Recording - April 2012 - 58

Within each app, you can choose from five amp heads, five cabinets, two mics, and set up a chain of up to four effects pedals (three on the iPhone). Supplementary tools include a tuner, metronome with tap tempo, audio Recorder, and a Song Player that lets you import audio files and play over them with speed control and A–B looping; AmpliTube 2’s Player now offers a centercancel No Voice button as well (also good for removing some guitar solos). The Fender app offers amps like the Twin Reverb, Super-Sonic, Pro Junior, Bassman, and Deluxe Reverb, and five very coolsounding effects including a tasty Tape Echo and Phaser and the Fender Blender germanium fuzz with tone boost. The standard AmpliTube’s five amps and ten effects have generic names (e.g. Clean, Crunch, Lead; Flanger, Delay, Phazer) but sound very good as well; the magic that made AmpliTube so popular on PCs and Macs is definitely there for the hearing, even if your options are more limited. AmpliTube Fender costs a little less and is really intended for Fender fans who’ll be content with Fender sounds; you can’t add new amps or pedals to it. On the other hand, the standard version of AmpliTube lets you inapp purchase all of the effects, amps, and cabinets of AmpliTube Fender, one at a time or all in a bundle, and offers five additional guitar effects and all of the effects from VocaLive (see below). Getting everything is a pretty hefty investment for an app (over triple the initial cost of the app itself!) but you end up with a very effective setup for signal processing and multitracking. Vocalists needn’t feel left out; IK has a complete hardware/software solution for them too. The iRig Mic is a handheld mic that hooks up to the TRRS jack of an iOS device and again offers a headphone output; it’s a cardioid electret condenser (therefore requiring no battery or phantom power) with a 3position sensitivity switch, and comes with a carrying pouch and standard mic stand clip. With the same caveats with respect to input/output crosstalk, the iRig Mic is a creditable inexpensive vocal mic with a mid-forward sound typical of “rock and roll” handheld mics and workable off-axis rejection.
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Just as the iRig teams with AmpliTube, the iRig Mic is matched with a nifty app called VocaLive. It’s laid out similarly to AmpliTube, with a chain of up to four effects and a list of categories and presets in place of the amp and cabinet models. In place of a tuner, VocaLive has a Vocal Trainer, a simple playback of piano arpeggios in major or minor scales in the key of your choice; it retains the metronome and Recorder. The effects in VocaLive run the gamut from conventional to insane—Delay, Chorus, Compressor, Parametric EQ, Reverb, Envelope Filter, Phazer, Double, De-Esser, Choir, PitchFix, and Morph. The latter five effects are high-powered vocal effects that can only be used once or twice in a chain. They’re easy to set up and sound quite good; the Choir effect is a 3-part harmonizer, PitchFix is a scale-settable intonation tuner, and Morph lets you warp either the pitch or formant of vocals in real time. It’s possible to get very tasteful and great-sounding vocal tweaks from VocaLive, but my guess is that a lot of folks will buy it for special-effects use or just plain fun. There are a large number of really out-there sounds available... not something you could use every day, but great for adding a splash of something attention-grabbing to a track. IK encourages buyers to register their apps on the IK website; when you create an account there, you get a free effect pedal added to your app—an Overdrive in AmpliTube, a Fender Compressor in AmpliTube Fender, and a Doubler in VocaLive. The Recorder in each app can only record a single track; to turn it into an 8-track recorder (4 on the iPhone) with built-in Master FX (reverb, eq, and compressor) is a $14.99 in-app purchase. There are feature-limited Free versions of all apps available, plus a $2.99 AmpliTube LE version. Note that all of these products except AmpliTube LE come as separate iPad and iPhone versions; be sure to buy for the right device. Whichever you pick, be prepared to have a ton of low-cost fun and lay down some great sounds. Prices: iRig, $39.99; iRig Mic, $59.99; AmpliTube 2 and VocaLive, $19.99 each; AmpliTube Fender, $14.99; in-app purchases $2.99 and up. More from: IK Multimedia, www.ikmultimedia.com.

IsoAcoustics ISO•L8R Monitor Stands
It’s been known for quite some time that monitor stands can improve your listening experience in a number of ways. The ideal monitor stand positions your monitor at an appropriate height and angle for listening, and also decouples it from whatever surface it’s sitting on. This is important because energy lost in vibration between the monitor and the surface beneath it equals energy that’s not coming to your ears. IsoAcoustics is a new firm with an innovative and effective monitor stand it calls the ISO•L8R (get it?). The company showed a new design for larger monitors at the recent NAMM Show as reported in this issue, but I had a chance to set up and test its first product out of the starting gate, the ISO•L8R155 for small nearfield and desktop-audio monitors.

Out of the box, onto the table
The 155 consists of two metal platforms (one resting on the table or shelf, the other supporting the speaker), roughly 6" x 8", with rubberized feet. The two platforms are connected together by a set of four steel tubes, and the magic happens in the connection; the tubes slide into friction-fit rubberized sleeves on the two platforms, which provides the needed decoupling and allows the stands to be quickly assembled without tools.

Each stand has two sets of four tubes. One set is 3" long and the other is 8" long, yielding heights of roughly 3.5" or 8.5". In addition, each set of tubes has sets of plastic end-plug inserts of two different thicknesses, to slightly offset the heights of two tubes vs. the other two. These inserts allow you to build the stands to hold your speakers at an angle for optimum placement, aiming them at your ears in the recommended equilateral triangle configuration we all know and love.

http://www.ikmultimedia.com

Recording - April 2012

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