Sound Effects! App Tool Review

by Lari Tanner

Description

Sound Effects! is an app created by TM Soft for iPhone and iPad.  I was originally going to do TweetMic which was reviewed before, about two years ago, but since that review TweetMic's features are limited.  So I decided to go with something that would let you play around with sound effects instead.  You can play sound effects with this app and also add more effects.  Some of the sound effects it features are laughing, horn blowing, Whistles, booing, animal sounds and clapping just to name a few.   

Access

The app is accessible at the App Store, and it is a free download.  It is available for iPhone and iPad, and I believe there is a Mac version in the works.

Sample Usage

This app started out as sort of a joke app to tease your friends with, but it has become useful for sound. There are four basic pages on the app.  The Cover page, the Sound Board, Sound Catalog, and More screens.  More- shows additional buttons, like the Layout, Theme, Timer, Lock, and reset.  You can access the Sound Board and Sound Catalog threw the cover page.  Once you're on either screen you can play with sounds.  In the Board screen you can actually maneuver the sound tiles, you can tap a tile to hear the sound, and tap it again to pause it.  If you start a sound and pause it, you can reset the sound to start over by picking up the tile and shaking it.  You can also click and drag sound effects tiles around and touch several at one time to make more than one sound play.

Tips, tricks, and tutorials

The app is fun to play with.  You can click and drag on more than one tile at at time and move them all at once. You can add sounds by uploading them from your phone into your Mac and use iTunes, the "Help" guide in the app itself explains how to transfer sounds.  Something interesting if you happen to have a podcast show. This app was actually built for use on the Tech 411 Show on iTunes (tech411show.com) so you'll find the stock sounds will compliment your show too. And the ability to add new sounds lets you customize the board.  

What the Tool Does Well

The sound effects are great.  There are only 50 sounds to start with, but the app is capable of downloading and uploading new sound so it can be expanded.  Textually it was fun to move the tiles around and create a visual tier with them or put the ones you like better on the first page, etc. The sound effects are very clear and the actual timber/tone is very good.

What it Does Poorly

It seems limited in some ways, since you only start with 50 sounds. There are only so many themes and layouts you can choose from as well, and if you want more sounds you have to add them from another device.  It would be nice to somehow prolong a sound if needed. It can be touchy moving from screen to screen, sometimes it moves to a screen that you don't want to move to, and it seems to only go one way at times instead of back and forth. Since it is a free app, there are a lot of ads to deal with while using the app as well.

What happens when you...

The catalog screen is locked, you cannot move the tiles as you can in the Sound Board screen, but with each tile there is a drop down menu, there is a timer for each sound and it is helpful if you want to start a certain sound at different time points/intervals.  You can range the timing from 10 seconds to 60 seconds before it actually starts.  So you can scatter your sound start times if desired.  I do like the Sound Board feature where you can start and stop a sound by tapping the tile.  The layout screen is good as well, when I first opened the app I didn't like the color scheme, and I was able to change it with the layout section.

Additional Resources

They have a support page at the TM Soft website here http://www.tmsoft.com/forum/index.php  This company also makes the White Noise app which seems to be popular with sounds that are relaxing or ambient for listeners.  Like wind blowing, water falling, sounds that can relax you.  Because that app is more popular the support page has many forums about White Noise, it was hard to find anything on Sound Effects!.