Author: David Biedny

In the world of Mac audio hardware, Apogee has always been the Rolls Royce of interfaces and converters in professional studios, as well as the luxury choice for serious hobbyists. Apogee’s original MiC microphone is one of the more popular bus-powered mics for folks needing a single unit that works on both Macs and iDevices. This newest incarnation of that microphone, the MiC 96K, retains the cardioid condenser design of the original, but now includes a pristine 24-bit, 96KHz recording ability, bringing the already stellar sound quality up to the highest pro-level standards. 

The very first thing you’ll notice about the MiC 96K is how solid it feels in your hand. It’s manufactured entirely in the United States, and the overall build quality of this almost-all-metal mic is a thing of beauty, largely justifying the premium price, especially compared to some mundane foreign-made mics we have on hand. There are three cables in the box: USB, 30-pin, and Lightning, making the unit ready to roll with any of the supported devices, and it effortlessly plugs into an iMac or iPad with no extra drivers of any sort — it works like a charm. We discovered that it would not always power up when plugged into a powered external USB hub, while other hub-powered audio accessories worked fine, but this hiccup was inconsistent; we plugged it into an external hard-drive enclosure with an integrated USB port, and there were no problems.

There is a gain knob on the right side of the MiC, and a multi-color LED lets you know when the unit is powered but not being accessed by software (dim blue), powered and live in a recording app (dim green), picking up significant audio signal (bright green), hitting hot levels (orange), or clipping (red). The box also includes a standard stand adaptor (the mounting thread is on the back of the mic, but this is a non-issue with the adaptor), as well as a small tabletop tripod — a really nice touch for using the MiC right out of the box. While Apogee sells an optional $20 hard case, there was no carrying pouch in the box, which really should have been included for the price. The three included cables are also a bit on the short side (3 feet), but Apogee does indeed offer longer cables as optional accessories.

The bottom line. The Apogee MiC 96K is the kind of hardware that you buy once and never replace. It’s built like a small tank, and provides some of the best audio quality we’ve seen in a relatively inexpensive microphone. The fact that it plugs directly into an iPhone and an iPad simply rocks, and makes this a natural choice for your one-stop-shop mic needs.

Our neighbors to the north have a long and colorful history of strong public funding of the arts, and NFB StopMo Studio from the National Film Board of Canada demonstrates that a government agency can indeed create something of true value for the creative minds of the world. It’s perhaps the single most usable, slick, and capable stop-motion creator we’ve seen on iPad, and it’s a truly unbeatable value for aspiring movie makers.

StopMo Studio is very obviously designed by animators, as the interface makes the process of grabbing consecutive still images effortless. An onscreen grid helps with aligning elements, and the implementation of the “onion-skinning” feature is clever, with a slider fading between the last captured frame and the current live one coming in via either iPad camera. While we wish we could visually overlay more than a pair of frames at a time, it’s a minor quibble for anyone but the most seasoned cel animation fanatic. The time-lapse feature is perfectly suited for creating stuttering video clips, with fixed choices ranging from multiple frames a second to snapping a single shot every 24 hours. We like the fact that you can do such long intervals, but it would have also been nice to include the ability to precisely specify a custom time period.

Besides capturing images from either camera, you can also import images, as well as create frames of solid color, add text cards, or even use a very decent set of painting tools to draw on top of captured or imported frames. And the inclusion of a basic layering ability lets you keep your graphics separate from the main background image. The lack of a graphics text tool means you can’t easily create word balloons—another minor omission we’d love to see addressed in a future update.

Beyond the one video “track,” NFB StopMo Studio also features four audio tracks for adding music and recorded sound effects, plus a separate FX track for inserting audio effects from a built-in library. Final animations can be saved as video files to your gallery, and then you can freely share your mini masterpieces as desired.

The bottom line. While some minor tweaks and additions would sweeten the pot, NFB StopMo Studio is the iPad cel animation tool to beat, with a wide array of abilities and total ease of use.

Sector is a totally unique, vastly powerful, and well-designed beat manipulation tool for iPad that stirs together audio and math in a way that astounds and delights. The description of a “stochastic sample slice sequencer” might scare some off, but fear not: this is a beauty of a beast.

You begin by importing a sampled sound file – a drum app like DM1 is a great place to start, but you can bring in audio files via iTunes, the general pasteboard, or the excellent AudioShare app (created by the same developer as Sector). Once imported, it’s mapped into a circular, looping display, and sliced into a specific number of sectors, or segments (from two to 32 chunks), each with its own color. If you do nothing else and hit the “run” button, the imported sound will simply play back normally.

But things start to get interesting as you program “probability links” by tapping on combinations of different sectors, creating jumps in the playback that are based on randomness and probability. If you want to enforce some order in the chaos, switching to the secondary Seq(uencer) screen lets you hardwire specific sectors to trigger at exact positions in the loop, while still retaining randomness where applicable. While this all surely sounds a bit confusing, the tastefully sparse and colorful interface really helps with the process of learning, alongside the decent online manual — a must-read before going too crazy inside the app. 

Four programmable sector buttons along the bottom right allow you to manually force a specific sector to play back when the current one is done, and there are also controls for instantly linking a selected sector to all others, as well as flipping the symmetry of the existing links. A third screen, Warp, puts all sorts of playback effects – backwards, jitter, speed up/down, and random speeds – on the table, which can be assigned to selected sectors.

Up to four effects can be used at a time, with controllable probability determining which will be applied with each playback pass of the selected sector. And it gets even wilder: all of these controls are tweakable in real-time while playback is happening, which makes Sector perfect for live performance. The lack of external MIDI sync and built-in recording abilities are definite drawbacks, but the developer claims that both are coming via update.

The bottom line. Despite missing a couple of notable features (for now), Sector is one of the most innovative and entertaining audio apps you’ll ever encounter.

Tablet DJs have long been happy with the two primary players in that sandbox: Native Instruments’ Traktor DJ and Algoriddim’s djay, the latter of which launched a stellar sequel not long ago. Both are digital spinning powerhouses, but carrying around a large library of music has always been a limiting factor for covering all potential sonic bases. That’s where Pacemaker is trying to carve out a unique niche: it’s the only iPad DJ software that comes with Spotify support.

The interface is streamlined and colorful, which makes spinning and scratching a blast, especially for casual and first-time spinners. The waveform display for the two loaded tunes is a simplistic, low-res affair, however — nothing like the accurate waveform display seen in other top DJ apps. The beat sync feature works reasonably well, but we found that Pacemaker is a little less than spot-on with detecting the native BPM (beats per minute) of loaded music.

Pacemaker’s base version is free, with in-app purchases for the audio effects sold either piecemeal or as a $10 bundle (which saves you a couple of bucks), plus you’ll need to have a Spotify Premium account to tap into that streaming service’s immense library of music. The six effects options vary tremendously in quality – the Beatskip and Loop effects are cool and useful, for example, while the Reverb and Echo are cheesy and muddy. At $1.99 apiece, you can pick and choose, and there’s even an interactive preview for each one in the app.

We were a bit perplexed and unhappy to find that much of our iTunes music library showed up as unavailable to use, while those same tracks worked just fine in Traktor. There’s no direct Dropbox support for bringing in your own music, nor does Pacemaker work with any of the iOS tools for moving audio data between apps, meaning that serious musicians will find the software of limited appeal. On the other hand, Spotify fans’ wishes have been granted with this release, though be aware of the fact that you’ll need a live Internet connection to use this key feature, and you won’t be able to record your performances (making the Record feature largely useless).

The bottom line. While Pacemaker is easy on the eyes, it pays the price in limited functionality and music file support outside of Spotify. If you primarily intend to mix your own tracks, look elsewhere for better effects and more precise mixing tools.

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