A Tribal Smile vs Audio Object

They came from geostationary orbit above metro Detroit. They brought music you didn't know you needed. And now they're on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, Apple Watch, and CarPlay. Buckle up, sonic travelers - enjoy the ride! What is A Tribal Smile? - Only THE legendary space basement band. An ever-morphing ensemble of musicians from around the world who collaborate in-person and online to create unique sonic experiences unlike anything else in the known universe. Their mothership hovers (probably) above metro Detroit, Michigan — and they do visit us from time to time. What kinds of music is this? - A delightful and unpredictable variety — electronic, avant-garde, dance, chill, alternative, rock, psychedelic, and deep space basement. You'll hear all of A Tribal Smile's recent color vinyl LP releases, individual songs, and cosmic emissions too. Something for everyone, and then some. What does the app do? - Stream A Tribal Smile anywhere, beautifully. The app features hypnotic fractal visuals that pulse, breathe, and tilt with your device as you move, floating orbs that perform tricks when you poke them, a background glow that changes color with every song, a built-in Tribal Smile Equalizer and Smoothinator to shape your sound just right, and a rich Now Playing screen with Recently Played tracks and shuffling artwork so every session feels fresh. Your settings sync through iCloud across your devices, a Battery Saver mode keeps the party going longer, and Truly Total Tribal Time keeps count of every minute well spent on every device you own. Wear the fractal smile on your Apple Watch face, and check in with the Space Basement from CarPlay. Available on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, Apple Watch, and CarPlay — your soundtrack, on every screen you own. Who are the radio station hosts? - Like the world's most wonderfully strange college radio station, this 24x7 broadcast is hosted by a charmingly eccentric assortment of DJs who each bring their own flavor to the experience — including Jonny Socko, Danny Mothra, Oliver Middlebrook, Spanky Bottoms, Eddie Gold Obvious, Gary Hurglewitz, and more! What does it cost? - Nothing. Free. Gratis. But let's consider the cost of NOT streaming A Tribal Smile daily. You could be toe-tapping, drifting away with chill psychedelia, and discovering your new most favorite song right now. What's to lose? Where can I learn more? - The fine folks at A Tribal Smile routinely update tribalsmile.com. They also occasionally surface on facebook.com/tribalsmile and instagram.com/atribalsmile. Carrier pigeons and smoke signals have also been known to work. How much of the above is real? - Most of what's truthful is real. They really are THE legendary space basement band. The carrier pigeons were mostly added for a laugh and, to the best of our knowledge, they are not actually in geostationary orbit. At least, we're not entirely sure they're not. Anything else? - Press play. Buy the records. Pick your favorite streaming service. Download the app. Tweak your settings so it auto-plays the second you launch it, skip the splash screen if you're in a hurry, tilt your device to spin the fractal for fun, poke an orb to see what it does — and if a particular tune doesn't suit your fancy, maybe get a glass of water, because by the time you get back, something wonderfully different will almost certainly be playing. Come join the sonic adventure. Tribal Smile Radio - where gravity is optional and the colors are always hungry.

Audio Object is a pocket-sized music instrument for iPhone. It looks and works like a small piece of hardware — a wooden body with an instrument panel on each face. Pull the wood edge and the body rotates to the next face. WHAT IT DOES - Four-track looper with bar-quantized recording and per-loop trim - Three-voice drum machine as the click track — kick, snare, hi-hat with a per-step accent grid - Eight-pad sampler with grid, auto, and tap chopping, two switchable banks, three-band EQ, varispeed tuning - Project save, load, and WAV stem export with tempo map - Streams audio to any Mac DAW over USB (Inter-Device Audio & MIDI) - Sends MIDI clock over USB — Ableton, Logic, and Bitwig lock transport to the phone - Records stereo from any Core Audio interface (iRig, Focusrite, MOTU, and others) HOW IT WORKS Six faces. Perform pads on one, sampler on another, click and time signature on a third, projects on the back, I/O on top, master on the bottom. No menus, no tabs. Every control lives on the body. The click track is not a metronome. It is a three-voice drum machine with per-step accents, subdivisions from quarter notes to swing, and time signatures from 3/4 to 12/8. Set up a kick-snare-hat pattern, press record, loop on the beat. The sampler holds eight pads across two banks. Record from the mic or load from Files. Chop by grid, by transient, or by tapping markers. Each pad carries a three-band EQ, varispeed pitch, and an amplitude envelope. All eight play polyphonically. Recording quantizes to the bar, the beat, or runs free. A dedicated loop-adjust face trims each loop to the sample — drag the region brackets, snap to the grid, hear the result while the brackets move. Plug the phone into a Mac over USB. Audio Object appears as an audio input and MIDI clock source. The DAW locks transport to the phone's tempo. No drivers, no setup. Plug a USB audio interface into the phone. Audio Object names the device on screen and records through its preamps at up to 48 kHz stereo. WHAT IS NEXT A synthesizer — bass, chord, and lead modes — is in development for the next major release.