Dear AppleVis forum,
I'm Thomas, one of the developers of Tape It, a recording software that we originally designed for musicians. We were frustrated that Voice Memos' organisational features and recording quality were both very lacking, and wanted to build something better.
Tape It is used by many professional and amateur musicians today. But during our journey we discovered that we gathered more and more blind people among our user base who often aren't musicians at all. Our blind users use Tape It simply as their photos and camera equivalent. A bit more than a year ago, we worked with one of our blind users on making Tape It accessible with Voice Over, and have since made it our mission to always keep it accessible. We wrote a blog post about it then: https://blog.tape.it/recording-memories-for-blind-people/
Tape It has much better organisational features and much better playback and listening support. It's a fully featured music player that behaves exactly like you'd expect it to (compared to Voice Memo's cumbersome playback UX), with full Media Center integration. There's automatic syncing and cloud backups, private sharing, and much more.
On top of that, we record with two mics on the iPhone to create a stereo image and apply much gentler dynamic range compression. The resulting sound is in fact so good that we have recording engineers in Hollywood who use Tape It to record voice overs and folio. For our blind users, it means that Tape It can capture a memory with much more fidelity than Voice Memos can.
Tape It is a free app with an optional pro upgrade, available as either a monthly or annual subscription or a one-time lifetime purchase. The big difference between the free and the pro version is the recording quality: the free app sounds like voice memos, the pro version has the high fidelity stereo microphone sound.
I'd be delighted if you gave it a try. Just search for Tape It on the App Store or visit https://get.tape.it . And of course, if you find any accessibility issues, please let us know - we're always eager to improve it. Either reply here or mail me directly at thomas at tape dot it.
All the best,
Thomas
Comments
Why is an account needed?
Even though the registration would be easy (Apple Sign-In), I'd like to know why that account is actually needed.
Does Tape It not use iCloud?
No, we don’t use iCloud. We…
No, we don’t use iCloud. We built our own cloud as we want to support sharing to Android and Windows in the future, but also because we found iCloud syncing a bit unreliable in edge cases. The upside is that you get free cloud storage from us. Everything is hosted in the EU, and our privacy policy very clearly states that we don’t do anything with your data except store it for you.
Does the app have the features found at tape.it?
Does the app have the post-processing options like noise removal that we can find on the tape.it website? Does it support external microphones and gain adjustment? What file formats and sample rates or bit rates does it support?
The denoiser is not yet in…
The denoiser is not yet in the app, but will of course come soon. Tape It supports external audio interfaces, including channel selection for multichannel interfaces. Just plug your external mic or interface in and Tape It will automatically switch to it.
Tape It records at 44.1kHz in AAC (highest quality settings) or Apple Lossless at 32bit depth. We’re aiming to lower that to 24bit once Apple fixes the Apple Lossless encoder in the next major iOS release as 32bit is complete overkill.
What about gain adjustment for external mics?
I can still upload the recording to tape.it to apply noise removal and download the result, but would love to be able to do that straight from the app. Are there any demos that let us hear how the premium version records though?
getting my recordings from the website?
Hi,
Is it possible to log into the website and the app with anything other than Apple? Also, if I log in, no matter which way I log in, can I access my recordings from the cloud on the website? I have a mac and an android device. How can I get my recordings to them? Is there a way other than airdrop to the mac?
Thanks
Is this using 32 bit float?…
Is this using 32 bit float? I'm a little rusty on all this but, as I understand it, 32 bit float removes the possibility of clipping? Is that the same as what you site in your above comments EG 32 to 24 bit when Apple sort out their codec?
Also, it sounds like the reliability of iCloud sync generally is an issue. Another app I use, Ulysses, is falling apart, at least the syncing aspect of it, because iCloud is junky.
@Enes the best way to try it…
@Enes the best way to try it is to just start a trial. There are listening examples in the onboarding inside the app, the onboarding emails I send, and the help section. But I'd really recommend just trying it yourself. You can hear the difference instantly; it's like night and day. You can either compare it to Voice Memos, or switch the audio setting inside Tape It from stereo to mono. The mono setting sounds 100% identical to Voice Memos.
@Moopie no, we currently only support sign in with Apple, and there is no web interface yet. If you have a newer Apple Silicon Mac, Tape It runs on those too and syncs automatically, although I will admit I haven't tested the Mac version for accessibility. I'd be very grateful for feedback and would love to fix any issues that exist.
@Ollie the lossless setting uses 32bit float (that's the 32 bit depth I was referring to), but no, that doesn't remove the possibility of clipping. The only thing that bit depths affect - 16 bit, 24 bit, 32 bit - is the digital noise floor. Let me explain.
Basically, any recording medium has some noise floor that just comes from physical limitations. Vinyls, for example, always have a bit of noise - if you have a perfectly pristine vinyl record, you might barely hear it, but it will be there. Cassette tapes are the same - they will introduce some sort of noise, regardless of what music they contain.
To make sure that the noise of your storage medium - like your cassette - doesn't drown out the audio you recorded, you want to make sure that your audio is stored at almost maximum loudness. Obviously, if you make it too loud, your audio starts to clip. That difference between the noise and the signal level is called the headroom. Lower noise storage mediums allow you to record at lower volumes and massively minimise the risk of clipping without everything drowning in noise.
In digital media, the noise comes simply from rounding numbers, and is measured in bit depth. It doesn't matter whether the numbers are stored as ints or floats. The cool thing is that we can calculate directly the equivalent noise in decibels, and then compare it to analog media. It might surprise you as we discuss 16bit vs 24bit or 32bit in digital media, but the finest, best vinyl you have at home only has 11bit, and a standard cassette tape has around 6bit. You can already guess that 16 vs 24 vs 32 is mostly an academic discussion. This gets even more obvious once you realise that every additional bit *halves* the volume of the noise, so the difference from 7bit to 10bit isn't 30% less noise, but 1/8th of the noise.
In decibels, 16bit gives us 96dB and 24bit 144dB headroom. If the noise of the hardware you record is higher than the noise introduced by the rounding errors, then a higher bit depth won't help at all. Let's take a recent audio interface as an example, the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 4th Generation: https://www.thomann.de/focusrite_scarlett_2i2_4th_generation.htm
Focusrite claims the AD converter has 120dB headroom. In that case, 24bit would actually be a good idea, as at 16bit we'd only have 96dB headroom. However, the interface also has microphone preamps built-in, with a headroom of 69dB according to Focusrite. Once you use the microphone preamps, recording in 16 or 24bit makes no difference - the noise in the hardware itself is much higher anyway.
There's an even longer and more in-depth explanation on this link: https://sonicscoop.com/why-almost-everything-you-thought-you-knew-about-bit-depth-is-probably-wrong/
The conclusion of all this is that whether 24bit or 32bit even make any difference over 16bit on the iPhone depends on how good the hardware of the iPhone is. Luckily, Apple's hardware is actually astonishingly good. Personally, I think that 16bit would probably be more than enough, but I think it's perfectly fine to err on the safe side and record in 24bit. 32bit, however, is definitely overkill. Unfortunately, Apple's lossless encoder ignores the bit depth flag right now and always stores in 32bit, which is simply a waste of disk space. Apple has already promised us that they will ship a fix in a future update; I assume that will be the next major iOS version coming out this fall.
By the way, none of this matters when you store audio as AAC. Lossy audio codecs introduce their own type of noise that makes any discussion about bit depth completely irrelevant.
As to clipping: this is mitigated by automatic gain staging on the iPhone. The iPhone is incredibly good at this. If your mics clip and you still have warranty, I suggest taking your iPhone to an Apple Store and talking to them about it - the chances are extremely good that they will replace your phone.
Wow, thank you for the in…
Wow, thank you for the in depth description of bit depth. Makes a lot more sense now. I know the new zoom recorders all boast 32 float, but it does sound like marketting blurb, espeically as they haven't upgraded the capsules on the bottom end devices.
I was espeically impressed to read how your app can differentiate between spoken and singing. This is super helpful for those of us too lazy to title clips. Having a similar discussion regarding images and labelling them for quick refrencing purposes.
I'll continue to have a play and should anything come up I think of, will drop a line here. Seems a solid app though.
No, I can't afford it...
I would go for the lifetime purchase but it costs so much in Turkish liras. I may sound to some like ranting on and on about this exchange rate thing but it's really a severe problem. It would be great to have prices set with the region where the user resides in mind. By the way, it's disappointing that the free version doesn't even let me record lossless audio or raw stereo without Tape It's own processing. There are several apps that let me record in stereo and one even has its own features to apply stereo expansion and noise reduction to mono recordings, all for free. One has extra features like reverb and time stretching unlockable via an in-app purchase. This same app also lets you share your recordings via e-mail as long as they do not exceed the maximum file size allowed by the e-mail service provider, or store them on their own website and share a link instead, regardless of the size, even if you don't unlock share sheet access. The others already let you share the recordings without any restrictions. Why would I pay that much for Tape It then? I would really like to use it but why, and why Tape It and not any other app? You could at least let the user access certain features for free and offer this unique professional stereo recording thing as an in-app purchase, at a lower cost. I get development and maintenance costs, your efforts to make the app accessible and everything, but all the other apps I mentioned are also quite accessible and this should not be treated as some favor; it's a right already.
Oh, let me add that I am ready and willing to translate the app's interface into Turkish if that will let me get the pro features. I don't really intend to request stuff and complain without doing or offering anything in return.
Hi Enes,Apple automatically…
Hi Enes,
Apple regularly automatically adjusts the prices for each region, and my understanding is that they will continue to adjust it for Turkey as well. It is part of the service that Apple offers to app developers; it would be difficult for us otherwise to know what fair market prices are in every part of the world. We set a price in USD in the App Store, and Apple converts it to what they think an equivalent local price in every region is, taking into account local purchase power. The lifetime purchase is quite expensive in all regions, though. Creating a high quality consumer app is just incredibly expensive and time consuming, and we need to put a certain price on that to make it viable.
Tape It is worth it if you want a really polished recording app. You can find many of its features in some other apps, but it's really the combination of features and the design that sets Tape It apart. There are many details that you discover as you start using it, like automatic instrument detection, that make your life a lot easier as it lowers the need to meticulously name and organise every recording. Most of us aren't that organised, and Tape It gives you excellent chaos management.
You can use most of Tape It’s features for free, without any ads - including sharing via email, by the way (since you mentioned that specific feature). The pro upgrade is entirely optional; around 80% of our long-term users are perfectly happy with the free version. A lot of value in Tape It is in its much better organisational features - mixtapes, annotations, markers, private sharing, excellent playback support - and they are all available for free. And if you want to upgrade and the lifetime purchase is too expensive: there’s a free trial for the much more mildly priced annual subscrIption, and there’s a monthly option if you just want to use the paid features occasionally.
Overall, I would say the value of Tape It really comes down to its general feel. It’s nice to have an app that lets you record, but it’s not worth that much if the listening experience is so bad that you rarely listen to your recordings. We aim to put the same attention to detail into audio recording and listening that photography apps have enjoyed in the last twenty years. And that’s really where the true value lies. Other apps have features that you might use in theory, but not in practice. Tape It just works.
Is what Apple does not just convert the prices?
- Twisted Wave Recorder (AKA TW Recorder): This one lets you export the recordings as 24-bit lossless WAV or FLAC files even though it stores the raw recordings in 32-bit if you toggle that on in the settings. It does let you record lossless stereo audio, and you can even export the recordings without unlocking full access to the Share sheet without compromising the quality of the recordings themselves.
- RecorderHQ: This one also lets you record lossless stereo audio and export the recordings however you desire without any additional purchases.
- Ferrite (Ferrite Recording Studio on the App Store): I've not used this one that much, but it also does let you record in stereo.
- Dolby On: This is the one that lets you apply stereo expansion and noise reduction to mono recordings, and it works better with its own dedicated hardware made by the company.
Let me emphasize once again that Tape It's free version doesn't even offer many of the features found for free in those apps I listed above, so as you stated earlier yourself, Tape It's free version doesn't have anything that the Voice Memos app does not. This actually implies that the subscriptions or lifetime payment do include those features as well, but we can already use them for free in other apps. Hope my point is clear enough this time.Dear Enes, It’s absolutely…
Dear Enes,
It’s absolutely ok if you have found other apps that work well for you. All I can say is that we built Tape It because we really wanted something better than the apps you listed. I can only encourage you to give it a try and see how you like it. The difference really is in the details.
Best,
Thomas
It is true that we will both continue to...
It is true that we will both continue to defend our own arguments and stances. I am a user, or from your vantage point, a customer; and you are the company's representative and possibly the CEO and the developer himself. We all have our own standpoints and perspectives, so it is more than likely that you will try to respond to me in a manner that is in the "best interest" of the company, while I will find your responses too short and unsatisfactory, and think that you have been evading certain points instead of addressing them. In that case, there should at least be one thing that we agree on: This won't get us anywhere.
Ah, question. Can I say,…
Ah, question. Can I say, plug this into an audio interface that has multiple inputs and can I do multitracking coming from the interface into the app? Can I say, have separate inputs going from the interface into separate tracks? Kind of looking for an on the go way or recording bands. If this can indeed do this without too much hassle, I may have to give this a spin hehehe.
I’m afraid no, Tape It doesn…
I’m afraid no, Tape It doesn’t support any multitracking yet. It’s on our roadmap, but we don’t want it to become a complicated DAW, and haven’t found a good design yet that allows such complex use cases without making the simple recording situations more complicated.
With Tape It, you can only record one or two channels with an external audio interface (mono or stereo).
There are some other apps out there like Cubasis that should support it. I don’t know how good their Voice Over support is though, especially given how complex they are.
Voice Over Magic Tap and Rotor Support
I've received quite a bit of great feedback via email from many new users from AppleVis, for which I'm very grateful. One thing I explicitly want to mention here is Voice Over magic tap and Voice Over rotor support. We didn't know these features existed, and we really rely on your feedback to understand what we need to improve. Needless to say, we'll add support for both very soon.
Is that how you brag about accessibility?
Is that how you make accessibility a high priority? I do know that you could have made an inaccessible app and ignore user feedback and requests for better VoiceOver support, but I also know that your emphasis on accessibility allegedly being your mission actually calls for a better app. This thing called the magic tap, and rotor actions, are some of the best-known and widely-used features of VoiceOver that many accessible apps have enhanced support for. I am just surprised that you didn't even know about either one of them and yet are promoting your app as one that is maintained by a team that has accessibility as its mission. I would normally appreciate such attention to feedback from visually-impaired users by developers, but your responses and attitude have made me conclude that all you do is exploit the concept of "accessibility" to address visually-impaired users so that more of us purchase your app. It is therefore not because more and more blind people have started using Tape It, but because you want more and more blind users to use your app that you've been blabbering on and on about accessibility. As I said, this should not be treated as some kind of favor; it's a right already. I don't want to be treated as someone in need who has to wait for developers like you to pretend to take our needs and demands seriously and then assert they have accessibility as their mission. That blind guy whom you worked with a year ago may not have thought of those things like magic tap and rotor actions, but you should have. Why not when you worked with that person but now are you finally asking us to use your app and "provide feedback"? You desperately try to advertise and sell such an expensive app but I am unfortunately confident that you wouldn't do that hadn't you had that many (potential) blind "customers". I've witnessed how you've been evading my points and how selective you are to respond to comments. I sincerely inform everyone that I shall do everything I can and make use of every means at my disposal to better disseminate how dishonest you are.
By the way, this app entry I posted recently, might be useful for those wishing to record 3-D audio without requiring any additional hardware, provided that you have two iPhones to be used as the two microphones to capture audio like your ears do:
https://applevis.com/apps/ios/photo-video/soundx-record-3d-audio
I know this app doesn't let you record multichannel audio, which was asked earlier, but it does appear to let you record 3-D audio at a much lower cost compared to Tape It's exceptional stereo thing.
really excited!
I'm working on a project that needs good audio recording on my phone. i have the 15 pro so i know i have the mics for it but have been looking for some software. I've been playing with the UX and love it. i'll upgrade soon to pro, $100 seems actually pretty reasonable, it's the same cost of a low end zoom.
question: do you think you might add whisper support in the app? for transcribing things?
Re: Is that how you brag about accessibility?
I am shocked and deeply saddened by Enes Deniz's post.
First and foremost, I want to applaud the developer of Tape It for their efforts in making the app accessible to VoiceOver users and for proactively reaching out to the AppleVis community to share information about the app's accessibility. This level of engagement and openness to feedback from blind users is commendable and should be encouraged, not subjected to such open hostility and accusatory assumptions about the developer's knowledge or approach to accessibility..
While there may be areas for further improvement or accessibility features that could be better implemented, it is shocking to hear the developer treated this way and accused of having ulterior motives or exploiting accessibility solely for financial gain. Attacking or discouraging developers who make genuine efforts is always going to be counterproductive.
To the developer of Tape It, I encourage you not to be disheartened by the tone and negativity of Enes Deniz's post. Their response should not be taken as representative of the AppleVis community. Most of us welcome and appreciate developers who actively seek feedback and prioritize accessibility.
What about the dev's dodgy responses?
I already have other free or cheaper alternatives to do whatever I want, including the apps I mentioned earlier, and the Sennheiser Smart Headset. Being unable to use Tape It won't be a significant loss for me. I did try to discuss a lower price and having some features for free, and list some other apps as examples, but no more than the developer do I care about financial gains for sure. My posts and Thomas' responses are all here for y'all to read and take into consideration. I also have e-mails to which he has not yet replied. If he doesn't reply to them, I will be even more confident that he has been insincere and dishonest. I will paste the contents of those e-mails here if he doesn't reply within three days and leave the final decision to you.
Re: Is that how you brag about accessibility?
and yet you wonder why devs don't wanna take the time to make their apps accessible. It's honestly because these kinds of negative comments right here. I'm personally shocked at this comment! At least there's a life time purchase should you wanna take it if you don't feel like subscribing. The fact that the devs is working on accessibility for this app is an appreciation at best. You can either choose to use it, or not, just another tool in my toolbox as one would say. Just because devs didn't know about some of these VO features and they been out for a long time, don't mean you gotta direct personal and negative attacks! What's all the fuss! And dishonesty? where did you get that idea from? Kay... Rant over!
Nice app
I'm trying the app and it's actually very polished. I feel like maybe the stereo recording could be a separate purchase from the general pro features bundle. I love doing stereo recordings, but it feels very expensive to pay a subscription just for this single feature.
BTW, it seems you can import stuff from voice memos. How so?
More feedback
1. VoiceOver doesn’t announce which tapes are selected.
2. It’s good that voiceover announces in which mixtapes are the tapes contained, but I think that it should be possible to tweak the order in which voiceover says these stuff. Or if there were a more info rotor option to say it’s mixtapes, who recorded it and etc. Like the photos app does.
3. It feels like when you put stuff into a mixtape, it gets sorted in a completely random order. I think it would be interesting to be able to sort tapes inside mixtapes by creation date and other criteria.
Re: Re: Is that how you brag about accessibility?
And how do you know I am throwing baseless accusations at the developer and complaining for no reason? I already said I would just share the e-mails with you in three days, right? Think and say whatever you desire after that but nothing you say in that post of yours actually mean anything to me right now. You first have to learn how to be patient, listen to others and make unbiased statements. The developer has not yet replied to my e-mails or posts, by the way. He could just say what you said and strictly deny my "accusations" if he felt as confident as you do, right? So why are you doing that on his behalf? Perhaps I should've just shared all the e-mails with everyone on here right away instead of giving Thomas more time? But I will give him even more time by friday, as he may have been unable or preferred not to reply on the weekend.
I completely agree with Cobbler
@Enes I don't get your antagonistic approach here. The dev is just trying to improve accessibility and solicit feedback. I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish, but it's definitely the wrong way to go about it in my opinion.
@tcwalther Thank you for prioritizing accessibility, reaching out and engaging with the community! It is much appreciated.
Best
M
Definitely and in your opinion?
Pick either one.
Harassment Prohibited on AppleVis
Hi all,
On AppleVis, we strive to foster an environment where developers—regardless of their level of accessibility knowledge—and users can collaborate together in a positive and constructive way. To that end, some of the recent posts in this thread have taken on a deeply antagonistic tone. Posts written with the soul intent of harassing/intimidating developers or other community members are counter to our mission, go against our forum guidelines, and are not welcome on AppleVis. Any further posts of this nature (including sharing of private emails in an attempt to intimidate the developer) in this topic will be removed by site moderators.
Michael Hansen
AppleVis Editorial Team
A big thank you, and responses to technical questions
I want to say a big, heartfelt thank you for the support many of you have expressed. It means a lot to me.
@techluver: we've played with Apple's SpeechRecognition framework in the past to see what the user experience would be like. I know of course that Whisper has a better word error rate, and it would be trivial to use that instead. Transcribing the audio is easy; the hard question is where to display it, and what the use case is.
Our original target market is musicians. Here, the use case is transcribing lyrics. Even for rough song ideas, a transcription can help you when trying to come up with lyrics. We tried displaying the transcription in the notes section, but it didn't quite feel right. We've then been considering adding a lyrics section, but we think it would make the interface too specific. It would be weird to have a section called "lyrics" on field recordings or longer recordings like band practice sessions or instrument lessons. And of course, for people who don't use Tape It for recording music - like the majority of people in this forum, I'd assume - a lyrics tab would be weird in 99% of cases. Of course, it also goes the other way around: having a "text transcription" section would be helpful for generic recordings, but would be weird on guitar riffs.
I wrote all that background to lead to my actual question. Can you explain what the use case for text transcription would be for you? In particular for users with limited vision, what is the benefit of listening to a transcription compared to the original recording?
@WellF: Thanks for the feedback on the pricing around stereo. Pricing is one of the really hard things for a developer, and feedback is really valuable. Most of the features of Tape It are actually in the free version. Stereo audio, external audio interface support, lossless audio, the home screen widget, trimming and unlimited search are pro features (the search in the free version is limited to three months), everything else is free. From my perspective, that already achieves what you ask - namely putting most of the features of the app on a different price tier (free, in this case) compared to pro features you may not use so often (stereo recording, for example). Is that what you'd like to have, or are there certain specific pro features that you'd love to have on a dedicated price tier that aren't included in the free version?
On your VoiceOver feedback (for which, again I'm really grateful):
Oh, ok. We will fix that.
I'm not a huge fan of configuration options if they can be avoided. Most of the value of Tape It is that we put in the extra effort to find solutions that don't require configuration and just work out of the box. But the rotor options sound interesting. I'm going to have a look at how the Photos app does it; thanks a lot for the reference.
It gets sorted by order of date added, where newer items are added at the bottom. Custom ordering, or sorting by date, is one of the most requested features and will definitely come soon.
One other feedback I received via email is that the go-back gesture is not implemented consistently. We will review and fix that, of course, too.
One last note on translations, as I received several really kind offers of support in translating Tape It to various languages: the app is currently only available in English. Most in our team are actually German, so it's not for a lack of knowledge of other languages, we just aren't there yet with the development. Of course, translations will come at some point, just not in the very near future. On the bright side of things, it means we're adding Voice Over before we add other languages. :)
If you have any other feedback of things that you'd like to see changed, please share them with me. It doesn't just have to be bugs - it can also be something like "it would be much more useful if it read out more/less information" or "the actions should be in a different order". Sometimes things aren't broken, they're just annoying and cumbersome. And we can change these things, too!
On pricing and other stuff
First of all, it's very nice to be heard. Thanks for it.
As for the pricing, of all the premium features, as an amateur musician and audio enthusiast, stereo recording is what I miss the most. Lossless is good, but as I'm not doing any professional work I'm sure a high quality compressed audio is more than enough. So paying a considerable ammount of money for basically one feature feels kinda overkill for me personally, specially as a student with no job currently LOL.
On a feedback perspective, how are long recordings handled by voiceover?
Pricing
I would like to make a few comments about pricing. These are only my opinions. So take it for what it's worth. I feel the pricing for this app is more than fair. You get a 1 week trial to see if it will meet your needs. The monthly price is only $7. So if you can't afford the yearly rate or the life time subscription, that really isn't a bad price. The yearly price is only $35. This is aproximately a 58 percent discount over paying monthly. I don't know of too many developers that offer that much of a discount. The life time price is $119. This is also not a bad price in my opinion. These
prices I have quoted are in Canadian dollars. I have no way of knowing what the prices are in other currencies. If you look at all the pricing options, I feel that they are more than fair. The 1 week trial should really help you to decide if you need the pro features.
On pricing and long recordings
Yes, stereo audio is really what matters, lossless is more of a niche feature. I only recommend turning on lossless audio if you intend to restore the audio further with professional tools like iZotope RX. We didn't even support lossless in the beginning as we thought it was pointless, but then we started amassing a decent user base among Hollywood sound engineers, and they post process everything in audio restoration tools like RX. These tools work much better if they don't also have to undo AAC compression artifacts. But if you don't do that, AAC is the way to go. You save a ton of disk space with AAC on your phone - you can practically record as much as you like. With lossless, the space usage quickly adds up.
On pricing: Our idea has always been that Tape It is free for the basics, but once you get serious, the pro upgrade should be worth the price. Originally, we didn't call it "pro", we called it "full version" and "free version", but we learned that "pro" is a better naming for iPhone apps. The subscription options should also make it quite affordable compared to a high up-front investment. At $30/year (USD), it boils down to one coffee per month. I know that subscriptions add up, but I hope that if this becomes your daily companion, the price should be worth it. The free tier is important to us because we want you to be able to share recordings inside the app with your friends without requiring your friends to pay money for that, and we want the app to feel worthy enough on the free tier that your friends also use it. That's why we erred towards putting most of the features in the free tier.
And yes, your feedback is certainly heard, WellF. We always collect a bit of feedback before we react to anything, especially around pricing - it's just a really hard topic with tons of different opinions. But I take notes on every feedback we get!
On the same note, I'm also very glad about your feedback, Earle, and I'm really glad to hear that you think the pricing is reasonable. As I said, pricing is really hard, and feedback is really appreciated.
> On a feedback perspective, how are long recordings handled by voiceover?
That's a good question. To be perfectly honest, I don't know how good the experience for blind people is. For people with vision, one of Tape It's biggest strengths is how we handle long recordings, and how easy we make it to add markers and browse through them. It really sets Tape It apart from other apps out there. I'd love to make it equally nice for blind people, and am very open for suggestions.
Is there something specific that would help you with listening to long recordings?
a few app suggestions
Hi,
Afyter reading all of the comments, I would like to say thank you for making such a wonderful app for blind audio engioneers/musicians. I do have a few app suggestions.
1. In the native Voice Memos app, a beep confermation is herd when starting/stoping a recording. can that be added in tape it as well?
2. in apps such as Voice memos, and other apps, and I know that it has been mentioned in previous comments, but the scrub gesture allows you to go back to a previous screen. Is that still going to be implemented?
That's all the suggestions I have for now.
beeb confirmation and scrub gesture
Hi JC,
Thanks for the warm words. Much appreciated!
Absolutely, we can add a beep confirmation. Is there a case where this beep can be annoying, or would this be an uncontroversial addition?
Definitely. I'm glad you mentioned it again; I may have missed it but I think this is the first time someone named it the "scrub" gesture, and this seems to be the official name. I was trying to find it via Google and was searching for the "go back" gesture and other similar terms, but knowing now that it's called scrub gesture makes it trivial for me. Thanks a lot!
responding to your comment
Hi,
In responce to your comment, the beep is actually not annoying. I like it. I use it all the time to confirm when it's recording and then when I stop the recording it actually lets me know that there's no dead air or silence. It just notifies me through sound when the recording has ended. One more thing that I forgot to add in previous comment is that nailed that we have the shortcuts app on our phone it would be cool to have a shortcut added into the shortcut app so that whenever we want to record quickly instead of loading the tape it app you just double tap on the shortcut and it will perform the action like starting at recording and then when you tap on the second shortcut it will stop recording instantly. That could be something you guys can look at especially with iOS 18 about to come out in June for beta testing, that might be a good idea for you to look into. And always keep the app updated as frequent as possible, especially for future beta cycle releases. I have been a beta tester since iOS 9.
Received a reply from the developer.
I don't ever intend to harass anyone, and while I am not sure I will every use Tape It, I would still like to share a few suggestions regarding the beep thing as a sign of goodwill: The settings may have different options to toggle it off or on, or make it depend on the ringer switch. It can even be set to be switched on or off in a certain location, depending on the active "focus" or whether airplane mode is enabled. There might also be some countdown feature to let recording begin 3 or 5 seconds after the user (double-)taps the button to start recording, and indicate the countdown with beeps every second. It could also be haptic feedback instead of beeps. Let's say the user holds the device in his/her hand, or leaves it on something like a desk, and (s)he can still sense or hear the vibrations but doesn't want to make too much noise. There could also be an option for visual feedback.
Let me quote only the last paragraph of my e-mail in reply to the one that I've got from the developer (with one tiny correction), so that my intentions be clear: "I want one thing to be crystal-clear, like a high-quality recording: Whatever I've said I can and shall continue to defend, and none of it is meant to disseminate inaccurate information with nefarious purposes without being backed by solid facts. What I say does not differ in any way from what I believe. I am as ready as I first was to defend my points and justify my view truly because I believe I am right. I am as unconvinced as I am ready to be convinced.". The rest the developer must've received already, so he can always object to this claim of mine that I truly consider certain practices unfair, and not out of selfish attempts to bargain with him and broker a more "favorable" deal. By the way, those mails did not contain any private information, and were actually quite similar to my posts on here.
Recording beep suggestion
Hi Enes,
I'd love to avoid settings as much as possible. We very often get requests to add settings to the app, but if we had done that with every feature so far, the whole app would be one huge settings page. The value we're trying to bring with Tape It is that we took the time to figure out a setting that works for the vast majority of cases. This is very in line with Apple's ethos of not doing everything, but doing a few things well. Similarly, I also believe that changing behaviour based on location would introduce way too much complexity.
On focus mode: is this something that you use to change the Voice Over behaviour? Would you expect an app to no longer play sound in focus mode? Or more broadly speaking, would you expect an app to behave vastly differently in focus mode? For me, focus mode simply means that the iPhone doesn't send me notifications, but I can still do everything proactively, like play audio from Spotify, for example.
On the count in: that's actually something we want to add more generally to Tape It in the future as part of adding a metronome.
Shortcuts
Hi JC,
There is actually a shortcut to start a recording, but no shortcut to stop a recording directly. If you activate the "record" shortcut while you are recording, it will simply open the app on the record page, and there you can decide whether to stop the recording.
I made a note that we'll also add a shortcut to stop a recording. Makes a ton of sense.
And yes, we'll keep the app updated :).
that works
that works. I love recording such things as everyday sounds, and I still use the voice memos app, which records in mono. that sounds the same, so I'm not sure what the difference is when it comes to the sound in Lossless mode. what's the difference?
On the recording beep alert
In some apps, the beep for starting and stopping a recording is different. Although a single beep is enough, having it a bit different is interesting just in case.
As for the person who asked about lossless and mono, these are different things.
Stereo audio, in opposition to mono, will have a greater sense of space. Tape it has its own demonstration when you start using the app.
As for lossless, it’s more about professional audio workers who need it for editing purposes. For our ears, a good quality compressed version is more than enough.
Update with Voice Over improvements
Thanks for all the feedback that I received, both here and via email. We just released an update with several Voice Over improvements:
- Make lock screen widget and home screen widget accessible
- Improve how the duration is read on record view
- Add magic tap gestures for recording and playback
- Add scrub gestures
- Announce selected tapes in Voice Over
- Announce monthly headers in the tape list to allow scrolling by month using the Rotor
- Improve accessibility when renaming a tape
- Improve how the scroll position is read out in the tape list
One thing I'm particularly happy about is the navigation by headers in the tape list. Tape It groups recordings by month, and by choosing the headers via the rotor, you can quickly jump from month to month. That's probably not any news to you, but personally, I found this to be absurdly useful. There's no equivalent function for sighted people to jump between months so quickly. As a sighted person, you visually see the grouping by month, but there's no explicit navigation for it. You scroll, and while that's really fast it's rather imprecise. It really got me thinking of how we could build something equally powerful for sighted people.
Please give the update a try, keep the feedback coming on what else we can improve.
I'm sold
Wasn't sure i needed another recording app but after reading through this thread i'm downloading as i type this. Thank you so much to the dev team. You guys must be one of the most active and responsive devs on here especially with direct user feedback. That stuff takes time, thank you. Also very glad to see you weren't discouraged by one particular entitled jerk on here. THeres always one :).
About to go record heaps of stuff and annoy my wife with it haha.
Cheers
Good to see
I tested the app this morning and it’s almost perfect. When the beeping alerts for recording and stopping a record are implemented it will be fire!
One thing that I think that could be interesting is the possibility to add our own tags to the recordings, as well as the possibility to add more than one tag to a single recording, E.G, singing and acoustic guitar.
Recording from Drum Set
Hello. This app sounds interesting. If I had a lightning to 3.5 inch headphone adapter, is it possible to record directly from the headphone out of my electronic drum set? I've been hoping for a quick and easy solution to do this without all kinds of extra cords or mixers. I would love to simply plug one of my phones into my drum kit's input jack to play along as I do now, and then plug another phone into the output/headphone jack of my drum set, and have an app record both the song and my playing being outputted. I've tried other apps, but none seem to work like this, and I don't even know if the iPhone is capable of recording from a headphone cable and lightning adapter... I hope that made sense.
Re: recording from drumset
Hi Jesse,
This might be possible, but you’d only be able to record in mono and may need to solder your own cable.
The lightning to TRRS adapter has two stereo outputs and one mono input channel. You need to create a cable which takes mono input via a regular TS connector on one side (your drumkit) and routes that to the TRRS mic position. There are different standards on how the TRRS jack is wired; Apple uses the CTIA standard: tip (left), ring (right), ring (ground), sleeve (mic). So you want to leave the tip and first ring unconnected.
On the new USB C iPhones you can simply plug in any class compliant audio interface, but the Lightning port is tricky.
Recording via USB
Thanks for the quick reply. I will definitely be upgrading to a USB C iPhone at some point, probably this fall when the new model comes out. Would recording from my drums be easier this way? All this stuff is new to me, but it's something I would love to be able to do without a lot of complexity and hassle.
Re: recording via USB
Yes, it gets a lot easier. You still need an audio interface to record your drums, but any USB audio interface will do. Some newer drum kits even have one built-in, in which case you simply connect your phone with a USB cable to your drum kit.
more suggestions
It seems that, visually, when a record is more than 3 minutes long, it is divided into sections, right?
I just did a 5 minute recording and voiceover treats it as a single element. As I imagine that you can kinda move between these sections as if they were chapters or paragraphs, it’s necessary for that feature to be made accessible for us too.
One idea would be to have them as separate elements and then we could have the option to double tap a section to move to it, or to use a tree finger sweep gesture to the left and right to move between them in sequence.
Still on the tree finger sweep, I think that it can be used in various sections of the app, E.G, to have it as a gesture to play the next or previous recording if the focus is on the media player. Spotify, which has a lot of issues TBH, has this feature and I find it pretty neat.
Navigating long recordings
Great suggestions. I like it.
One question: when you’re working with long recordings, there are basically three features that matter:
- playing/pausing (right now via magic tap)
- moving the playhead
- adding a marker.
In addition to that, you may want to jump from marker to marker. I believe that I can implement the different move actions via the rotor, where you can switch between different time steps, including 3mins - which is a line, as you correctly identified - and step by marker.
My question is though: is there any gesture I could use to let users add a marker at the current position? The magic tap is already taken. Sighted people have a big fat floating “add marker” button for that. You can always navigate to the “add marker” button with Voice Over, but that takes a while.
Long recordings
the create a marker, as well as the jumping between markers, could all be rotor actions.
I`ll try to find an app where a similar logic is applied to give you an example on how to integrate it all.