Review: Metronome(s)

Score:
various%

Author: Various

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A metronome, of course, is a tool to help you keep time when playing an instrument. You set the BPM (Beats Per Minute) and you're away - at its simplest level, with audio and (hopefully, given that you'll be making a lot of noise yourself too!) visual clues. A few extra bells and whistles do help, too as we'll see below.

In each case, click on the application heading to go to the appropriate page in the Ovi Store, noting that not all apps below are available for all phones and that scores are shown here in-line, in the titles, rather than in a single box above.

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METRONOMi - 45%

  

This is bare bones metronomy, all you get is a 'nudge bar' to adjust the BPM and a choice of 3/4 or 4/4 (to determine where you'd like the 'accented' beat). A tap on 'On/Off' and you're away, with a little beep-ding-ding-ding sound to give you time.

The nudge bar is superbly done as a control - it's very sensitive and intuitive. Unfortunately, the application isn't very usable overall because of other issues. There's no visual indication of the beat; even on maximum volume it's really not very loud; the screen dims in the usual Symbian way and you then can't even see the application UI anymore; and other system tasks like checking email interupt the regular beat in any case.

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Metronome Touch - 40%

Interestingly, there's an attempt here to recreate the look and feel of a traditional weight-based metronome, in which you slide the weight up and down to change the characteristics of the sprung mechanism:

    

Changing the BPM is done by using touch to drag the virtual weight up and down, with the lit panel showing the current tempo selected. Unfortunately, this control is as badly done as the nudge control above was well done - in this case, it's complete luck as to whether you get the tempo you were going for and adjusting BPM is a frustrating experience. And even then you're limited to the multiples of 4, 6 and 8 shown, there's no finer control available.

Once underway, there's a nice satisfying metronome sound effect, along with an animation of the metronome arm swinging backwards and forwards - which would be great if the arm was synchronised to the beat, as a visual clue as to the beat. Alas, it's not - the animation is purely eye candy, completely foiling the point of the otherwise interesting UI. Finally, Metronome Touch fails completely by switching off as soon as the phone's keylock cuts in - leaving you high and dry a minute into your first piece. Shame.

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Metronome - 25%

The idea here is to recreate a modern electronic gadget. I just wish it was as reliable...

 

Metronome, the most simply named app here, fails at just about every level. And I mean every level. For starters, it can't keep time. Which is a basic failing in a metronome - the beat varies and rises and falls in tempo - I've tried to create my own apps like this in the past and have hit similar timing hurdles - so I recognise it's not trivial to keep the beat solid on a multitasking smartphone - but other apps here have managed it, so....

In addition, the tempo always starts at a ridiculous 200, there's no visual indication (despite the virtual LEDs) and the app stops sounding when the screen goes off.... Next!

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Professional Metronome - 88%

Now this is more like it.... By far the most expensive app in this roundup, at £4, at least you're getting quality!

 

Ostensibly the fussiest and least 'metronome-like' UI of all the apps in this roundup, Professional Metronome wins out by sheer functionality and performance. For starters, the app can keep itself alive when the device keylock would normally kick in. Then there's the visual clue to the beat, with a bright red flashing background on each beat that's really rather impressive (the screenshot above shows a little fading red as the pulse heads back to black again - the peak of each pulse is a very bright red and easy to follow, even when your orchestra or group is drowning out the metronome sound sample). 

Up to four separate BPMs and time signatures can be batched up, with a number of repeats of each, just in case you want to count irregular sequences. When all four have been processed, the app loops back to the first one, and so on. It's a very flexible system.

  

There's plenty to configure and, wonder of wonders, a way of saving your tempos and beat arrangements to a profile stored on your phone, ready for recalling later (e.g. for a particular song) - you can have as many of these as you like, all with your own names.

You really do get what you pay for in this case - Professional Metronome is well worth the purchase price and is a cut above all the other applications here.

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KopKop Metronome - 72%

Although not in the same class as the previous title, KopKop Metronome is at least fully functional.

  

There's a simple spinner to adjust the BPM, though you're limited to the tempos shown, there's no dialling up '113', '114' or '115', for example. Audio beeps are loud and clear, though there's disappointingly no visual equivalent. Settings include being able to adjust the beat signature and choosing different sound samples, plus there's a bonus feature in the form of a '440Hz' reference tone ('A' on the musical scale) that plays for as long as you need it.

I did detect a few irregularities in the beats, depending on what else was going on in the phone, and the score was lowered a little to reflect this. If you can't afford £4 for Professional Metronome then go for KopKop Metronome at £1.

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Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 1st September 2011

Reviewed by Steve Litchfield at 15:16 UTC, September 1st 2011