Having been an early adopter to the iPad, and recently selling the first gen and upgrading to the second gen version on launch day, one question I’m often asked is regarding my preferred apps and workflow.  I thought it might be cool to give an overview of what I would consider my must-have apps and such.  I recently read an article that gave solid insight into the experience of living with an iPad.  Check that out here.

My iPad is my go with me everywhere computer.  I start out my day reading the newspaper, twitter, facebook, and RSS through it every morning before I get out of bed.  During the day I live and die by the combination of Pocket Informant, QuickOffice, and IA Writer.  It was especially interesting to go without it for a few days after 7 months of ownership during the overlap between selling the first gen and buying the second gen.  I didn’t realize how much I’ve grown to rely on it until it was gone.

For my first gen, I used the Apple iPad case.  This time around I considered one of the Apple Smart Covers but like many others, the lack of overall protection makes me nervous.  Because of how much I carry my iPad, I recently decided to order a simple Portenzo moleskine-style case.  I considered several of the other companies making similar product but decided the Portenzo had the most consistent reviews.  It is supposed to arrive in a few days and I can’t wait!

Here is the list of my preferred apps…

* QuickOffice HD – gives a native app front end for all of your docs in the cloud.  Google Docs, Dropbox, Box.net, etc.  Download a doc, edit it, and send it back to the cloud.  Works great.  Only weakness is you can’t do realtime collaboration with others since its a sync thing.  If someone changes the doc while you’re editing it, when you send it back to the cloud you’ll overwrite them.  For all of my personal docs, this isn’t an issue.

* Pocket Informant HD – calendar and tasks app.  Sync’s google cal for schedule, uses ToodleDo for tasks since Google’s API doesn’t allow syncing with third party apps for tasks.  I LOVE this app!

* IA Writer – best simple writer app I’ve used.  Syncs with Dropbox, simple text.  I use it when I just want to write content without being distracted by formatting or other stuff.  Keeps track of word count and time required to read the post.  Love it!

* GoodReader – file storage/reader app.  Basically most any document but media.  Turn on WiFi server and it will mount your iPad as a drive on your computer so you can drag and drop files back and forth with GoodReader.  I keep digital editions of magazines, documentation, catalogs, will do an offline sync of Dropbox folders so you always have the most current version of files with you when not on WiFi.  Another must have.

* Penultimate with the Targus Stylus.  Best writing app I’ve ever seen.  I held off on a stylus until very recently, never really understanding what was the big deal about them.  Then I tried writing with one using Penultimate.  It’s the first real notebook replacement, at least for me.  I take notes in meetings, sketch, and brainstorm just like I am carrying 5 or 6 different notebooks.  MUST HAVE!

* Evernote – self explanatory.  The latest update really improved the functionality of the app.  Geotagged notes, record meeting audio, etc.

* LifeForms – PDF form filler.  No need to print PDFs to sign and then send back to someone, things like that.

* AppShopper is great for keeping track of new apps, finding apps on sale or when they go from paid to free.  I’m sure I’ve saved quite a bit just by checking in with this app every week.

* Social Media: Friendly (native Facebook app), Twitter, IM+ (multi-platform IM client)

* News: Flipboard, USA Today, News360, Zite, CNN, Today, Reuters News Pro, Fluent News, ESPN ScoreCenterXL, The Weather Channel Max+

* Tech News: SkyGrid, Flud News, Mashable, Macworld

* RSS:  Reeder.  I’ve tried some of the others but Reeder is still my favorite.

* Photography:  Adobe Ideas, LIFE, Photoshop Express, Filterstorm, Wallpapers HD, Photo Delight

* Music:  Garageband, Pandora, Remote, Set List (really helpful for production notes – acts like a virtual stack of cards you can cycle through while doing a show), DJay (awesome for walk-in music or production cues)

* Video:  iMovie (it’s pretty sweet), ABC Player, PBS, Discovery, TV Guide, Netflix, Redbox, Flixster, TED, VLC Player (multi-format video player – I think its been pulled from the App store but I have it you can have), Fandango

* Travel:  Google Earth (awesome on iPad), Kayak HD for trip playing, Urbanspoon and Yelp

* Shopping:  Ebay, Amazon Windowshop (best Amazon shopping experience), Target, Epicurious & BigOven for recipes and such

What are your favorites?  Anything I’ve missed?

I wrote a couple weeks ago about the importance of reviewing your mixes and all the things you can learn from this discipline. Up until recently, my workflow to accomplish this involved physical media – either burning a CD at FOH or grabbing a copy of the service DVD after the fact. My favorite way to review is to listen in the car after a service since I have a 30 minute drive each way, hence the CDs. The problem with this workflow is obvious – literally at least 50 CDs from old services cluttering up my car, keeping the blank CD stockpile ready to go, etc. I’ve messed around off and on with recording to a computer and somehow dumping to my iPod/iPhone but never settled on a workflow that was simple and fast enough to surpass the simplicity of CDs. Until now.

Enter Wiretap Studio. I bought the MacHeist bundle for the first time this year and this little gem is one of the apps that came in the package. What this program does is allow you to record audio from just about anywhere on your Mac – skype, streaming audio, line input, etc. It has a really handy library where it keeps track of everything you record and besides basic file editing, once media is in the library, you have lots of options of what to do with it…everything from dumping the raw file to the desktop, straight export to an idisk or iPod, bluetooth transfers. Essentially you name it.

Now, I connect into the line in on my laptop from a console output with the same feed that’s being sent to video world. Record in Wiretap and it spits it out into the Wiretap library. I created storage folders in the library for rehearsals, services, favorite elements, and misc. I like this because it keeps all of these board tapes separate from my iTunes library on the same machine unless a particular clip is strong enough to warrant importing into iTunes and promoting to my regular music library.

But Wiretap is only half the equation. I still need to get the files to my iPhone so I can listen on the drive. In the past, this has been the most complicated part of the equation because my iPhone media library wasn’t paired with the library. I’d messed around with converting my recordings into podcasts which could be sync’d to the phone independent of the rest of my media, but this was clunky and took too long. Enter FileMagnet. This cool little app lets you transfer files via wifi back and forth to an iPhone and play media natively inside the app on the phone without having to add to the phone’s iTunes library. Now I have two media “libraries” on my phone – iTunes and the files transfered with FileMagnet.

The result is a really solid workflow that makes reviewing my mixes SO much easier and neater. Record in Wiretap – export to desktop – drag into FileMagnet – wifi sync with phone.

I don’t know if this would be helpful for anyone else but I think its pretty cool.

Here’s a few tips and tricks I read about Transient Designer a long while back.  I’m not sure where I found these – copied them into my Evernote without noting the location!

Boosting its attack controls on drum tracks can give kick, snare and toms the extra punch often needed to make them come alive. When you’re processing tom tracks, lowering the TD4′s sustain controls is a much more transparent (and speedier) remedy for reining in timpani-like sustain than smothering batter heads with duct tape. And for reducing excessive cymbal bleed into tom mics, just turn the TD4′s sustain controls counterclockwise for inputted toms and you’re done.

I wouldn’t dream of mixing a drum kit in my room without Transient Designer.  However, Transient Designer sounds great on more than just drums. Crank that sustain knob on soaring guitar solos to make David Gilmour blush. Or boost the attack on dampened ostinato parts played low on a six-stringer to make that rock ‘n’ roll vamp jump. These are just a few of the well-known — but powerful — applications that the TD excel at.

Tight, discrete-sounding drum tracks are cool, but trash is a bash. When your drums’ overhead mics sound like they were placed in a shoe closet and you’d prefer the sound of an empty warehouse, Transient Designer can provide instantaneous moving services. Route the stereo room mics through two of the TD’s linked channels (channels 1 and 2, or 3 and 4) and crank the unit’s attack controls to put a point on the traps. Then, slowly raise the sustain controls on both channels to bring up the room tone for an “all-buttons-in,” 1176-type sound — without pumping cymbals. Fine-tune the sustain control settings so that the room mics’ envelope more or less ends on the desired upbeat or downbeat for a driving rhythmic effect.

Are you bored with using the same tired reverb patches on your productions? Patch your reverb’s left- and right-channel outputs through linked Transient Designer channels to add a little pizzazz. Boost both attack controls on TD to the max and lower the sustain controls to their minimum settings. You’ll notice that the reverb’s intensity at its onset will subtly increase while the apparent decay time decreases.

Take the exact opposite approach to process a reverb patch so that it exhibits a pyramidal slope. Turn Transient Designer’s attack controls on two linked channels fully counterclockwise and crank the sustain controls to the max. With these settings, the onset of the reverb patched through Transient Designer will be de-emphasized, but the effect will bloom and then tail off over time (as long as the reverb program’s decay time is set to a sufficient length so that it continues evolving during the unit’s sustain phase).

Transient Designer can also be used to superimpose the dynamics of one track onto those of unrelated tracks. For example, patch two mults of a kick drum track into channels 1 and 3 of TD and send the outputs of those two channels “out to get pizza” (i.e., somewhere they won’t be heard). Patch a stereo keyboard track into TD’s channels 2 and 4 and activate both of the unit’s Link switches. Next, boost channels 1 and 3 attack controls to emphasize the kick drum’s slammin’ nature. TD will dynamically adjust the attack of its processed keyboard tracks to track the dynamics of the kick drum. Try it — you’ll get the point!

Its a great day to be a Venue engineer! Somehow I missed its initial release a few weeks ago, but yesterday I loaded the new SPL Transient Designer TDM plug-in and enjoyed sweet audio bliss!

Why so excited? Danny Cox, Kensington’s music director and accomplished studio drummer, first introduced me to a 4-channel hardware version of the Transient Designer a few years ago and I had one in our previous PM1D rig for maybe 6 months. In that time, I quickly found it to be one of those magic tools that just makes things sound better.

Its very simple to use – only attack and sustain controls – and the combination allows the engineer to completely reshape the attack and sustain characteristics of a sound. On snare, adding some sustain adds a natural verb of sort to an otherwise too tight sound. On toms, reducing the sustain a few clicks gives a similar effect to taping up a drum that’s a bit too resonant. On kick, dynamically adjust the click of the tone vs the sustain. On piano, add or reduce the initial attack of the note.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I’m a big proponent of getting the mix right at the source. While Transient Designer made its name in the industry to fix in the mix otherwise poorly recorded tracks, I found it provided a great tool to adjust for the variety of styles of drummers that play on our stage and make otherwise great tones even better. The whole key to using it effectively is moderation.

Now on any given week I will have at least 6 or 7 instances of the plug-in set up in my rack on kick in and out, snare 1 and 2, rack & floor toms, & piano.

Dave Stagl said today that its a bit early, but it seems likely that Transient Designer TDM is destined to become another must-have plug-in for Venue. I must agree! Much in the same vane as Cranesong Phoenix, Rane Serato Dynamics, & the Pultec/Fairchild combo on guitars, Transient Designer will be a staple of my live setup going forward.

SPL has a 14-day demo available on their site. But be warned: don’t try it unless you’re prepared to purchase!

Exciting news!  Quietly over the past week, version 2.0 of QLab was released by Figure53.  This new version has some pretty impressive features and my preliminary testing has gone quite well.

Here’s a rundown of what I consider notable new features…

• Updated GUI with a single integrated layout
• Audio waveform display of cues so you can visually trim or loop audio files inside the app
• Vamping is really cool!  Define a looping section in an audio track and then pop out of it with a Devamp Cue so the next time around the loop the track will just keep playing to the end or into another track.
• Draw your own fade curves
• Auto follow in addition to auto continue!  QLab is now a solid alternative to iTunes for preshow playlists.
• Trigger cue lists from MIDI or Linear Timecode
• Full app scripting with AppleScript

QLab has become a staple in my audio toolbox for all kinds of SFX or prerecorded music playback.  Version 2.0 ups the ante in some major ways.  Big kudos to the developers for an update that makes an already solid app that much better!