iPad creation tool Auxy may have come with a lot of fanfare touting its simplicity and elegance when it launched. The piano roll-turned-touchable music maker first launched on the merits of doing less, better, then turned into something more of us might use with the addition of MIDI.
But a rather significant upgrade has come without any trumpets or bolts of lightning. I can’t post a screenshot, because all the work is under the hood.
For all the power of today’s mobile devices, though, there’s a significant effort in coaxing optimal performance. So, sometimes this behind-the-surface stuff matters a lot.
I spoke to Auxy 2’s Henrik Lenberg. New in this release:
A new synth engine. DSP is licensed from fellow Swedish dev house Sonic Charge. It’s more optimized, and sounds a whole lot better. (I must confess to not distinctly remembering what the old version sounded like, but it seems good!)
More stuff at once. That optimization means you can get more synths running even if you don’t have the fastest Apple hardware.
Ducking. Sidechaining done automatically.
Edit chromatically, and get advanced editing for free. Arnold Schoenberg and even Richard Wagner are pleased.
Share right from the program. You can upload tracks directly from Auxy, and then link to a webpage. (Cough – come on, Apple, you realize Connect really should have an easy Web presence and not only live inside iTunes. I’m going to keep ranting about that until they fix it.) Here’s how that looks:
With sharing, and the emphasis on simple creation in general, I can’t help but feel like what this tool really needs is a mic input – so you can add vocals. Until then, I still think the killer use case is for MIDI control of hardware and other apps. But it’s nice to see Auxy continue to invest, especially as we’ll find out if this free app with add-on purchases can be a sustainable business in a field of apps that are generally a labor of love.
But it’s worth watching, as Auxy is the rare app that feels like it makes most sense on an iPad rather than a desktop environment. Have a look: