

Show HN: My first iOS app - Soundtribe - 45 second sound clips with filters - drum
http://www.soundtribe.com

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jathu
Shorten the audio clips down. No one wants to sit around and listen to 45
seconds of anything. Even with tweets, no one bothers to take 10 seconds to
read ALL the tweets. Shorten the audio down to around 5-10 seconds. Also, make
it visual somehow.

Regarding design, change the color scheme... too "viney". I would go with some
sort of red... maybe a red-pink as red is already take by YouTube. Get a good
UI/icon design, please! The recording menu is too "complicated". Forget all
the stop, pause and all the other crap. Just one big record button. Make the
"filters" a bit more aesthetically pleasing, maybe an icon of what you're
trying to represent (A chipmunk for chipmunk.. duh?).

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zombio
A social network for sound? Interesting to say the least. Why do you think
people would want to join?

You should fix your scroll bar. I can scroll through the sound clips with my
mouse wheel, but not by physically dragging the scroll bar.

I'm not sure if this is what happens, but I wouldn't want an audio clip I
upload put on your homepage. (That's what I assume happens from looking at
your website).

PS congrats on your first iOS app.

~~~
bx_
We see a lot of this in China, with apps like Papa (like Instagram adding an
accompanying audio clip). Most people are tired of reading here and would
prefer sound or, now, video (we just got a Vine clone).

With that said, my thought is: why not be able to just press play and stream
the experience, allowing me to listen to everything with my friends that day
(like a personal podcast)? I haven't installed this app, but the screenshots
look like I have to press play on every single one. Vine autoplays, which adds
some feeling of this to their service.

Edit: also, congrats on your app!

~~~
drum
Streaming sounds like a good idea. It's definitely on the to do list. Thanks
for the international feedback! Cool to hear what's going on with the app
market in China.

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infogaufire
Something similar to <http://croak.it>. Anyways congrats on your first iOS
app. How long did it take you to build this?

~~~
drum
Thanks! First version took around 4 months... But that was after spending
WWAYY too much time trying to build it in PhoneGap.

~~~
samweinberg
After PhoneGap, which approach did you end up taking?

Congrats on the app, by the way!

~~~
drum
Started with Stanford classes - did the first/ second lecture probably 10
times. Then went to the Big Nerd Ranch iOS programming book. Built a few
throwaway apps based off code from both. The pinnacle was building an app far
betond my skill level with a senior programmer. If you can find a mentor who's
willing to code with you, ask them to build something. You'll learn much
faster.

~~~
infogaufire
Awesome. Just to make this more useful for me & other readers who have been
doing web developing with php/python/ruby etc, what will be your advice
regarding how to get started with iOS development to build our first working
app?

~~~
drum
Big Nerd Ranch Guide: iOS Programming -- This book was well worth the
investment. Go through the chapters and do the exercises. After you start to
feel somewhat comfortable, try testing your creativity by taking some of the
code you've written and making something unique.

Example: The book teaches you how to make a quiz app where you store questions
and answers in two arrays and use two buttons to display each.

My variation on this was an app that helped me measure how much water I was
drinking each day. I had an increment and a decrement button. The goal was to
get to 8 glasses. Each time I got closer to the goal a motivational message
popped up.

This enabled me to use some of the code I was familiar with, but also change
it slightly enough to where I could venture into new territory. -- To me this
is the best way to get your first apps going.

~~~
infogaufire
Great. Thanks alot, this is very useful.

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kennywinker
This is awesome. I'd been toying with an idea somewhat like this for a while
now. It was too far outside my wheelhouse to go ahead with, but I really think
something like this will blow up and become a big part of the future of
podcasting.

One difference between this and my idea was that instead of filters I was
thinking the app would have "recipies"... The app could break up your
recording into sections with prompts. I.e. if you want to tell a story you
start by recording an introduction, then the body of the story, and then a
conclusion. The app could then interleave music or other ambient audio into
the recording to create a richer audio experience.

Fundamentally Instagram was successful because it made it easy to take good
photos. Or easy to make bad photos better. I think when someone figures out
how to make bad audio good, they'll crack this field wide open. Of course I
wish you all the best of luck, but I am a bit skeptical that audio filters are
the right formula for this.

~~~
kennywinker
Another quick note. In the app, I can get as far as submitting a recording
without signing up... but then I am forced to go back and sign up, which
causes my recording to be deleted. You should either make a way for me to sign
up via the sound-sharing screen, or prevent me from getting that far without
signing up.

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BasilAwad
45 seconds is too long for me. I only listend to 6ish seconds.

Vine is 6 seconds and that's also visual. Tweets are read in 10 seconds.

~~~
drum
It's a tough balance between making the clips long enough for the creators to
sing their song / tell their joke but short enough to where it's not annoying
for listeners. I don't quite know the equilibrium yet.

The looping nature of Vine videos for me typically makes the videos longer (
or at least the amount of time I spend watching them ). Maybe if we looped the
sound clips we could get away with shorter?

Thanks for the feedback

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xpose2000
So the "in" thing now is to shorten everything into treat size snacks and wrap
that idea around a social platform? Just because Twitter took off on this
premise does not make it a good idea to apply to everything else.

As for the app itself....Great job for a first timer. You've got a lot of
talent even if this idea doesn't take off.

~~~
BasilAwad
Not being "in" or simply suggesting to follow twitter. It's just that when it
comes to social mediums I blaze through things as fast as possible to get
gists. And the vibe I got from the front site is that this is about gists (45
seconds or less).

If this was presented more as a curation of best audio submissions, probably
with nice subheadings and short descriptions, then I'd probably spend 1-3
minutes enjoying each piece like how I do when I'm reading curated articles.

------
MaxGabriel
Scrolling performance is a bit low on the main page. I profiled your app using
the Open GL device driver in Instruments and your device utilization was
capped at 70%, so it isn't a GPU issue (I see you also don't have many blended
layers, so that makes sense).

When I profiled with Time Profiler, I notice that 51% of CPU time was spent in
backboardd, the UIView/CoreAnimation render server. The only way I know to
reduce this is to cut down on number of views, which is typically pretty hard
:(

Soundtribe itself was at 38.4%, maybe there's some optimizations to make
there?

I'm still on an iPhone 4 so you may be able to ignore this.

~~~
drum
Sweet, thanks for downloading and taking the time to do the profiling! I've
stil yet to use the Instruments tool. When you say "soundtribe itself was at
38.4%" , what does that mean?

~~~
MaxGabriel
The Soundtribe process specifically was using 38.4% of CPU time on the app.

I'm still not very good at improving performance, but if you do any work on it
I would highly recommend WWDC 2012 session 238. It's the only WWDC talk that's
high level enough to point you in the right direction -- most talks (and alot
of blogposts) are focused on specific areas to improve performance that may
not apply to you.

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tbolt
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf8SZYXRufg>

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danielrakh
Great job. What are you using for the backend?

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drum
Thanks! Backend is Ruby on Rails

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hydralist
make it 9 seconds, that digit appeals to me

~~~
wingerlang
25-30 would be it for me.

