View Single Post
  #75  
Old 12-27-2018, 10:58 AM
raysachs's Avatar
raysachs raysachs is offline
Charter Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2017
Location: Eugene, OR & Wilmington, NC
Posts: 4,706
Default

So after playing around with just the Spire IOS app for a while, I decided to try the Spire, see if it really improved on just using the app, and then see if I wanted to keep it or not.

It's definitely a keeper. Easiest multi-track recording I've ever been able to do. And the sound of both my acoustic guitar and vocals are better using some of their filters (basically just the first two under "spaces") than just recording into my apogee mic with the app. The soundcheck feature is really nice, very effective. And I'm happy enough with just the internal mic that I don't see buying any mics unless I decide it matters to be able to sing and play at the same time into two separate mics, but my singing really doesn't warrant that sort of expense!

I don't like the electric guitar effects at all - I do much MUCH better just playing through my pedals and amp and running the speaker emulated line out from my amp into one of the instrument plugs on the back. Much better sound IMHO. Really freaking great sound actually - best electric guitar sound I've ever managed to record!

After using it a bit, I have a few questions for some of you more experienced folks.

1. Is the actual music stored in the app or on the Spire? I recorded some stuff with the app on my iPad connected to the Spire, then switched to my iPhone and was surprised that none of the songs showed up there. So I figured the music was stored on the IOS device, not the Spire. Since my iPhone has a ton more memory than my iPad, I exported the stuff on the iPad and figured I'd just use the iPhone going forward. When I imported them onto the iPhone, I could listen to them just with the app. But then when I'd connect to the Spire and try to work on one, it was like the song had to then upload from the phone to the Spire before I could do anything with it? So I'm still fully confused about where the data lives. And whether I can fill up the Spire's memory by leaving a bunch of songs on my iPhone that have also been connected to (and seemingly uploaded to) the Spire??? Any thoughts are appreciated...

2. I haven't figured out the "trim" feature yet - every time I try to use it I end up deleting the whole track. I probably just need to play around with that a bit more.

3. When I'm in the mix screen, sometimes if I grab one of the tracks to move it around in the mix, a little label shows up at the top of the screen that says something like 'hold to force solo' or something - I'm sure I have that wrong because I haven't seen it in a little while, but it's something like that. Any idea what that would be? I was thinking it might have something to do with my wish to be able to vary the level of a track in the mix at different points in the song, like bring it up for a solo break and keep it more in the background under vocal sections. But I haven't seen it near enough to figure out what to do with it.

I think there's at least one other thing I meant to ask about, but I'm spacing it out at the moment. There are a couple of features I'd love to see, one of which would probably require different hardware, one could probably be easily done in firmware, but neither of them are deal-breakers given the many advantages of this little unit for a "recreational" player like me.

Outside chance I'll post an instrumental at some point, but my voice will never leave the house! I've recorded a couple of things where my singing is less horrible than usual and it sounded OK in my headphones while recording. But then when I sent a mix to my phone and played it through a bluetooth speaker, it was still embarrassingly bad. So nobody but my poor long suffering wife will ever hear anything with vocals on it!

-Ray