logic Express 9, which Apple began shipping yesterday.

Apple Logic 9’s audio editing have been transformed, via a new means of squishing audio around in time (FlexTime) and new editing tools (Bounce in Place, one-step conversion to sliced sampler instruments, drum replacement, the ability to edit in takes, and reorganized contextual menus for regions). All of those features are in Express, as is the new Amp Designer and Pedalboard.

What Express gives you: Express is basically all of Logic Pro, with all the major effects and instruments, mixing, notation, and stereo output. You ven get things like the UltraBeat drum machine.

What Express doesn’t give you: The big ommissions from Logic Express are, naturally, the additional apps in the suite – MainStage for live performance, Soundtrack Pro for editing, and the lot. You also don’t get surround sound (no biggie). Most importantly, you miss out on some of my favorite sound design tools – the insane Sculpture physical modeling instrument and Space Designer convolution reverb and not to be found.

Logic still isn’t for everyone – well, anyway, I don’t really believe in “one size fits all” for music tech, generally. But if you do like Logic’s workflow and aren’t quite ready for the whole Studio suite, Express is a good choice, priced at US$199. That almost makes it the best bargain DAW available on the Mac – except that for non-commercial use, Reaper, now available on Mac, is cheaper (and for commercial use, roughly ties).

http://www.apple.com/logicexpress/

In other Logic news, those of you wondering what happened to the PDF manual for Logic Studio 9, it’s back! Apparently there was a production delay that held up its release; Apple says it was never their intention to eliminate the PDF version. Also, if you do choose to use the default Mac help viewer, that incorporates the full text of the documentation available in previous versions as PDF and print, along with all the expanded documentation for Logic Studio 9. I still find the help viewer annoying, because it insists on staying the topmost window, but both it and the PDF version work. (For window management on the Mac, check out my new best friend TwoUp, which could help solve this problem if you’ve got a big display. It finally makes my Mac manages windows as well as, well, Windows.)

Direct PDF documentation link from Apple (thanks, dead_red_eyes on comments!)

Rounding up my catch-up-on-iPod/iPhone-stories, here’s one from the developer perspective – one that could face music creation developers on the entire platform.

The Apple iTunes App Store now faces the risk of becoming a victim of its own success. Music applications could be a big part of that, without some adjustments on Apple’s part. The problem is this: incoming music “fan” apps could flood out the music production apps that had enriched the mobile software platform since its debut. I think the need could be really urgent. Consider that part of the appeal of Apple’s mobile platform – yes, even in stark contrast to the Google Android on which I’ve been developing myself – is its spectacular real-time audio tools. Combine that with a disproportionately large number of Mac-using musicians, lots of ingenious apps build on Apple’s Core Audio platform, and we’ve seen a mobile platform with an extraordinary number of tools for music creation.

The problem now is that that unique set of powerful apps could get overwhelmed by essentially unrelated “music” apps. A developer who has asked to remain anonymous is already campaigning for a change. He does a good job of explaining the issue, and what might need to happen to fix it. If you’re a developer, you can add your support and feedback to the idea.

Here’s the full explanation:

Hi Peter,
I am writing you with this email I have been sending other developers on the Apple App Store. Although you probably cannot go visit the apple developer connection website because you dont have a membership, I thought you should be informed about the discussion brewing there. Here it is:

Recently the Music section of the App store has gotten very busy with a new type of app, lets call them Artist Apps or Fan Apps. Some of these Apps are great resources for fans and artists reaching out to their fans and potential fans, and some don’t live up to their potential.

However, they are joining a category that previously moved a lot slower, as the apps that had been populating this category were apps with a lot of development put into them and therefore sold at a higher tier usually- but were released at a slower pace. A look at the top 100 paid music apps illustrates this nicely.

Customers perusing the music section to catch that next great sound generating tool (for example), could check in on the new releases section perhaps once a week or even once a month and have the opportunity to check out all the great new apps that had been released, without worrying that one was missed.

Now however, these newer Artist apps have flooded this category, and great apps are getting lost in the shuffle. On one day last week, there were 21 pages of Artist or Fan apps, with a few “other” apps strewn in the mix here and there, very hard to pick out of the jumble.

I understand that this may be happening in other categories for other reasons, but I only concentrate on the Music section since I am a music producer and music App writer.

I propose that we all get together to come up with some suggested sub-category names for the music category. I will start the list off and hopefully some of you will chime in and give suggestions for other categories or add more definition to a sub-category that is alredy here.

Once enough input is received, I will compile it into one bug report for Apple. i will then post the bug# for everyone to include with any correspondance with Apple on this issue.

New sub-categories for the Music section of the App store.

Music Creation:
Synthesizers, drum machines, sound generators, scoring and notation, sequencers, DJ apps, recorders (multi track)

Music Utilities:
Lyrics apps, iPod interfaces, visualizers, iPod controllers, song recognizers, concert finders,

Learning:
Metronomes, guitar and voice tuners, music slow downers, guitar tutors, chord apps,

Artist Apps/Fan Apps:
iLike apps, Deadmou5 app, PVD App, Underworld App, NIN, etc.

Radio Tuners:

AOL Radio, Pandora, Last.fm, individual radio stations

Please visit the Apple iPhone developer forums and voice your opinion/support!

https://devforums.apple.com/message/107989#107989

Definitely voice your thoughts to Apple, but I’d love to hear what you think here on CDM, too (especially since I know some folks at Apple do read this site).

Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess and noise.io developer Amidio have made a crazy-looking hexagonal sequencer for the iPhone. It comes with plenty of samples and factory sessions if you just want to play around, but I imagine the greatest draw for CDM readers is that it allows exporting your own files via a WiFi server application.

(Ahem… cough… Google Android and others don’t require any special app just to get files onto your mobile device. Sorry, something got stuck in my throat. Cough… ahem… can we have a real, live audio system in Android now, please? Whoops, throat thing happened again.)

This application also works with Beatmaker, so you now have a pretty nice studio of mobile apps on the iPhone and iPod touch. If your arms have been cramped whipping out your laptop on the Chinatown bus to Boston (now with 6″ of legroom), this could be a huge help.

More features:

• Stutter, chorus, and bit-distortion effects
• Seamless loop creation you can use with Beatmaker or your own favorite audio production tool
• Cell randomization

JR Hexatone Pro is US$9.99.

JR Hexatone Pro Site @ Amidio
Via the ever-up-to-date, ever green-on-black Matrixsynth

Now, this isn’t the only way to get your hexagon on with music sequencing. See previously:
Hexagonal Sequencer with vvvv, MIDI, Ableton, and Soon Wii, Camera Input
Music on the Game Grid: Interactive Arpeggiators Al-Jazari, reacTogon
Code Your Own Sequencer? Archaeopteryx Generates MIDI with Ruby

Here are the developer’s videos:

…including some preset examples:

Lastly, from Jordan himself, here’s a tutorial on sound programming with the tool: