Audiofile Engineering has released MIDI Surface for iPhone OS. Designed for use with Line 6’s MIDI Mobilizer hardware accessory, MIDI Surface gives iPhone and iPod touch owners the ability to quickly and easily build their own fully customized MIDI control surfaces. Seamless touch-screen control of MIDI-enabled instruments such as keyboards, drum machines, software synths and more is now available in the palm of users’ hands.

“There’s no reason to sacrifice utility for convenience when it comes to MIDI control,” said Matthew Foust, co-founder and Operations Manager for Audiofile Engineering. “When used with the Line 6 MIDI Mobilizer, iPhone and iPod touch are more than powerful enough to store many full-featured control surfaces under one roof. We created MIDI Surface to harness that power and make it accessible for musicians at all levels.”

Suitable for use on stage, at home or in studio settings, MIDI Surface offers four elegant interface styles, each with its own set of changeable parameters: The Keyboard interface features Channel and Velocity controls. The Sliders interface includes Channel, Controller (Mod Wheel, Expression, etc.), Low Value and High Value controls. The Drum Pads interface includes Channel, Category (Note On, Controller, Program Change), Note, Note Off (Immediate or Touch Up) and Velocity controls. The X-Y interface supports up to four touches and includes Channel, Controller, Left Value and Right Value controls.

Users can create and save as many MIDI Surface interfaces as they like. Each customized control surface can be configured in precise detail and adjusted on the fly. Users can even store their own unique Presets for quick recall.

Audiofile Engineering previously developed MIDI Memo Recorder, a free application that allows iPhone and iPod touch users to record, store and playback MIDI sequences using Line 6’s MIDI Mobilizer accessory.

MIDI Surface is now available for download via the iTunes App Store for $5.99. Installation on iPhone or iPod touch requires iPhone OS 3.1 or higher. The required Line 6 MIDI Mobilizer accessory is sold separately.

Discuss MIDI Surface for iPhone in our iPhone OS forum.

Audiofile Engineering has released Backline Calc 2.0, an update to their professional music calculator app for iPhone and iPod touch. Backline Calc is an indispensible tool for musicians, music students and teachers, DJs, audio and video engineers and broadcast technicians, featuring more than 20 calculators and converters to cover virtually any musical situation.

“Playing, teaching, practicing or writing music, mixing live sound and producing music all involve calculations and conversions of musical and technical data,” says Matthew Foust of Audiofile Engineering. “Backline Calc lets you calculate musical, acoustic, video and even electrical data quickly and easily, so you can get on with the music and not the math.”

The Backline Calc app is free to download and includes three basic calculators: Note Length, Frames to Time code, and File Size. The rest of the calculators can be purchased and unlocked directly from within the app. The length calculators include Bar and Song Length, Song Length, Beats to Tempo, Time to Samples, Compare Tempos, Change Tempo and Sum Times. The pitch calculators convert Note Name, MIDI Notes, Frequency, and Wavelength. The additional time code calculators include Frames to Time code, Convert Time code and Change Time code. The acoustics calculators include Distance to Time, Time to Distance and Sound Pressure Level (SPL). The electrical category includes Compare Power and Compare Voltage calculators. There is also a Files calculator for converting sizes of audio files.

In addition to a newly designed, streamlined interface and a fully integrated Help feature with examples and instructions, version 2.0 includes a new Time to Samples calculator as well as the addition of a Tap Tempo and number keypad for easy tempo input.

Backline Calc is now available on the Apple App Store for free with 3 calculators unlocked, or $2.99 with all calculators unlocked.

Discuss Backline Calc in our iPhone OS forum.

Audiofile Engineering has released Backline, a handy new utility for Mac OS X. It’s an indispensable set of tools to manage all things audio related on your computer. Whether you need to repair damaged audio files, update your audio effects, reset CoreAudio, or load and playback a DDP file set, Backline is here to simplify your life!

Have you ever discovered an audio file that doesn’t load in your favorite DAW, or sampler? Or, perhaps after digging out your favorite recording from the archives you discover that something has gone wrong with the audio files themselves? An industry first, Audio File First Aid will give you new insight into the structure of your files, giving you the power to diagnose and repair the most common causes of corrupt audio files. Originally packaged with Wave Editor and Sample Manager and now available in Backline Basic.

Manage, update, and audition your Audio Unit and VST effects all within Backline! The days of launching a full-featured DAW to demo an effect are over, as are the days of scrounging around the internet to find an update. Effect updating uses our Audio Effect Database. Read more about the database, especially how developers can get involved.

Experiencing technical difficulties with your applications? No problem. Easily create backups of your Audiofile Engineering application’s settings, restore from a remote location, clear effect caches, reset the CoreAudio, and more. You can also monitor all incoming MIDI messages, generate MIDI clock or time code and specify any MIDI output.

• Audio File First Aid: repair malformed audio files
• FiRe Browser: download FiRe recordings to your computer
• Effect Manager: manages Audio Units and VST plug-ins including SmartGroups
• Effect Update: Effect Manager integrates with our online effect database and tells you when updates to your effects have posted (think MacUpdate + software update for plug-ins)
• Effect Audition: load any Audio Units or VST effect and see how it sounds using our built-in sound files or your own
• MIDI Tools: MIDI Monitor, MIDI Clock, MIDI Timecode Generator
• DDP Player: Load a DDP 2.0 set, browse its metadata, listen to the tracks, and burn to CD
• Reset Audio System: Reset CoreAudio server (coreaudiod), clear the Audio Components Cache, Stop CoreMIDI server
• Audiofile Engineering Tools: back up/restore all of your Audiofile settings such as keyboard shortcuts, reset preferences, reset effect caches, uninstall

Backline requires Mac OS X 10.5 or higher.

Backline Basic will run, without limitation, for 15 days. Audiofile-specific tools are free. The rest of the tools (Audio File First Aid, FiRe Browser, Effect Manager, Effect Update, Effect Audition, MIDI, and Reset Audio System ) require a license key ($29). DDP Player requires its own, separate paid license ($59). Both paid modes can be purchased and used independently.

www.audiofile-engineering.com/backline/

Discuss Backline in our Audiofile Engineering forum.

SoundCloud, the online music service, has launched the first in a series of product integrations with professional music software makers which will enable producers to upload their tracks to the web direct from their favourite audio applications. The first partnerships, announced today at NAMM, are with Studio One from PreSonus and Audiofile Engineering’s Wave Editor, with Ableton Live to follow.

Following on from SoundCloud’s recent partnership with Abbey Road’s online mastering service, today’s announcement marks another step for the service towards its goal of enabling a fully integrated digital music ecosystem.

Studio One and Wave Editor users will be able to upload their tracks direct to their SoundCloud accounts from within the application, bypassing the need to bounce tracks to the desktop and then upload. These integrations were built using the SoundCloud API, which enables any developer to create a huge range of audio applications and services based on core SoundCloud functionality, like the streaming, uploading and downloading of music.

Matthew Foust, Co-Founder and Operations Manager, Audiofile Engineering, said: “Integration of the SoundCloud API in our iPhone and desktop apps not only fits our strategic vision, but is very simple and straightforward.”

Alexander Ljung, SoundCloud CEO, said: “We’re very excited to be launching the first of our music software integrations with PreSonus and Audiofile Engineering. With these upcoming partnerships it’s possible to imagine a production workflow in which you produce a track, upload it to SoundCloud, and send it direct to Abbey Road for mastering without any files hitting your desktop. We’re imagining a future where music professionals can seamlessly use the web together with their desktop tools in a fully integrated and extremely powerful combination. The SoundCloud platform and our open API, in combination with progressive companies like PreSonus and Audiofile Engineering, are making it possible for this future to arrive in 2010.”

PreSonus Studio One Product Manager Jonathan Hillman said: “With Studio One and SoundCloud, musicians can produce their music and share it with millions of listeners in a matter of minutes. We’re very happy to be the first DAW application to introduce the world to 21st-century music production and distribution. We believe this type of integration is critical as the digital-media distribution landscape evolves. And from a development viewpoint, integrating a SoundCloud client into our application took very little time. ”

SoundCloud partnerships with other key music software companies, including Ableton, are already scheduled and set to be released later in 2010.

soundcloud.com

Discuss SoundCloud in our Promotion forum, Wave Editor in our Audiofile Engineering forum, and Studio One in our Studio One forum.

D’Addario and Planet Waves have released Scale Wizard, a complete guitar scale and arpeggio library for iPhone and iPod touch. Our friends at Audiofile Engineering have developed the application. The scale library comes courtesy of our own by Marc Schonbrun.

Scale Wizard puts a massive library of guitar scales, modes and arpeggios into the palm of your hand. This revolutionary app will help you unlock the secret of guitar scales, modes and arpeggios in any key, for any position on the guitar.

Offering over 10,000 patterns, left-handed view and alternate tunings, Scale Wizard is the most complete scale application on any platform. With an interface truly optimized for iPhone and iPod touch, you can swipe your finger up and down the fretboard to hear ascending and descending scales or tap the screen to hear individual notes. You’ll hear the scales, modes and arpeggios come to life, played by a skilled professional guitarist. Multiple positions of each scale, mode and arpeggio exist, to ensure that you’ll always find a unique way to apply your new-found knowledge.

Scale Wizard has the following features:

• More than 10,000 scale, mode and arpeggio shapes
• Basic Major, Minor, Harmonic Minor, Melodic Minor, Major and Minor Pentatonic, Blues and Chromatic scales
• Modes for Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian and Locrian
• Unbelievable advanced, jazz and world music scales including Harmonic Major, Enigmatic, Man Gong, Ritusen and Hungarian scales
• Major, Minor, Dominant, Diminished and Augmented arpeggios, including 7th chords arpeggios
• User-selectable display of note names, intervals or fingerings
• Left-handed viewing option
• Supports 8 different alternate tunings
• “Swipe to play” functionality
• Switch on “big stretches” for unique, challenging fingerings
• Works in both portrait or landscape mode for the ultimate in flexibility

Scale Wizard is available now for $1.99 from the Apple iTunes Store.

Discuss Scale Wizard in the new iPhone and iPod touch forum.

Audiofile Engineering today announced FiRe, a professional field recording app built exclusively for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

FiRe was created for audio professionals by audio professionals. It’s powerful enough for the most experienced musicians and recording engineers, and its efficient workflow and intuitive interface make it a breeze for business and casual use.

FiRe will revolutionize what you expect from a portable recording application. It’s the first iPhone recorder to display an accurate audio waveform in real time, and the first to support markers, Broadcast WAVE metadata, and the instant downloading of files in multiple file formats. FiRe is also the first recorder of its kind to offer native SoundCloud integration. SoundCloud makes it simple to upload recordings directly to the web and share them with the tap of a button.

Features:

• Record in mono and stereo
• Live waveform view
• Scroll waveform with touch
• Navigate waveform via double-tap with configurable behavior
• Moveable Playback Head
• Tap Playback Head handle to add markers
• Editable Markers list
• Preference to add markers at time intervals
• Overdub mode
• Beautiful and accurate VU Input Meters
• VU meters change to output in playback
• Configurable time units display
• Tag Recordings with location data
• Pause gracefully when interrupted by phone call
• Countdown with gorgeous graphics
• Record for… settings
• Record until… settings
• Record over threshold… settings
• Quality settings: Low (11.025 kHz), Medium (22.050 kHz) and High (44.1 kHz)
• Preference to automatically move to end and/or add marker when recording starts
• Preference to limit recordings to 2GB
• Screen rotates 180 degrees for better control of the iPhone’s internal mic
• Broadcast WAVE metadata
• Preference for amount of info displayed in Recordings List
• Ability to lock recordings
• File export via local web server and FTP
• Choice of export file formats via web server and FTP: WAVE, AIFF, CAF (Core Audio Format)
• SoundCloud integration

FiRe also fully supports stereo recording with external microphones such as the Blue Mikey and Alesis ProTrack.

FiRe is available now via the Apple iTunes Store for $5.99. It is compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch and requires iPhone 2.2 software.

Discuss FiRe in our iPhone & iPod Touch forum.

D’Addario and Planet Waves, have released Chordmaster, a chord library/playback application for iPhone and iPod touch. Our friends at Audiofile Engineering have developed the application.

The Chordmaster boasts a library of almost 8,000 gig-tested chords for every style of music. True to the iPhone and iPod touch, the application can be strummed with gestures. The notes are sampled from D’Addario endorsing artist and Mac OS X Audio.com owner, Marc Schonbrun.

Chordmaster has the following features:

• Support for right and left handed guitarists
• View as notes, or intervals
• View chords in multiple inversions/positions across the neck
• Strum full chords or individual notes

Chordmaster is available for $1.99 from the iTunes store

Read more about it here in the new iPhone and iPod touch forum.