Audiogasm – Review

Our rating:

By: Audiogasm

Version #: 1.0

Date Released: 2009-01-08

Developer: TMSOFT

Price: 0.00

User Rating:

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I remember my college days when I’d review (read: cram) for a major exam. I’d fire up WinAmp on my old desktop, press play on an album by an awesome indie band who call themselves Mae (an acronym for Multisensory Aesthetic Experience), open the program’s visualizer window, stare at the amazing abstracts and doze off on top of my Electronic Devices and Circuit Theory textbook-cum-pillow.

I remember the afternoon I volunteered to babysit our neighbor’s perpetually hungry three year old girl. In hopes of keeping her away from the fridge, I showed her Annabelle the sheep on RealPlayer. I thought it would keep her preoccupied long enough for me to hide my stockpile of chocolates and rocky road ice cream. I was wrong. Before I knew it I was under Annabelle’s spell and my chubby charge in the kitchen.

I remember our company’s eighth anniversary celebratory dinner. While everybody else was already busy with their food, I held off going to the buffet table to admire the randomizations being projected on the stage wall from the entertainment committee’s laptop’s Windows Media Player. When I finally decided that I’d took pleasure in more than enough visualizations, I set out to get me some grub and returned rather upset by the absence of macaroni and cheese on my plate.

I remember the Tuesday the latest season of Gossip Girl was set to premiere on local TV. Ten minutes before being reunited with the gorgeous Leighton Meester after a long hiatus, I launched iTunes to help pass the time. I clicked on Death Cab for Cutie, a staple on the show’s soundtrack, opened the visualizer and — you guessed it — totally forgot about my guilty pleasure.

I remember all these things because of Audiogasm, a native visualizer app for the iPhone. Apparently it’s just another one-trick app that makes use of the iPhone’s microphone to receive ambient sounds. But what it displays on screen is far from being "just another." The app processes the sounds, interprets the intensity of each component and "paints" what the mic "hears" on the iPhone’s screen, not unlike how the aforementioned media players come up with the visualizations for the music being played on them.

For the app to work properly, you have to play music near the iPhone (not on the iPhone since the iPod app would stop playing in the background as soon as you open Audiogasm; thank you, Apple) and maybe whistle a tune every now and then. The resulting visualizations range from waves one might find on an oscilloscope to a myriad of multicolored specks and sparks. Their effects on this audio slave range from awe-inspiring to soporific. What I would like to see on a future update though is the ability to choose among a variety of fancily named visualization themes, like Stix, Green Is Not Your Enemy and, yes, Annabelle the Sheep.

Normally, to take a screenshot anywhere on the iPhone, you need to position your left thumb (or any other finger) on the Home button, place your right index finger (or any other finger) on the Sleep/Wake button and press the two buttons at the same time. The shot is then saved automatically in the camera roll. With Audiogasm, the steps are far easier if you want to save a visualization and set it as your wallpaper afterwards. Step 1: Swipe through anywhere on the screen. Step 2: There is no step 2.

Obviously I’m a big fan of visualizations, and those on Audiogasm, even in its limited present form, are no exception. I’ll watch them even if they’ll cost me another high score on an exam, another six bars of dark chocolate, another bowl of my favorite appetizer or another pseudo-date with the beautiful Blair Waldorf.

Quick Take

Value: Low-Medium
Would I Buy Again: Yes
Learning Curve: Zero
Who Is It For: People with iPhones (and external music sources) who enjoy visualizations
What I Like: Great visuals; can easily take a screenshot
What I Don’t: Due to Apple’s restriction, doesn’t support music from iPod app; no theme selection

Final Statement: To this day I still can’t figure out the etymology of the app’s interesting name. The audio part is a given, but the origin of the remaining four letters eludes me. Anyhoo, one thing I know for sure is that although it’s quite limited at the moment, Audiogasm gives me pleasure of the audiovisual kind and it’s an app whose feature the native iPod should have built in.

My Rating: 3.5/5