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Preview Video of synthPond Music Toy

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Apr 12, 2001
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An iPhone developer has forwarded a video of his upcoming synthPond iPhone application that provides a music toy to create 3d/4d sound effects through your iPhone or iPod Touch headphones. The video demo shows the application off and you are encouraged to wear headphones when listening to it:

Video

The app should become available in the App Store in the next few weeks for $1.99.



Article Link: Preview Video of synthPond Music Toy
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2008/10/21/preview-video-of-synthpond-music-toy/
This is pretty cool from a technology standpoint. I'm not so convinced that I personally would have much fun playing with it just for amusement. I'll be interested to see if people come up with cool uses and compositions with it, though. Perhaps the developer will add a community element to allow for sharing compositions.
 
Very cool idea, although I think the video pretty much summed up all the enjoyment anyone could get from it. Unless they squeeze some other features into it, functions, sound barriers, I don't know....anything, it may be one dollar too high for the app store.

Not saying its not worth two dollars, but it will sell twice as well at 0.99. $0.99 is the magic number for app sales.
 
I think its a very well thought out App. WELL WORTH the $1.99, I think. A community sharing feature would be nice.

For those musically-inclined, sure to be a hit!
 
lftrghtparadigm said:
Not saying its not worth two dollars, but it will sell twice as well at 0.99. $0.99 is the magic number for app sales.
Click to expand...

Half the price and twice as many? I fail to see how that would make any difference to the developer, using your logic.

Actually, 99 cents doubled is $1.98, and after Apple takes their share, they'll actually be losing 7/10ths of a cent on each sale.
 
macduke said:
Half the price and twice as many? I fail to see how that would make any difference to the developer, using your logic.

Actually, 99 cents doubled is $1.98, and after Apple takes their share, they'll actually be losing 7/10ths of a cent on each sale.
Click to expand...

Assuming that it actually worked out exactly that way, with a perfect correspondence between price and demand, I would think all things considered a larger user community is probably better. More purchases would mean a higher app store rating, thus potentially a higher ranking and more exposure and increased potential for sales, and if the developer adds community features, a community of twice the size would be more likely to produce interesting compositions and be more active.
 
3d AND 4d?

This is obviously a new definition of "4d" that I hadn't previously been aware of. Unless you mean the sound exists in time, which is kind of a given for sound.
 
This looks very cool. Could make use of some of the sounds generated. This reminds me of something i've seen at art events.
 
Hell.... I'm gonna buy it! It looks awesome fun and if you could export as ringtone that would be amazing!
 
hey guys, thanks for all of the feedback, ill try and address most of the points you made :)

regarding the pricing, i know this is a heavy topic and certainly open to interpretation, but I did do a lot of thinking about how I wanted to price this.
The first thing that came to mind is that I feel unhappy when people price software one way one day and then change it randomly. I feel like if you're going to charge for your software you have to decide how much it is worth to you and charge that. Changing prices just makes people feel like they're getting ripped off if they buy it before you put it 'on sale'

So i did a lot of thinking, and i decided that I think the app is worth 2$. I could sell it for 1 yes, but I think it's worth 2, and I think that's important. Also I did some research in the app store and although it seems like 1$ would be a lot cheaper, looking at the top paid apps, less than half of them cost 1$. I think the jump from free to 1$ is huge, but the jump from 1-2 is not really that high. Anyway, I think it's worth 2$ and I think that representing it as a 2$ app is honest and reasonable.

as for the video summing up the enjoyment? maybe, I guess that's up to the user, but I've been playing with it for weeks, and i still find new ways to make things work. Everyone I've given it to still enjoys it and plays with it as well.

As for the 4D thing, I tried not to be overly 'arty' with my terms, but I think I used it properly. It does refer to time, in the sense that in 3D mode, the sounds play from their node locations, but in 4D mode the place the sound is playing from is the wave, so it moves over time.

As far as community areas or things like that, I'm more than open to suggestions on ways to improve it, and I'm really excited to hear how people react to it and how I can improve it. Those things may come in time, but you can't just cram every feature in the book into a product, eventually it gets bloated and horrible, and I wanted to present a polished and complete product, before I started working on community features or more advanced composing modes.


so, thanks everyone for your feedback! i'd love to talk more about anything if you want and I look forward to those that decide to buy it playing with it and finding out how i can make it even better
 
:) Looks good my friend! $2 may not sell you as many but it's what ever works for you.
 
stfj said:
hey guys, thanks for all of the feedback, ill try and address most of the points you made :)

regarding the pricing, i know this is a heavy topic and certainly open to interpretation, but I did do a lot of thinking about how I wanted to price this.
The first thing that came to mind is that I feel unhappy when people price software one way one day and then change it randomly. I feel like if you're going to charge for your software you have to decide how much it is worth to you and charge that. Changing prices just makes people feel like they're getting ripped off if they buy it before you put it 'on sale'

So i did a lot of thinking, and i decided that I think the app is worth 2$. I could sell it for 1 yes, but I think it's worth 2, and I think that's important. Also I did some research in the app store and although it seems like 1$ would be a lot cheaper, looking at the top paid apps, less than half of them cost 1$. I think the jump from free to 1$ is huge, but the jump from 1-2 is not really that high. Anyway, I think it's worth 2$ and I think that representing it as a 2$ app is honest and reasonable.

as for the video summing up the enjoyment? maybe, I guess that's up to the user, but I've been playing with it for weeks, and i still find new ways to make things work. Everyone I've given it to still enjoys it and plays with it as well.

As for the 4D thing, I tried not to be overly 'arty' with my terms, but I think I used it properly. It does refer to time, in the sense that in 3D mode, the sounds play from their node locations, but in 4D mode the place the sound is playing from is the wave, so it moves over time.

As far as community areas or things like that, I'm more than open to suggestions on ways to improve it, and I'm really excited to hear how people react to it and how I can improve it. Those things may come in time, but you can't just cram every feature in the book into a product, eventually it gets bloated and horrible, and I wanted to present a polished and complete product, before I started working on community features or more advanced composing modes.


so, thanks everyone for your feedback! i'd love to talk more about anything if you want and I look forward to those that decide to buy it playing with it and finding out how i can make it even better
Click to expand...

First, I think it's always nice to see when a developer joins third-party forum conversations about their product and is interested in getting feedback (on an unreleased product, no less).

Since you're listening...another thing I was thinking about watching the video was sequencing, i.e. being able to have nodes in a position and then have them move elsewhere, so that the composition would change over time as it plays. I know that would be a new and complicated idea, but I do think that's a direction you'll eventually have to head to really allow users to fully exploit the potential of the application. Otherwise compositions are limited to the same sounds playing over and over, right?
 
hey, thanks for the response! first off, I should mention that synthPond is released, so if anyone still reads this and has an interest in picking it up.... go for it! :)

second,
thats an interesting idea about nodes moving.

I've been thinking a lot lately since i finally finished up the release version about things that people might want and ways to improve the software.

as it stands right now, I think theres a lot of depth despite the limitations, and that was an intentional design decision. I wanted it to be easy to pick up and fun for 30seconds to 10 minutes, over and over again. I feel like I accomplished that.

That said, theres definitely a lot of room for advanced features that would let people use it to make more advanced compositions. I have some other ideas besides movement that I want to keep quiet until I start hearing more suggestions from the community, but since you mentioned movement, one idea I was toying with was allowing the nodes to orbit eachother, so that they would stay at the same distance from oneanother, but where they moved to would generate new compositions.
 
stfj said:
regarding the pricing, i know this is a heavy topic and certainly open to interpretation, but I did do a lot of thinking about how I wanted to price this.
Click to expand...

I think your price is fine. It's an ingenious approach to music creation. It would be fun to incorporate imported sampled sounds for the nodes. But that might exponentially increase the difficulty of using it. Right now, the app is elegantly simple. It's quite addictive and relaxing.

My only other comment is to clean up the numbers on the various menu screens. The blocky, pixelated look doesn't quite go with the flowing lines in the pond, and it makes the numbers and icons difficult to see.
 
thanks! yeah sample sounds is something a lot of people have been asking about. I think you totally nailed it in that it would be cool but it would make the app much harder to use. That's been my main concern with adding new features, but I think if enough people want it I may put sampled sounds in future versions in some kind of advanced menu.

and about the icons, you're totally right. I think in the excitement of polishing off the game to put it out I made a bad design decision on that menu. I'll definitely update that in the future. thanks for noticing that, and thanks for buying it!
 
I've been playing with the app for a couple days. It really is fun and has lots of potential for serious music composition in an entirely new way.

I teach a college music technology class and I let my students play around with it for a while. They were all amazed and entranced by it. A few of them said they could just keep playing with it for hours.

Good job, Zach!
 
hey, thanks!

I have some new features in the pipeline that will hopefully make the program even deeper and crazier
 
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