Audio: TouchDAW - Wireless Sequencer Control

     TouchDAW is an affordable midi control app for Android OS devices. It's developer, humatic, charges a mere £3.03 for the app from the Android Market. While the hardware you run it on is obviously more expensive, if you already have an Android OS phone or tablet then the additional outlay for a full hardware control surface is likely to exceed this £3 investment. What you get for the money is a full pre-configured mixer, 9 octave keyboard, transport controls specific to your choice of DAW and a host of other assignable midi controls. Which all in all makes for a bit of a bargain really, as you'd probably end up spending in excess of £200 on a device with as much functionality.

MIDI Control


     Midi control, for most DAWs, has been pretty standard for most DAW and sequencer packages for some time now, whether it be a simple hardware keyboard triggering notes on your soft synth or a full blown mixing console controlling every aspect of your ProTools/Logic/Cubase/Ableton Live mix. The hardware has been evolving, from the simple midi keyboard, over the last decade, and we now see very complex hardware controllers designed to control every aspect of your software, in any scenario. You have hardware like the Akai APC40 designed from the ground up to enhance control of Ableton Live in any live scenario, or you have studio enhancing control surfaces for your "in the box projects" like the SSL Nucleus or Euphonix MC series controllers. The most complex are of course very expensive too, with the SSL Nucleus weighing in at well over £3,000 (although I'm sure it's very very nice!). With that in mind a lot of hobbyists and enthusiasts who want to get into controlling their software with something other than a keyboard and mouse look towards the lower end of the price range.


TouchDAW


     The app covers a lot of ground, with a lot of functions pre programmed for each DAW. Start with the main TouchDAW screen, a home screen of sorts (right), which has most of your main controls on a single condensed view, with switchable panels for quick access and readouts. The transport controls on this page are also switchable to function buttons which change the function of controls on the page to control mix, send and pan seperately.
     Then there's the scrollable pre-configured mixer (top image), with solo, mute, and pan functions for each track; and play and pause buttons. Four tracks plus the master are visible at any one time. It's multi touch capable too, so if your hardware is well specced then you should be able to move all the faders simultaneously using different fingers, which is good for writing automation in one pass.
   




     There's also a page of dedicated transport controls (left). With all of the usual controls you'd expect on a hardware controller, and some you just don't get on the cheaper ones. One of those is the scroll wheel for scrubbing back and forth along your timeline, I have a Novation ReMOTE ZeRO SL, which is missing this function, and that cost me a lot more than three pounds! Also included are some of the odd controls that aren't present in all DAWs. In the Ableton Live patch you have that button which re-enables arrangement view audio and automation. A nice feature to have if you use a lot of Ableton Live, which I do.

     Also included, for controlling your instruments and effects, pictured below, are a nine octave keyboard, with pitch and volume sliders. Which functions just as you'd expect, but also retains the multi touch functionality, allowing you to play full chords should you want to. Then there's a configurable set of trigger pads, XY pads, or a Kaossilator style control layout called Turmoil. The second of the two XY pads is configurable, on compatible devices, to be controlled using the various sensor of your device like the accelerometer, magnetic field, orientation, or even the light and temperature sensors. I'm guessing a few of those would be a pretty cool way of experimenting with compression and modulation effects.

Problems?

     Well, midi is quite complicated, so setting up the device to operate on your system might prove quite a challenge. It took me at least 2 hours of re-reading the online setup guide (which seems to be written in a strange style, as if it has been translated directly from the native German of the developers) and downloading stuff to get it to work, but now it does it was so very worth it. The sheer functionality of the app is worth the time.
     Compatibility can also be a thorny issue. The app was clearly designed and developed for Andriod 2.1+ devices with phone sized screens, with operation on tablets under Android 3.0+ being a little more flakey. Tablet improvements are, according to the Market page coming in the next update. The other issue with compatibility can be the exact hardware your phone has and how it is accessed by Android. With the vast number of phones and tablets now coming out, you can bet that one or two things will be incompatible. My tablet seems to have some issues with some of the additional midi devices like the keyboard and XY pads, which setup just fine on my phone.
 

Overall Impression

     So over the course of the last day or so I've been both wowed and infuriated by the software. TouchDAW has all of the functionality of the best and most ingenious dedicated hardware controllers. It is clearly made by clever people. But the overall impression you get is of a work in progress, especially on the tablets, it just doesn't feel completely finished. Saying that, this is also the impression I have of Androids tablet OS (currently 3.2). Missing features and broken functionality compared to it's phone based brethren.
     If you have a decent Android phone or tablet and want a cheap alternative to a hardware controller, that you can use wirelessly and with fairly minimal latency, then it's an absolute must buy. The complexity of setting up the midi is just a short learning curve that anyone should be able to get over in an hour or so, and it's worth the hassle.

     Get this app here: https://market.android.com/details?id=de.humatic.tdaw
     The manual and more information are here: http://www.humatic.de/htools/touchdaw/


UPDATE: Version 1.3 has now been released, which includes full support for Android Tablets running Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich. This fixes all of the problems I mentioned with the app running on a tablet and gives tablets a larger and more complete interface, with a properly scaled keyboard, with 2 octaves on screen at any point, and an 8 channel scrollable mixer with full transport controls next to it. This update is exactly what I was waiting for and makes my Sony Tablet the only device I need for controlling any DAW