Quiztones: EQ Ear Training

Description of App

Train your ears and improve your mixes with Quiztones, the frequency ear training app for amateur and professional audio engineers, producers and musicians.

Quiztones uses tones and frequency-altered noise and musical loops (including source material from your own music library) to train your ears and help develop more acute listening and frequency recognition skills.

Quiztones will...

• Sharpen your ears & frequency recognition skills
• Improve your mixing and EQ chops
• Prevent noise and frequency buildup in your mixes & recordings
• Eliminate the need to sweep for frequencies

Quiztones cleverly uses quizzes to engage users in training exercises. Each EQ quiz includes four trainers:

• Easy frequency boost (+10 dB)
• Hard frequency boost (+5 dB)
• Hard frequency cut (-10 dB)
• Expert frequency boost – 1/3 octave (available via Quiztones Pro in-app purchase)

New in 1.7: Train your ears to identify boost & cut between 1-16dB with our new Gain Level Comparison quizzes! These new quizzes are available via the Quiztones Pro in-app purchase.

Quizzes included in version 1.7:

• Music Library
• Tones
• Pink Noise
• Piano
• Bass
• Drums
• Strings
• Strings 2
• Orchestra
• Electric Bass
• Upright Bass
• Female Vocals
• Electric Guitar
• Acoustic Guitar

One Testimonial:
"A professional Audio Engineer of 10 years, I've come across many ear training devices, blind tests, and software. This app is TOPS! Highly recommended! The developers are serious about what they do. You will not be disappointed!"
- Joel Avery

Version

1.8.3

Free or Paid

Paid

Apple Watch Support

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone

iOS Version

8.4.1

Accessibility Comments

This app Is very accessible.

IMPORTANT: There are three buttons at the bottom of each quiz that are unlabeled for Voiceover. You can label them yourself easily enough. From left to right they are:
Left Button: Repeat toggle,
Middle Button: Play,
Right Button: Audio Change Toggle.

The middle button plays the audio for the current question. The Repeat button toggles between single play and continuous play. You will want to toggle this to continuous if you are using the app's built-in audio loops, while you toggle the right-most button on and off. The right-most button toggles between unaffected and affected audio. For a frequency quiz question, this means toggling between the audio as it is, and the audio with a portion of the frequency spectrum boosted or cut. For a volume level quiz question, this means toggling between normal playback volume and louder or quieter.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads all page elements.

Button Labeling

Most buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

There are some minor accessibility issues with this app, but they are easy to deal with.

Other Comments

This app is listed in the Music category in the App Store, but I chose to categorize it here as educational. If you are interested in audio engineering at all and want to train your ears to recognize changes in various frequency bands or level, this app is for you!

IMPORTANT: It may be very hard to accurately answer the frequency boost/cut quizzes if you are listening on Apple Earpods, other cheap earbuds, tiny speakers with limited frequency response etc. Garbage in, garbage out. Start with headphones, IEM's, or speakers that are fairly flat and wide frequency response to begin with.

App Store Link

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/quiztones/id436707254?mt=8

Developer's Website

http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/quiztones/

Developer's Twitter Username

@quiztones

Recommendations

1 people have recommended this app

Most recently recommended by Chris Smart 9 years 2 months ago

Options

Comments

Improvements

Feel free to write the developer about the unlabeled buttons and to request more quiz types. There are tons of additional things this app could drill, such as:
* compressor attack and release times
* reverb type, predelay or no, early reflections or no, approximate reverb decay times etc.
* delay times
* phasing (millisecond timings)
* amount of distortion, clipping, jitter, digital aliasing etc.
probably lots more.