Andronome – professional metronome for musicians

Andronome. Totally. Professional. Metronome. For free. 'Nuff said.

The musicians metronome - simple, professional, accurate.

Andronome is designed to keep time, and to do it well. Simple in appearence and use, it contains the most precise metronome engine available. But no cluttered user interface and no unnecessary bells or whistles.

With Andronome you'll get:

• Sample-accurate ticks.
• Clearly visible screen indication.
• Tempo adjustable between 20 and 240 BPM.
• Start and stop via touch screen, hardware buttons, headset.
• Tap tempo directly on screen.
• Large BPM numbers (visible from a distance, e.g when lying on the stage floor).
• ...and that's about it!

This metronome is made to be the professional choice, giving the working musician exactly what is needed. No more, no less. And completely for free! (No, there's no catch: no hidden fees, no advertising, no time limits.)

If you for some reason think you need more features, please check out the other metronomes available on the Android Market. There's plenty of choice out there. Andronome will be kept simple. And free.

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How to use the Andronome metronome

There are often several ways to get at the most important functions of the Andronome metronome. Most users will prefer to use the touch screen, like this:

• Tap the screen once to start the metronome.
• Long press (touch and hold) the screen to stop.
• Adjust the tempo by swiping the finger over the screen. Fling or swipe up to increase the BPM, down to decrease it. The tempo change is proportional to the velocity of the swipe.
• Tap the tempo on the screen, Andronome will adjust to the tapped tempo.

You may also use the menu to start, stop and set tempo. Or the hardware buttons. And why not try the remote control on your headset?

You may also use the menu to button and press play/stop. Tempo is adjusted via a slider control and the short usage welcome screen can be shown.

If you have a headset with media control the play/pause button will work as expected. If the headset has a volume control, this will work too.

Phones with real hardware buttons are supported like this:
Up/down will change the tempo while the middle/fire/OK button plays and pauses.

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Andronome Engine – making Android tick

Android is a great platform. For the end user there is a huge variety of phone models (yes, you can actually select between more than black and white...), pads, TVs and other cool stuff. For the app developer the Java language and nice API makes for a fun and easy development environment. The business model lets you publish anything you want, good and bad. For free. For better and for worse. And hardware manufacturers as well as kernel hackers have a lot of open code to play with.

However, for us musicians Apples iOS still have a huge advantage: Android does not support realtime applications, especially audio with low latency requirements. And unfortunately this is only partly due to garbage collecting Java, so writing native code is only part of the solution. But the Android OS developers seem aware of the problem, and the Linux kernel can do better than this, so I'm sure the problem will eventually be solved. But we're not there yet.

In the meantime, let's play with what we got!

Introducing: The Andronome Engine -- a simple way to provide audio cues with sub millisecond accuracy and synchronised visual feedback. As I said, the Android OS still has some way to go and the performance will depend partly on the phone hardware, but rest assured that the Andronome Engine offers the best possible tick-per-buck available today.

Currently the Andronome Engine is used in the Rude drum training app and (of course) in the Andronome metronome. But there is more to come, so stay tuned.

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