Apple’s latest iPhone occasion introduced some nifty concepts, from the digital camera button to a reinvention of Google Lens and past. The corporate additionally introduced that it is bringing easy multitrack recording to Voice Memos. This was notably thrilling for me since, nicely, I exploit Voice Memos quite a bit. I’ve almost 500 of those little recordings that have been made throughout the lifetime of my iPhone 14 Professional and hundreds extra within the cloud. You by no means know if you’ll want a random tune you hummed whereas ready for the subway in 2013.
So this function felt tailored for me. I write songs. I play guitar. I do all the pieces that girl within the business does, together with opening the fridge late at evening for no actual cause.
Then actuality hit. This isn’t a software program replace that can hit all iPhone fashions. It’s tied to the ultra-premium iPhone 16 Professional, which begins at a cool $1,000. I don’t actually wish to improve proper now, so the dream of singing over an acoustic guitar monitor proper on the Voice Memos app is lifeless on arrival.
Why is that this explicit function walled behind the iPhone 16 Professional? It’s a easy multitrack recording operate. From the advert, it seems to be just like the app can’t even layer greater than two tracks at a time. This could’t precisely be taxing that A18 Professional chip, particularly when the telephone may deal with 4K/120 FPS video recording in Dolby Imaginative and prescient.
Professional Instruments, a well-liked digital audio workstation, was first launched in 1991. This was two years earlier than Intel launched the Pentium chip. Computer systems of that period had no hassle layering tracks. For a little bit of reference, final yr’s A17 Professional chip had round 19 billion transistors. An unique Pentium chip had round three million. In different phrases, a contemporary smartphone chip is round 6,300 occasions extra highly effective than a 1993 Pentium-based PC.
So allow us to layer tracks on Voice Memos, Apple! It might’t be that difficult. I’ve been utilizing devoted multitrack apps ever for the reason that iPhone 3. Apple throws GarageBand in with each iPhone. Each GarageBand and third-party recording apps have a spot, certain, however nothing beats the quickness and ease-of-use of Voice Memos. It’d certain be nice to have the ability to make a quick-and-dirty acoustic demo of a tune and ship it out to somebody with out having to navigate a reasonably difficult interface.
Yeah. I see the elephant within the room. There’s part of the advert that I’ve been avoiding. The girl information the vocal layer over the guitar monitor with out sporting headphones. She simply sang into the telephone whereas standing in entrance of that fridge. Now, that’s one thing old-school Pentiums couldn’t do. There’s some microphone placement wizardry occurring there, together with machine studying algorithms that scale back undesirable ambient noise. The iPhone 16 Professional has a brand-new microphone array, so I get that older fashions may not give you the option deal with this explicit a part of the equation.
However who cares? That’s a extremely neat function. It’s additionally utterly pointless. In the event you’re studying this, you might be probably already sporting earbuds/headphones or have some inside attain. Document the primary monitor with out the headphones. Document the secondary layer whereas sporting headphones. That’s it. Downside solved. You’ll be able to even do it in entrance of the fridge.
Additionally, each the base-level iPhone 16 and the Professional help Audio Combine, which lets individuals modify numerous sound ranges from numerous sources after capturing video. That is completed with out the brand new Studio Mics on the iPhone 16 Professional and appears to scale back ambient noise in an identical approach. So it may very well be doable that there is a software program answer right here to deal with even that elephant within the room. In any case, the corporate credit “powerful machine learning algorithms” for this tech — if it could actually erase environmental wind noise, certainly it could actually deal with music taking part in within the background?
So I’m as soon as once more asking for Apple to let the remainder of us mess around with multitrack recording on Voice Memos. There’s no cause each older iPhone mannequin couldn’t compute its technique to a easy guitar/vocal two-track wav file. Pop the function right into a software program replace. I hear there’s one for iOS 18 coming actually quickly, and one other for Apple Intelligence after that.
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