Behind the scenes: Hobnox's Audiotool
We catch up with the developers of the groundbreaking web-based audio toolkit
The rate of growth in online tools recently has been matched only by the mind-boggling improvements in the scope and capabilities of these Flash-based powerhouses. The likes of Pixlr are giving desktop image-editing tools a real run for their money in features and convenience, while the ambitious team over at Aviary seem hellbent on creating an online equivalent to Adobe's entire Creative Suite.
So far though, the audio community seem to have rather drawn the short straw, with a few half-baked loop-based attempts at interactive mixing failing to match the creative freedom of offline "virtual kit" sandboxes like FL Studio or Reason. Until Hobnox's Audiotool that is, which barrelled out of the doors of the Cologne-based creative community in the latter half of 2008, sending all previous attempts at online audio production scurrying back to their Actionscript in shame...
If you've not yet stumbled across Audiotool and emerged blinking into the daylight several hours later, you're missing out on one of the most productive ways of wasting time on the web. Imagine a limitless floor, covered with an endlessly configurable array of distinctly familiar groove-boxes, amplifiers and FX pedals, linked together by a nest of self-arranging cables. What's more, everything is tweakable, and the whole thing can be recorded and shared...
We caught up with the Hobnox guys for a quick hobnob..
LR: Hobnox may not be familiar to everyone just yet. Care to introduce yourselves?
HN: Hobnox is an online entertainment and publishing platform, a network for creatives and their fans. On hobnox.com artists can present their content to the community, work on projects, collaborate and connect with like-minded artists. Between November 2007 and February 2008, Hobnox called on artists to submit their projects to the "Hobnox Evolution”, an artist-development program that encouraged over 1,500 projects to be submitted for review. These artists became the first generation of the Hobnox-community. Since then the development process of Hobnox embarked onto the next level: a community, stage, library and the first web-based production tools for artists are now in a public beta-phase.
LR: The Audiotool is quite a different offering to the rest of the site. How did it first come into being?
HN: The Audiotool started as a small project but quickly became bigger as we saw the potential of it. It is about exploring music and having fun experimenting. The Hobnox community is about collaboration and connection - For example, the recording feature allows you to directly upload your track to your profile page in the community. This is the first step, and there is more to follow.
LR: The basic set-up is obviously heavily based on some classic units. What made you decide on these rather than other "vintage" synths?
HN: I guess its just pure love for the TR909, TR808 and TB303, but besides from that we had to start somewhere! We got very positive feedback from Roland (Germany). This made us happy as the great Roland machines are our personal favorites, we grew up making music with them...
LR: The project is an impressive feat of programming - how on earth did you do it?
HN: Its a mixture of both the use of samples and synthesized audio. Some drum sounds are generated with wave tables the rest is all synthesized. Flash 10 introduced a low-level sound API to the Flash Player enabling some powerful digital sound processing features. This basically means, we have almost the same possibilities as standard audio software. However Flash isn't as fast as normal software environments. But we do our best to make everything as fast as possible. Since we all have years of experience in Actionscript programming, we know in most events how to circumvent these problems.
LR: You’ve just added the new Tenori-on-like ToneMatrix... Are there plans for more modules in the coming months?
HN: There are lots of things planned, thats for sure. Aside from new effect machines a lot of work is going into a sequencer to automate every device parameter and pattern changes. You can also look forward to a new sample-based drum computer and a synthesizer coming later this year. Above we hope to introduce modulators which are similar to automation but rather like LFOs. They can manage very complex device parameter changes in a vivid manner.
You can check out Audiotool for yourself at www.hobnox.com/audiotool/, or join the Hobnox community and take advantage of the other Noxtools at www.hobnox.com.
