Here’s a couple of things I wish I had known earlier…
Turn off velocity sensitity to fix snare drum volume issue.
Turn the bar count to automatic for a section so that it doesn’t cut you off at 8 when recording with a mic.
Shake to get the undo button to come up.
And an issue with my preferred guitar input, the iRig, and GarageBand on the iPad 3:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3836528?start=0&tstart=0
It doesn’t sound like there is a fix, so it may be necessary to abandon the iRig – here are some alternatives mentioned:
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/MobileIn/
http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/stealthplug/
“Hey I’ve got an idea, let’s release an amazing new music service, and completely shun our biggest user-base and our most popular product!” (not an actual quote, just a dramatization)
This is Microsoft’s idea of how to roll out a new music service – don’t offer it to the hundreds of millions of users of their current flagship consumer PC operating system, Windows (7).
Or here’s another great idea, make it first available on your game console (XBOX). Who listens to music while they are trying to play a game or watch TV (and I don’t mean watch TV through the XBOX)? Oh but there’s an additional $60 per year charge to listen to music on your game console versus other platforms.
How do they come up with this stuff? This is a clear case of management by committee. Straight stupid. When they force me off my Zune subscription with the 10 songs to keep per month, I’m going straight to Spotify with my money.
In Google Music – error “For your protection, please sign into your account again.”
http://digitalproletariat.com/blog/?p=3
If you are taking Google Music for a spin, and are getting stuck in an endless authentication loop trying to grab songs (even free ones), please check out this post – it fixed it for me.
http://www.winsupersite.com/blog/supersite-blog-39/zune-2/zune-pass-heads-canada-140761
http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2011/09/29/microsoft-taking-zune-to-canada-revamping-zune-pass/
Don’t read those blog posts wrong, Zune is not lowering the price, it is raising it. Currently I pay $14.99 for the monthly subscription PLUS 10 free song downloads per month. Starting in October new subscribers will pay $9.99 for the monthly subscription with NO free song downloads. (It appears I will be able to keep my plan if I want.)
If we postulate that average song downloads cost or are worth about a dollar, then $10 out of my $14.99 each month was for the downloads, meaning I was paying $4.99 for the subscription service. That was a great deal! Now they want to charge me twice as much? Boo.
Is this a chance for Spotify to swoop in, undercut the new price and steal my business, my money, my loyalty, my heart away from Microsoft? (Sorry for the dramatics, they are aimed at motivating Microsoft.)
It actually isn’t Spotify’s big moment, but as usual the devil’s in the details. Spotify on my iPhone is only available (after the trial) with the $9.99 plan, not the $4.99 plan they also offer. Furthermore according to Spotify’s website, if I am reading it correctly, the premium account only extends to 3 devices (phone or pc).
My current Zune plan includes 3 pcs and 3 devices, but it looks like the new Microsoft plan is for 4 devices total (new users losing 2). However they have thrown in some music videos (psh).
The number of tracks each has seems to be roughly equivalent – today I saw mention of 15 million on Spotify’s site and 14 million on Zune’s. I’m sure that goes back and forth. And I’m sure that the depth on particular kinds of music varies between the services.
Bottom line, this is a bad time for Microsoft to raise the price, because they put themselves on par with Spotify, which was more expensive, but doesn’t require a Zune or Microsoft phone. That said, I’ll probably stick with them while my Zune hardware lasts and I can keep my plan for $4.99/month. After that I’m a free agent!
I have been using Amplitube’s iRig ( http://www.macworld.com/article/153301/2010/08/guitar_cables.html ) for quite a while with both my iPhone and iPad and think it’s great. It’s well-designed, pretty sturdy, and sounds great. I use it with Amplitube’s own app (basically amp/effect modeling), 4-Track, and now GarageBand. There were a very limited number of solutions for getting audio signals in to the iOs devices when I was first looking, and I’m convinced that iRig was the best choice then, and may still be the best choice.
However the one thing all the cable solutions had in common was connecting through the headphone jack. It looks like Sonoma Wire Works (see links below) has figured out how to connect through the dock port.
http://sonomawireworks.com/guitarjack/
http://iosmusician.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-guitarjack-2-for-iphone-and-ipad.html
And the really cool opportunity that opens up is simultaneous dual input. I assume this possibility exists for recording stereo audio for hi-def video, but for an app like 4-track (or GarageBand?), it means recording two tracks at the same time.
Of course iPhone/iPad audio recording/editing does not come close to a professional recording setup, nor even a good dedicated mobile field recorder. But the maxim from the photography field applies here as well. “The best camera is the one you have with you”.
File under “I hope you can learn from my mistakes”
I had downloaded 3 or 4 albums for a certain band using the Zune subscription. I noticed that the release year was all the same for the albums, and it was not the year that most of them came out originally. There are several possible explanations for this, for instance reissue. I didn’t even bother to track that down. However I wanted to listen to them in order, so I changed the release year in the Zune media player, which is as simple as clicking on the picture of the album and choosing edit from the resulting context menu. I would guess this probably affects the mp3 file properties as well as the Zune metadata database.
Unfortunately I didn’t start to listen to them right away, thus it took me a really long time to connect the error message I got when I tried to play them later, “Error C00D0BBE - Zune software can't verify usage rights”, with the fact that I had changed the album/song properties.
Once I did I just deleted the albums and re-downloaded them, which fixed the problem right away. It’s possible just changing the year back might have fixed them but I doubt it, and didn’t want to mess with that.
Even though I understand what caused the problem, I still consider this a bug or a shortcoming.
I don’t know how to feel about this – my favorite computer parts store is now selling my favorite musical instrument -
I’m strangely conflicted, rather than getting the “two great tastes that go great together” vibe. NewEgg is really good at selling tech goods. I’d hate to see them expand to become an Amazon. Amazon is great , but they never match Newegg’s prices, shipping speed, or service.
