Just a couple days after launch, the AmpKit apps and AmpKit LiNK are already generating tremendous excitement among guitar players and reviewers around the world. Word-of-mouth communication and published reviews have already helped propel AmpKit and AmpKit+ to be among the most downloaded and Top Grossing Music apps in the App Store, and orders for AmpKit LiNK are flowing into Peavey authorized dealers worldwide.

Leading music and technology sites have published strong reviews of AmpKit and AmpKit+. Ars Technica, a leader in “original news and reviews, analysis of technology trends, and expert advice,” posted an in-depth comparative analysis (“App Store showdown“) of AmpKit and another app. Ars Technica concluded that AmpKit is “the winner in our book” stating that “Agile put in some serious time and effort to make an awesome product” while the competitor “more or less slapped its offering together with existing technology.”  The analysis and review by Jeff Smykil ended with the statement, “Agile Partner’s better hardware, beautiful graphics, abundance of effects, and the ability to use more than three effects simultaneously makes that application a winner in our book.”

Brett Terpstra at the influential TUAW exclaimed, “It sounds awesome! … I’ve been having a blast.”  Other writers have also commented on AmpKit’s amazing sounds. For example, Jay Donovan at CrunchGear wrote, “AmpKit’s guitar tones are great! From crushing distortion to kooky tremolo, there are many tones to choose from.”

AmpKit’s overall user experience has also received high marks from reviewers. Damian Erskine at Bass Musician Magazine commented, “All in all, I loved this thing.  It’s VERY intuitive to use, sounds great and just simply works like you’d hope it would,” and Travis Ehrlich at GearDiary.com wrote, “Agile Partners applications are always polished quality apps … AmpKit might just raise the bar even higher.”

A user review that particularly caught our attention was posted by a customer in the Germany App Store. Customer “Lennys Apple” wrote a detailed, five-star review in German and appended a full translation of the review in English! In English (and I believe in German), Lenny Apple expresses his delight that AmpKit enables users to record their jam sessions and email them to friends. We’re incredibly grateful for this level of interest and support from customers like Lennys Apple around the world!

Over on Twitter, there have been countless tweets from customers enjoying the AmpKit apps, including: “AmpKit looks amazing” (@buymeasoda); “Oh. My. Freaking. Gosh” (@eatpixels); and “Dude. Crazy awesome” (@fraserspeirs). And on the AmpKit Facebook page, a fan wrote, “Just so slick-looking guys! Should I have expected anything less from the creators of the amazing GuitarToolkit?!”

AmpKit LiNK, the high fidelity electric guitar connector and perfect companion to AmpKit, has also received outstanding reviews.  A particularly sophisticated and detailed review was written by YK at tehloft.com in Singapore. Noting that AmpKit LiNK is a powered device, YK articulately describes the achilles heel (i.e., heightened cross-talk between input and output signals) of non-powered guitar interfaces: “… once you use an effects simulator and crank up the gain on this small crosstalk signal, it gets blown into epic proportions and you will get an uncontrollable amount of (deafening) feedback.”  YK concludes, “This makes the AmpKit LiNK a technically superior device” and it’s why we’re proud that our customers can fully enjoy AmpKit’s high gain amps like the Peavey 6505+, Taos Rectifier, American Rebel and others.

We want to thank all the writers who have reviewed AmpKit and AmpKit LiNK in the first two days of its launch, and a very special thanks to our customers around the world for providing us with their comments and feedback.  Please keep it coming — we’re dedicated to continuously improving all of our products and keeping our customers happy!

We’re incredibly excited at Agile Partners to join forces with Peavey Electronics, one of the world’s largest music and audio products companies, to launch AmpKit and AmpKit+.  The apps are the ultimate iPhone amp and effects studios with extensive recording and re-amping capabilities. Together with AmpKit LiNK, a high fidelity electric guitar interface, AmpKit and AmpKit+ provide guitar and bass players a powerful and convenient way to jam with high quality tones anytime and anywhere. I just read one of our first customer reviews in the App Store which says, “Astonishing. Just the best sounding and most capable rig emulator for the iPhone. Quality is exceptional.”

The AmpKit Apps are available on the iTunes App Store in two versions:

AmpKit is a free app that includes the Peavey ValveKing amp with clean and very-high-gain lead channels, two ValveKing cabinets (4×12 and 1×12), two pedals (Noise Gate, Elevenizer), two mics (Workhorse 57 dynamic mic, Germann 87 condenser mic), and a built-in Noise & Feedback Filter.

AmpKit+ is a paid app that includes three additional amps, four more cabinets and eight additional pedals, at less than half their individual prices. The additional amps include the Peavey 3120 amp with clean, rhythm, and ultra-high-gain lead channels and matching 4×12 cabinet, the Colonel Vintage amp paired with matching 4×10 and 1×12 cabinets, and the Vintage Brit amp with matching 2×12 cabinet.  The additional pedals include 10-band EQ, distortion, fuzz, compressor, chorus, phaser, flanger, and reverb effects.

With both apps, AmpKit’s convenient Gear Store enables simple In-App Purchasing of additional amps, pedals, and mics, up to a total of 12 amps with 20 distinct amp channels, 13 cabinets, 16 pedals, and 8 microphones.  One of the things that really distinguishes the AmpKit apps is that the amp, cabinet, and pedal simulations are modeled after real-world equipment and actual circuitry. Reviewers report that tone quality is the best available on the iOS platform.

In fact, we’re very pleased to have received incredible feedback from top reviewers. For example, Paul Riario, Gear Editor, Guitar World Magazine said, “AmpKit is the most extraordinary virtual studio of guitar sounds for your iPhone.  That alone may be enough for most guitarists, but combine it with the ability to record and save your sessions or just jam along with the bundled backing tracks and AmpKit is the ultimate guitar performance app.”

As Paul mentioned, AmpKit includes extensive recording capabilities, and creates both “dry” (guitar signal before effects are applied) and “wet” (guitar signal with effects applied) recordings. This enables another key feature that differentiates AmpKit: re-amping, where you can take a recording and re-record it using a completely different amp and pedal setup. Once you’ve made a recording, you can upload it to your computer, email it to a friend, or post it directly to SoundCloud.

Amps + Pedals + Cabs + Mics + More!

Starting with the Peavey ValveKing amp that comes free with AmpKit, you’ll find AmpKit offers amps that sound incredible and look gorgeous! Each amp in AmpKit is modeled after the actual circuitry of real amps from leading manufacturers. The controls even match up with the most important knobs and switches on the real amps. In addition, many amps in AmpKit include multiple channels (e.g., the Peavey ValveKing includes both clean and very-high-gain lead channels, which is almost like getting two amps instead of one). With 12 amps and 20 amp channels, there’s something for everyone with more amps coming!

AmpKit’s pedal selection is nothing short of spectacular, with a total of 16 available pedals. More importantly, because of AmpKit’s amazing performance that’s been highly optimized for the iOS platform, you can run as many as a dozen or more effects at a time! The effects available include multiple distortion and fuzz pedals, reverb, delay, 10-band EQ, octave, chorus, flanger, phaser, vibrato, noise gate, and compressor.

Speaker cabinets are critical to getting the exact tones you want and AmpKit offers some pretty incredible cabs. AmpKit includes two awesome cabinets matched with the Peavey ValveKing amp: the ValveKing 4×12 and ValveKing 1×12.  AmpKit+ matches the Peavey 6505+ 4×12 cab with the Peavey 3120 amp, 4×10 and 1×12 cabinets with the Colonel Vintage amp, and a 2×12 cab with the Vintage Brit.  In the in-app Gear Store, you’ll find 13 cabinets matched with AmpKit’s amazing amps, from workhorse cabs with solid mid tones to powerful cabs with colorful crunches.

Audio pros know that microphone selection is another critical part of producing just the right amp tone. Again, AmpKit gives you total control, not only of microphone selection, but also microphone positioning. The free AmpKit app includes two different mics and six additional mics are available in the Gear Store — from rugged dynamic mics that can handle whatever volume you dish out to amazing condenser mics with the frequency and transient response you need. All with ultra-low latency!

In addition to amazing simulations of amps, cabinets, pedals and mics, AmpKit also includes all the tools guitar players need for a complete audio studio.

Recording & Re-amping: AmpKit not only allows you to record as you play, but it also creates both “dry” (guitar signal before effects are applied) and “wet” (guitar signal with effects applied) recordings.  This enables AmpKit’s re-amping feature, where you can take a recording and re-record it using a different amp and pedal setup. Once you’ve made a recording, you can download it to your computer, email it to a friend or share the recording using SoundCloud.

Backing Tracks: With AmpKit, you can upload your favorite songs and play along, or record your own backing tracks. It’s an amazing way to learn and a lot of fun!

Tuner & Metronome: AmpKit also includes the same high-precision tuner and metronome technology used in GuitarToolkit, and both the tuner and metronome are accessible right from the setup screen.

We’re really proud to partner with Peavey Electronics to add the AmpKit apps and AmpKit LiNK to Agile Partners growing family of guitar-related products! We hope our existing and new customers enjoy the AmpKit mobile guitar recording studios as much as they have enjoyed GuitarToolkit and TabToolkit. Visit the AmpKit website to send us any questions and sign up for the latest news!

So here’s the story of how to connect your electric guitar or bass to an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad via the headset interface.

We’ve been considering this issue since as far back as 2008: GuitarToolkit customers have long been asking for a way to tune their electric guitars and basses without needing to power up an amp. We looked into what it would take and started building prototypes in 2009. At around the same time, the lightbulb went off: “Wow, if we could connect an electric guitar as input to an iPhone, and still have headphone audio coming out, we could do some really interesting things …” and this eventually led to our forthcoming AmpKit app.

Today, after a full 10 generations of prototypes, we’re thrilled to be collaborating with Peavey Electronics on the commercial realization of our explorations: AmpKit LiNK, a guitar and bass interface that, paired with AmpKit, bring full-scale amp and effects simulation to iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users. (AmpKit LiNK is available for preorder here.)

OK, so let’s look at the challenges of interfacing a guitar through the iPhone’s headset connection. One *could* simply rig up an adapter cable that would connect a guitar signal to the iPhone headset input, and a headphone jack to the iPhone headphone output; our first prototypes did just this, and there’s even a commercial product made this way. But you would encounter a number of problems.

1- The iPhone will (possibly intermittently) fail to detect that an audio device has been plugged in to the headset jack. The iPhone is looking for the electrical signature of its earbud headset, which includes an electret microphone. A guitar signal directly connected to the mic input is very different electrically; in our experience, a directly-connected guitar signal will “kind of work sometimes,” which can be a highly frustrating experience.

2- The incoming guitar signal will suffer severe attenuation of its high frequencies, resulting in an awful, muddy sound. This is again due to the different electrical characteristics of the guitar signal versus the electret microphone the iPhone expects.

3- You’ll get really nasty feedback if you try to use headphones with a high-gain guitar amp simulation. The issue is that, in the cable between the iPhone and the interface, the faint, low-current guitar signal runs right alongside the comparatively high-current headphone signal, using a common ground. The result is that the outgoing headphone signal bleeds onto the incoming microphone signal, a phenomenon known as crosstalk. Now, if you happen to be simulating an amplifier on your iPhone, especially a high-gain amp like a Peavey ValveKing® or 6505® Plus, this crosstalk turns into the ugly screech of feedback.

Over the course of our 10 prototypes, we grappled with each of these problems in turn. Here’s how we solved them in the AmpKit LiNK interface:

#1: The failure-to-detect problem requires a bit of circuitry such that the iPhone sees the electrical characteristics it expects with the earbud headset’s electret mic. Result: immediate and consistent detection of the connected interface by the iPhone OS.

#2: The muddy sound issue involves a more significant set of circuitry, which transforms the guitar signal such that it has the signal characteristics of an electret mic to the iPhone, while at the same time preserving the full frequency spectrum of the guitar signal. The result: a very nice, rich guitar signal which sounds great when run through an amp simulator.

#3: The toughest nut to crack was the feedback issue. We found that using a well-shielded cable between the interface and the iPhone was not by itself enough. Instead, we had to tackle the heart of the problem: the high current levels needed to drive headphones. We incorporated a tiny but powerful headphone amplifier inside the AmpKit LiNK interface itself, which enabled a radical reduction in the current flowing between the iPhone and the LiNK. Between great cable shielding and the current-reducing benefits of moving the headphone amp inside the interface, feedback on high-gain amps is virtually eliminated. You can still cause feedback if you crank a super high-gain amp up to max volume, and do the same with your iPhone hardware volume control. But this is actually fairly realistic: a real amp would have feedback under similar conditions.

AmpKit LiNK is powered by two AAA batteries. Buyers of guitar interfaces should bear in mind that, if the headset guitar interface you’re considering isn’t powered (with batteries or an external power supply), you’re almost certain to have feedback problems when simulating high-gain amplification over headphones.

Also note — anyone who owns an iPad should consider cable length. AmpKit LiNK’s cable is long enough to connect to a docked iPad with the LiNK laying flat on the table. A shorter cable would leave the interface dangling off the side of the iPad, which is likely to result in an iPad crash of the physical variety.

Stay tuned to this blog as well as @AmpKit on Twitter for news on AmpKit and AmpKit LiNK. You can also send us your questions about AmpKit or AmpKit LiNK here.

Starting with an awesome team get-together at Yosemite National Park and highlighted by the honor of winning an Apple Design Award, this past week was certainly one to remember for Agile Partners.

When Apple announced in April that WWDC 2010 would take place June 7-11 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, we immediately saw it as a must-attend event for Agile Partners. With the opportunity to learn more about the latest advancements in iOS technologies, take advantage of hands-on labs, and benefit from one-to-one interactions with Apple engineers, we knew WWDC 2010 would be an invaluable experience for our team as we continue to develop innovative applications for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

We kicked off our visit to northern California with a weekend get-together at Yosemite. The breathtaking views and tranquil trails (with an unexpected abundance of snow still on the ground) made Yosemite the perfect way to charge up for WWDC. To top it off, the talented chefs among the members of our team made sure everyone was well nourished with some incredibly tasty meals!

After driving from Yosemite back to San Francisco, our participation in WWDC started at 6:00 a.m. on Monday, June 7 as we lined up to attend Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ keynote address. The keynote address was filled with exciting announcements that culminated with the introduction of the new iPhone 4. Then, along with 5000 developers from around the world, we started digging into a wide variety of technical sessions and hands-on labs led by Apple engineers. Our team had come prepared with several questions related to our on-going projects and it was great to discuss them one-on-one with some of the 1000 Apple engineers attending WWDC.

The week was also packed with special events including awesome lunchtime presentations by speakers from Pixar, NASA and CNN. Evening activities included the perennially entertaining “Stump the Experts” Apple trivia event (hosted by some of the most knowledgeable and colorful Apple engineers you’ll ever meet) and the WWDC Bash at Yerba Buena Gardens with surprise musical guest, OK Go.

For our team, the highlight of the week occurred on Tuesday evening when Agile Partners was honored with a 2010 Apple Design Award for our TabToolkit for iPad app. We shared the stage with eight other developers whose applications also demonstrated technical excellence, innovation, superior technology adoption, high performance and outstanding design in the eyes of the Apple judges. It was a proud and humbling moment that inspired all of us at Agile Partners to keep working hard at continuously improving our craft.

We’re not a group that rests on our laurels — by now, we’ve all returned safely home and are preparing for some exciting days and weeks ahead. We’re at the beginning of Agile Partners’ most prolific period of product launches yet, with new products around the corner that we believe will delight our customers. Armed and energized by what we learned and experienced during the week of WWDC 2010, we’re ready to create many more memorable moments. Stay tuned!

Today, Agile Partners is proud to announce that our entertaining new app–Second Opinion, which you can use to ask any “yes-or-no” question, and get the “real answer” through crowdsourcing–is now available in the App Store.

What is it that got me thinking about developing an app like Second Opinion?  Focus groups.  You know, the kind where someone is paid to interact with or critique someone else’s work.  These studies can be great, providing multiple, anonymous and–most importantly–unbiased data points from unrelated 3rd parties.  The kind of responses you can’t get get as easily from co-workers, employees, or consultants; where politics cast shade, even when there’s the best of intentions.

Having designed and participated in a number of these studies, one “gotcha” is–because for the participant, this is not an anonymous experience–participants sometimes feel social pressure to answer a particular way. To seem smarter, for instance.  A common focus group observer “trick” is to “watch what they do, not just listen to what they say,” to compensate for this effect.   Remove all relationships between the “asker”, “answerer” & “moderator”, and the truth finds its way to the surface more easily: the model behind Second Opinion.

So, let’s make it personal–I have questions. Usually it’s about something outside of my areas of expertise (I’m better with power tools than picking outfits; I can critique the heck out of a film, but won’t know if the wine I choose will offend my vinofile friends).   I wanted my own focus group … and Second Opinion became my tool for everyday crowdsourcing.   The wisdom of the crowd provides the “real answer” (i.e., what is commonly perceived to be true) in a way that friends and experts–by their very nature–may not.

And, while Second Opinion can be a really useful tool for getting others’ opinions  in a crowdsourcing sense, we learned something else about it: it is an absolute blast to use!  Both answering questions and asking questions is addictive fun.  We’ve put together a few videos to show you just how much fun:

We’re very excited about the Second Opinion launch, and are curious to see what people will ask–and learn.  Why not give it a whirl: download Second Opinion from the App Store (free, with optional in-app purchases).