Rankings and Recognition Worldwide

Amps & Cabs™ has graduated from “New and Noteworthy” to “What’s Hot” in both the US and Canada. Since yesterday, Amps & Cabs™ has also moved spots on the front page of the UK App Store from “New and Noteworthy” to the “Staff Favourites” section. Amps & Cabs™ is also currently ranked number 26 after climbing the charts to the 14 spot on the Top Paid Music Apps in the US. It’s hard to keep up with all the iTunes Stores worldwide, so if you see something interesting, report a sighting!

v0.2 RE-AMPED Update

We are getting great responses to the v0.2 RE-AMPED update we recently submitted. The majority of you that own Amps & Cabs™ have already updated from v0.1 to v0.2 RE-AMPED and the feedback has been fantastic. Let’s keep the conversation going. Tell us what you think via our Feedback page.

Rate, Re-Rate, and tell Your Mates!

If you love Amps & Cabs™, and haven’t given it a 5 star rating yet, please do so by visiting the iTunes App Store. Help us get the word out!

If you are a fan of Amps & Cabs™, make sure to let others know by using the “Tell a Friend” function built into the App Store. Simply search Amps & Cabs™, select the app, scroll down to the ratings section and touch the “Tell a Friend” button.

Thanks to the watchful eye of one of our fans, we were notified that Amps & Cabs is a Staff Favourite now on the UK App Store. Thank you, dear anonymous UK employee of Apple that showed us some love. We love you too!

Because so many of you have downloaded and helped to spread the word, Amps & Cabs™ moved into the number 20 slot on the Top Paid Music Apps list overnight. We are really happy to see our app doing so well and know that we could not have done that without all of you. Thanks for purchasing it and keep sharing Amps & Cabs™ so maybe we can crack the top 10. Here are three big ways to help us get there.

1. Rate and Review

The best way you can help us out is by writing a favorable review of Amps & Cabs™ and giving the app 5 stars. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just a sentence or two expressing your undying love for Amps & Cabs™. Click here to view Amps & Cabs™ on the App Store.

2. Talk on Twitter

You can find us on Twitter as @GroundUpAudio. Then you can send out a tweet that says something like this: “I bought the Amps & Cabs app by @GroundUpAudio and love it! http://itunes.com/app/ampsandcabs”

3. Friends on Facebook

Facebook just replaced the Become a Fan feature with a Like button. Now is a good time to try it out and “like” us! You can find us on Facebook by clicking here. Be sure to tell your musician friends about us too.

Again, we want to thank you for putting our app Amps & Cabs™ up in the spotlight. We have a version 0.2 update submitted, so be on the lookout for that as well.

Today was an exciting time for us. We saw our app Amps & Cabs™ appear in the “New and Noteworthy” section of the iTunes App Store in both the US and Canada. Our sales jumped way up and website traffic increased tremendously. We were happy to see our young little app doing so well. Everything was bright and happy!

While word continued to spread about Amps & Cabs™, we turned our noses to the grind stone and toiled away on the final details of an Amps & Cabs™ v0.2 update. We uploaded the new meta data, touched up images, changed version details, and set the release date for the update a few days into the future. Then we went out for some wings.

At dinner we were notified that Amps & Cabs™ could no longer be found on the App Store. Searches returned empty and our prominent spot on the iTunes App Store front page seemed to have vanished. Suddenly, our delicious meal didn’t seem so delicious. We hurried back to find out what happened.

It turns out that we screwed up.

We made an honest mistake. Apparently, when we uploaded the update to Amps & Cabs™ and set the release date for some time in the future, it affected not only the updated version, but the version currently available on the App Store. We quickly changed the availability date back to today and are just waiting for Amps & Cabs™ to pop back up on the App Store. Hopefully we’ll see it back online soon.

As for those of you that downloaded Amps & Cabs™ earlier in the day, we hope you are enjoying the app. Tell us your thoughts and send your feature requests to us via our Feedback page. We look forward to hearing from you.

Update

It appears we’re back in the App Store and on the front page. PHEWW! Clicking on the app still doesn’t work, but should be very shortly. (9:35PM EST)

Update

We’re back online. Amps & Cabs™ is available again worldwide. (9:50PM EST)

New and Noteworthy

After putting in a hard day’s work prepping the first update to our app Amps & Cabs™, we noticed a significant increase in our website traffic. Inquiries about our audio interface hardware also spiked. Since 2:00am is an odd time for web traffic to pick up, we went on a little investigation. After a brief look around, we discovered that our guitar amp simulation app Amps & Cabs™ was featured on the “New and Noteworthy” section of the Apple iTunes App Store in the US and Canada. We immediately high fived each other and then started writing this blog post. Thank you to all of you that have downloaded Amps & Cabs™! We couldn’t have got there without you.

Hardware

We want to answer some of the questions we’ve received regarding our audio interface. It is unique because it directly inputs audio into the iPhone®, iPod touch®, and iPad™ and solves some of the problems inherently found with other commercially available devices.

Some of the problems our interface fixes are:

• • Impedance mismatches
• • Tone loss/tone sucking
• • Input overdriving
• • Accidental iPod playback triggering
• • Indirect input methods

By solving these issues we’ve created the opportunity for a guitar signal (or any other instrument with audio output) to be cleanly input into Apple mobile devices and then sent to output options such as headphones, powered speakers, mixing boards, amplifiers, and desktop recording hardware and DAWs.

Availability

Because our audio interface is so unique and solves so many frustrating problems it has taken us a while to make this interface. We have finally ironed out the kinks and are on target to make it available for order next week!

For more information please visit our Hardware page and sign up to be the first to hear about our interface release.

We’ve had a lot of interest in our recently-released iPhone® application Amps & Cabs™, and also in our up-and-coming audio input solution for iPhone®. Of course, since our solution isn’t yet available, everyone who is using Amps & Cabs™ or any other audio app is either using their headset or some other solution to get audio in and out of iPhone®.

We’ve had a lot of requests like, “Will Product X work with App Y?”, or “Does Product Z have the right impedance to use with a guitar?”.  In an effort to bring the best possible experience to users of our applications, we’ve done a fair amount of research to inform ourselves about these topics.

It’s this research that motivated us to develop our own solution–we’ve found that the solutions available at the moment, even some specifically made for instruments, are not actually designed to connect instruments.

I’m going to take a few paragraphs here to share some of Ground Up Audio’s research with you, in the hope that it will help you in your quest for ultimate tone (and of course in the hope that I might interest you in GUA’s new product once it is available).

Impedance

Impedance is a hot topic these days for whatever reason.  For those unfamiliar, impedance is (very) simply put, resistance; and for our specific needs, it is a property of signal inputs and outputs.  There are plenty of articles on the web that describe and define impedance, so I’m going to skip over the basics to the details.

In relation to iPhone® input, devices that have inputs are generally line level.  I have not found one yet that actually specifies the input impedance, though many will say “line level”.  Signal voltage itself does not imply any particular impedance, but “line level” does imply a particular impedance range.

There are many details that are fun to know, but won’t necessarily help you get good tone. For most active devices, impedance mismatches will cause only level (volume) issues, either too soft or overdriving or somewhere in-between.  However for passive devices, like instruments with pickups, an impedance mismatch will also introduce tone problems.

This is because if the impedance of an input that a pickup is connected to is too low, the input will load the pickup, which causes it to suck the tone out of it. This is why guitar amp inputs are very high impedance, typically in the range of a MΩ or so.  This is also why it’s a bad idea to plug a guitar into anything that’s not made to receive a guitar signal, even though it won’t probably wreck anything (except your tone).

All of that is to say, that most input solutions available today aren’t designed with this impedance in mind, and so they will all suck tone out of your guitar or passive instrument.  Due to the way the iPhone® input is designed, some of these solutions will cause popping and crackling issues as well as tone loss and input overdrive (the bad kind).

So, GUA has developed an audio interface for the iPhone® that properly buffers the low-impedance input of the iPhone® into a very high impedance input that won’t suck the tone out of a guitar.  It’s not quite ready yet, but it’s coming soon! Check out our Hardware page for more information or to subscribe to our mailing list.

Below is some information about various signal types and their levels and impedances.

Ground Up Audio is happy to announce that as of today Amps & Cabs™ is available on the iTunes App Store worldwide. Go download Amps & Cabs™ now! Be sure to rate it 5 stars and write a positive review on the App Store too.

Form the many responses we’ve received already, we know that many of you are looking for our hardware solution. It’s coming very soon! We are going to release information shortly. Look for an update in the next day or two. We can’t wait for you to hear how great Amps & Cabs™ sound when you plug into our hardware. Check the Hardware page for the latest details.

Also, if you want to help spread the word follow us on Twitter and retweet us! Thanks and enjoy the sweet sounds of Amps & Cabs™!

Ground Up Audio proudly presents Amps & Cabs™. We’re making the best guitar amplifier and speaker cabinet simulation you’ve ever laid eyes on. This sweet sounding guitar app for the iPhone®, iPod touch®, and iPad™ packs a selection of hot amps and cabs, so you can rock huge sounds anytime you want and everywhere you go. Amps & Cabs™ comes preloaded with three (3) different types of amps and three (3) different sizes of cabinets to make 9 different combinations. Build a guitar stack that fits your style and customize the settings to create the guitar tones you’ve been dreaming about. Future updates will add more amps and cabs to choose from, so you’ll have even more choices. Amps & Cabs™ crams a load of tone into one tiny app so you can finally “Put Some Amps in Your Pants!”

Head over to AmpsAndCabs.com and register to find out when Amps & Cabs™ will be released on the iTunes® App Store®.

UPDATE: The survey is now closed. Thank you for participating!

We just opened the doors on our iPhone Audio Interface Survey.

We want to get a pulse on the music-making community to find out what would make the best audio interface for the iPhone®, iPod touch®, and iPad®. We want to enable musicians to play their instrument through their Apple mobile devices, so we’re building the interface to do just that.

If you want to weigh in on this topic and get in on the ground floor, take the survey now!

We’ve started our spring cleaning a little early this year and spruced things up around here. Tidying up always feels good. Have a look around. More good things are to come!