iPhone App Directory

ImproVox: Real time harmonization for iPad and iPhone - Review


I was playing with this app the day it came out, and I have to say that I am simply amazed with it. You have to use headphones with this app, there's no question about that, but the results are amazing.

Sing into this app and it simply harmonizes for you. The two pads on the screen (I used the iPad version) allow you to control the harmony and the effects. Just messing around with this is truly awesome, I really couldn't believe how good the sound quality was.

Sadly it won't run on my old 3G as it requires at least a 3GS or a 4, but it works just fine on the iPad which is great.

The app has some other features such as sharing although this is not either of the copy functions available. I haven't tried these out as yet, I'm sure I'll get to them soon enough.

If vocals are your thing you should try this app out, it is worth the price in my opinion. I really hope that the developer adds more features to it, like better control over the harmony, but even as is it is a great app, and I'm sure that I'm going to be able to find a way of using this in my musical workflow very easily indeed.

8 comments:

soundog said...

I agree, this is an amazing app. It sounds great using the built in iPad mic and headphones. And the latency is surprisingly short given such a large amount of DSP required.

I have been experimenting with setting it up on my performance PA, using a line-in/line-out splitter on the 4-pin input headphone jack on the iPad. It took some work to get the proper signal levels in and out, but I am getting good results now. I do hope the developer allows the user to disable the passthrough of the original signal so I can get a better mix of the input vocal with the output harmonies.

I am T-Pain is a laughable toy. But ImproVox is an impressive engineering feat and a serious application for processing vocals in real-time.

Anonymous said...

I would think this would be more comparable to the Glee app than the TPain one. Anyone compared them?

soundschlock said...

T-Pain, Glee, whatever. Same sort of music app schlock from same company. I've played with 'em all. And playing with them is about their extent.

These sorts of apps are wonderful for giddy, twittering teens and pre-teens.

ImproVox, on the other hand, is a tool capable of play or serious music work. I would compare it more to the harmonizing hardware available from TC-Helicon.

Robert said...

Has anyone tried this using a USB microphone through the Camera Connection Kit on an iPad?

For those who don't know, an app like Multitrack DAW can use a USB mic like BLUE Yeti connected through the CCK and it works wonderfully and sounds so much better than using the inline mic on the Apple headphones, etc.

soundog said...

You might try contacting the developer. I had a question for him and he got back to me in a day. Doubt if most developers have tested it though, although I have read some forums and articles that say USB microphones do work through the connector, so I am guessing all apps would work???? That would be neat!!

Robert said...

Well, the verdict is in on the USB microphone front, and it's negative, I just tried it. It's too bad, because several existing apps for the iPad can use this beyond MT DAW, namely the 99 cent app ProKeys. Maybe the devs can add this in a future update, or we can only hope.

Also, a little more control of the harmonies like the video demonstration on their website would be great, along with audio copy/paste, and real wav file recording as opposed to the m4a presently.

They seem like a serious bunch, so hopefully we'll see some good updates as time goes on...

Anonymous said...

I'll let the developer know about the USB mic issue so they are aware....

dkwizard1 said...

I was about to buy the app to test my Yeti USB mic with it. After reading other posts here, it sounds like it will not work. Can anyone confirm this? Also note, that I found out that with IOS 4.2 for the iPad, you will need to use a powered usb hub for the iPad to work with the Yeti microphone. I was able to use the microphone with blue fire's app, so I know that the hardware works. If someone has tested this out, please post here. Thank you

2/10/2011 dkwizard1