A Killer Music App for Android?

tricky Android logo hot doggingIf you have spent much time browsing YouTube, you've probably come across the all-iPhone rendition of Atomic Toms "Take me out." Jumping off from there, you can find a slew of other folks making amazing music with just their iPhones.

But have you wondered why you don't see the same sort of awesomeness with android phones? The reason is quite simple. It is because Google hates music awesome music programs do not exist in the android market. Or any of those other markets. Here is where it gets interesting; there is a reason for this absence. Your first thought might be that it's simply a matter of time. iOS has been around longer than android and it'll just take time for developers to port their applications over. On the other hand, maybe developers evaluated the market and decided there wasn't enough interest to warrant the time required for a port. Unfortunately, both of those assumptions are wrong. The truth is that there is a kernel-level issue with the android operating system that results in extremely long delays between touch input and returned sounds (referred to as "latency"). Even worse, this latency is often inconsistent from one touch-sound event to the next.

What all of this means to you and me, the end-users, is that we won't be getting that awesome guitar app on android any time soon.

If you happen to have a hankering for music-making on your android device, at this point you're probably wishing that little skateboarding android up there would just crash and burn. But there is hope. A number of developers have started an issue thread requesting that the problem be resolved. What does that mean? It means there are actually lots developers just waiting to port their awesome guitar, drum, and synthesizer applications over to your favorite mobile platform. What's the bad news though? Google has yet to so much as acknowledge the issue.

It is also worth noting that the horrible sound latency in android also has a negative effect on games like guitar hero and really any game that returns sound after you touch the screen.

How can you help? If you would like to play around with music programs on your android device, or just generally have the opinion that this problem is important, head over to the issue thread, log into your gmail account, and give that thread a star. The idea here is that if enough people point out that it is an problem, the gods of Google might actually pay attention and do something about it.

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