DroneStation 1.1...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
I’ve just submitted Dronestation 1.1 to Apple for approval. I don’t know how long updates take to be approved, but I imagine they’re the same as initial submissions, so figure a couple weeks at worst, and a week at best.
Anyhow, as you can see, the UI is quite a bit different. I replaced the janky 80s-tastic aliased triangle drawing with some cool metaball shit. (I’m starting to get the hang of OpenGL | ES.) I also added a tilt sensor, which controls filter frequency in the amount you so desire. (An added control in the settings screen allows you to set how much tilt goes to freq, from none to like 3kHz or so.) The little arrowhead in the right-side bracket shows tilt position.
There is also a dead space between the notes and the LFO control, to make it easier to avoid hitting one when you’re trying to do the other. And I fixed the frequency bug, which was causing the notes to be offset by 5 semitones. Finally, I added a help overlay on the main screen that shows nubs how to play it.
There is some internal moving about in order to more easily allow future updates, and in the following rev I’ll add several of the things that were talked about in the last DroneStation thread, including 8 presets, a non-Southpaw mode that flips the controls, and probably a simple delay to make it more droney.
Anyhow, I expect this to be approved as there aren’t any changes Apple would object to, so it’s all up to them as to how long it will take.
10 comments
Forgive for the probably redundant question (can't usually keep up with all the comments here), but are us 1G iPod Touch users still out of luck? That was an API issue, not a Dronestation issue, if I recall?
Yes, that is an API issue. I tried to build against the 2.2 API, but Xcode informed me in no uncertain terms that was a Bad Thing if I wanted to actually hear the synth.
-CR
Ah, thanks for the info CR.
3.0 has not been a good thing for my device in general; I'll add 'no Dronestation' to my gripes list.
Oh no, I love the janky triangles! That's almost enough to make me stay on 1.0, but the tilt feature is pretty compelling. And the glowy balls do look nice. Any chance of the triangles coming back later as an option?
Another suggestion that I didn't get around to posting in the earlier thread: would it be possible to increase the "dead zone" before a pitch shift begins? That would make it easier to hit a note and slide or stutter the volume without inadvertently changing the pitch.
Hmmm. That's an interesting problem. Let me ponder that. (I'm not real good with the maths, so I'll have to hire a consultant for that one.)
-CR
@peterBING!: Actually, I think I found the problem. I was just able to build against the 2.2.1 kit with everything (seemingly) fully working. I'll pull the other binary and submit this one, and see what happens.
-CR
The naive suggestion would be to just ignore the vertical distance between the initial touch point and the current point until the distance is greater than some minimum value.
But making assumptions about how other people's software works is always perilous. Not that it stops me!
I like it although I will miss the triangles a bit. Is there an option to turn the tilt sensor feature on and off?
@CR Stellar! Fingers crossed
The tilt sensor is additive, and you get a control for how much it adds (at the top end) from 0Hz to 5000Hz. It should be obvious that if it's adding 0Hz to the filter frequency when you tilt it, it is effectively off. That said, I didn't think I would like the feature, and as it turns out, I kind of do. Just one more level of expression.
In a future version, I might have several different display options. I vastly prefer these metaballs to the triangles, but obviously visual taste is subjective.
-CR
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