Guitar Apps For Android
We recently spent time adding support for more devices and fixing problem with some previously supported devices. One of the challenges was that some USB devices only support 24 bit audio. So far we've only really managed to get 24-bit audio in working. Have a great 2014!
This month we added Reverb and a Metronome to usbEffects and DelayEffectsPlus. We also added the ability to play a background WAV file to usbEffects.
The short answer is "no". We have been investing a lot of time in making a more realistic amp model, but despite the best part of 3 months, and some promising graphics, it is not yet ready for publishing. This month we are going to turn our focus to some smaller enhancements that have been held up by the modelling and return to it in September. So if you have requests for small enhancements ... now is the time.
This month went in a flash. We managed to release an update to usbEffects -- Dry effect for bass players (also useful for guitarists to get a more balanced sound), Improved tuner and fix for a clicking problem with the UCG-102. Most of the month was spent investigating "Amp Modelling", but at this stage we are some way from releasing anything on this front.
Full marks for guessing who said this on stage in 1972. This month we have added a basic tuner to both Delay Effects Plus and usbEffects after several people suggested it. It is a particularly handy feature for usbEffects since you already have you're guitar plugged into the phone and it is a pain to switch it to another device/cable for tuning. This is a first attempt at a tuner for us, so if you have any feedback, please do send us an email. Also this month Delay Effects Plus finally got a configurable effects rack. So now you can change the Delay, Distortion, rate of the Wah Wah etc and create a whole range of sounds as well as make the wah wah or tremolo change at the right speed for the song you are playing. Finally, we started rolling out some new icons for the "amp" apps.
Several people asked us to support the popular, Behringer UGC-102 Guitar Link USB Audio device this month so we made it a priority. Turns out it is slightly different from most other USB Audio class 1.0 devices so it took a bit of figuring out. On about March 12 usbEffects version 2.1 was launched with support for this device, support for stereo-only USB Audio devices and some improvements to reduce "popping" noises further on Galaxy Tab 10.2 and Galaxy S3. After the release of this version all our apps saw an uptick in downloads but this may have been a result of other factors. Late in the month we had a request from Thomas of Austria to get usbEffects working on a Sony Xperia, and later yet, someone in Brazil wanted to play "Eruption" on the HammerOn Guitar! So the HammerOn Guitar app now has a "tapping mode" and a "turbo mode" for fast-picking -- we managed to squeeze these two releases out just as March faded into April.
During this month we focused on reducing the popping noises that some people were experiencing with usbEffects. This was particularly a problem for the Galaxy S3 and is still not perfect. You can now adjust the latency setting to trade off latency for less popping.
This month Githara Studios released version 2.0 of usbEffects with the new USB Out feature. Whilst it was not the first app on Android with USB out, it is the first app with truly low-latency guitar effects! This is a great thing and took significant effort to achieve. During the month we also added support for 48KHz USB, and upgraded the guitar effects rack to be fully configurable. Being able to change the parameters makes the Wah Wah and Delay effects much more flexible than previously. Yay team!