MusiKraken vs DJMesh

MusiKraken is a modular MIDI Controller Construction Kit, empowering you to fully harness the capabilities of your mobile device's hardware. Winner of a 2022 MIDI Innovation Award! Make music using device sensors like Touch, Motion Sensors, Camera (face, hand, body and color tracking, including TrueDepth and LiDAR support) and Microphone, or connected devices like Game Controllers, Apple Watch or AirPods. Choose from several types of modules in the editor and connect the ports to create your own personal MIDI controller setup. Route the MIDI signals through effect modules to control multiple instruments simultaneously or invent creative new MIDI controller combinations. MusiKraken supports sending and receiving MIDI data over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or via Core MIDI (for example by using Inter-Device Audio and MIDI (IDAM)). And it can host Audio Unit (AUv3) instrument plugins. Or send the sensor data via OSC. MusiKraken is also one of the first apps to officially support MIDI 2.0! You already own a very powerful device with all kinds of sensors and connection possibilities. With this app you can use these sensors as inputs, combine them with all kinds of MIDI effects and send the resulting MIDI events to your computer, synthesizer, any other MIDI-capable app or Audio Unit to to create your own, expressive MIDI controller setup. Your device for example has a multitouch screen. Use this with the Keyboard module to slide on the keys to control multiple musical parameters simultaneously. Using MPE, MIDI 2.0 or the Chord Splitter also allows you to control these parameters separately per key. Newer devices also support tracking the finger radius (or pressure on older devices), which adds another dimension of control. Multitouch is also used by the Chords Pad to play the chords of a selected scale, or the Touchpad, which allows you control values via touch gestures. Another unique input sensor is the camera: MusiKraken supports tracking your hands in front of the camera, your body pose, your face or objects with specific colors. This way you can for example use your iOS device as a Theremin, jump or dance around in front of the camera to generate notes or control audio parameters, use your mouth to control the sound of a virtual trumpet, or any other combination. If your device has a TrueDepth or LiDAR sensor, you can also use the distances as input values. Your device also has motion sensors: Accelerometer, Gyroscope and Magnetometer. They can be either used separately, or combined to get the current rotation of the device in three dimensions. Use this to generate sounds or control parameters while shaking or tilting your device. Your device also has a microphone, and MusiKraken can detect the pitch or amplitude of the signal. Your iOS device also allows you to connect to external devices. MusiKraken for example supports Game Controllers (trigger events on button or thumbstick changes, motion sensors, haptics and light on supported Game Controllers), Apple Watch (motion sensors, digital crown, touch, heart rate) or the motion sensors within AirPods. The real power comes once you start combining the sensors with the effect modules. There are effects that can be used to change or filter the MIDI events. Some effects allow you to combine multiple input sources into new output values. Or splits chords into separate notes so that they can be sent to different channels. Important: Please note that some of the modules only work on iOS devices with specific hardware: ARKit Face Tracking and the TrueDepth module need a TrueDepth front camera, and Hand and Body Pose Tracking needs at least iOS 14, and might be too slow on older devices. HealthKit is used in the app to access Apple Watch data like heart beat or motion sensors. The app only uses sensor data to generate MIDI events.

Your phone is the record. Lay it flat on a turntable platter and DJMesh turns rotation into playback. The phone measures how the platter turns with its own sensors and plays the audio at exactly that speed and in that direction. Slow the platter and the track slows. Stop it and there is silence. Spin it backwards and it plays backwards. No timecode vinyl, no needle, no interface. HOW IT WORKS The gyroscope integrates the platter angle continuously, so the app knows where the record is, not only how fast it turns. Playback rate is sensed rotation over nominal rotation. Reverse, stop and pitch are physics, not modes you switch on. THE SCREEN IS THE RECORD The waveform is drawn as concentric rings, a groove you can read, and it turns with the phone because it is locked to the platter. The playhead, the beat ring and the cue markers are counter-rotated every frame, so they stay fixed in the room while everything underneath them turns. Touches are hit-tested in world coordinates, so a control stays where you see it however the screen is oriented. Set 12 o'clock once with a two-finger double tap; the phone remembers it for the next time it is put down. THREE VIEWS, CHOSEN FOR YOU Groovy when the phone sits over the spindle. Cover when it lies further out on the record, for the picture-disc look. Wavey as a flat band when the phone is in your hand or on the table. The app switches by itself, from the sensors. IN YOUR HAND Off the platter the band is the record: drag it to scratch, let go to throw, tap play to run. A resting thumb on the glass cuts the sound, click-free. ON THE DECK - Click-free varispeed engine, built for scratching - Hot cues and loops on a board that turns with the record and fires where you see it - Cue points, loops and beatgrids read from tagged audio files - Loops that stay correct under bidirectional scratching - Any Bluetooth MIDI crossfader cuts the sound (CC 0, channel 1) - Two phones are two decks on the same network; put one down left of the spindle, one right APPLE WATCH The watch on your wrist shows the other deck: its label stays upright while the platter turns under it, and a live waveform strip runs across the face. One phone, both decks in view. BRING IN A MAC A Mac on the same network can follow the phone's playhead and render the audio on the house system, with a cover-art crate and drag-and-drop onto deck slots. Both sides always sit on the same position, so handing playback from phone to Mac is a change in gain, not a resync. The Mac can also present the platter to your DJ software as a MIDI controller, so the phone on the record drives a software deck: a mapping for Serato DJ Pro is included, djay follows over MIDI. Hot cues, pitch and instant doubles come back to the phone. WHAT YOU NEED A turntable, a phone, and something that stops the phone from sliding. Direct drive and belt drive both work. Smoothest on a 120 Hz display. Calibration is optional; the app offers it once and you can run it any time from Setup. PRIVACY No accounts, no analytics, no tracking, no ads, no third-party SDKs. Your audio stays on your device. Communication between your own devices runs over your local network only and is never routed through a server.