Spotlight on local devs: Nick Feisst of Inklen

MixEmergency! But don't worry, Inklen's here.

In the second of our series on spotlighting local iPhone developers, I spoke to Nick Feisst of newcomer Inklen. Nick is a software developer as well as a professional DJ and his company bridges the gap between vinyl and digital.

As a complete know-nothing in the world of DJing (is that even a word?), Nick’s app “Tonetable” sounds both amazing and magical to me but is beyond my mortal grasp of understanding, so in his own words:

“It can be a little confusing as to what exactly this app does – especially to those outside the DJ community. Tonetable is an application that sends out a control signal (through the iPhone/iPod Touch audio output – it basically sounds like a sine wave tone) that most DJ software can use to track movements (forwards or backwards).

“Essentially, most of today’s vinyl controlled DJ software uses the same underlying principles to control them – usually the only difference is how they add timecode to the tone, and what base fequency they use for the tone. Generally a control tone is then pressed onto a vinyl record, and this is put on a turntable and fed into the DJ software. So, what Tonetable does is that it emulates a turntable playing a control tone record.”

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Yeah. What he said. So who is Nick Feisst and how did he come to code Tonetable? What were the drivers behind developing it?

“I run a small company called Inklen that specialises in creating DJ software. Our main product is a piece of software called MixEmergency – which is essentially an application for DJs to scratch and mix videos and visualisations in real-time. During the development of MixEmergency there were several times when I needed to test specific actions of a DJ scratching vinyl, and at the time didn’t have access to any control tone records (they were in storage) or turntables. So, I quickly wrote a very small application that could produce a control tone from my computer, and fed that output back into my DJ audio interface. This small first application was slowly improved – and then eventually I had the idea to further develop it for the iPhone.”

Sounds fascinating — is it a hobby or a living?

“Inklen is a full-time job for me – with work on MixEmergency being the primary focus of the business.”

Nick originally threw the idea for the app out to the DJ community and it was their reaction to the idea that spurred its development.

“Initially I had very positive feedback about the idea for Tonetable from a few DJs – and I could see that it had potential in many areas. I should mention that Tonetable is not supposed to replace DJs current expensive turntables or hardware controllers – as their performance could never be matched using the iPhone. Instead it is supposed to be a tool that can be used in many situations, for example, if for some reason you want a backup in case your DJ equipment becomes unusable, for DJs that travel and don’t have turntables easily accessible, for those that want to get into DJing and see what turntablism is about before spending thousands of dollars on equipment, etc. I guess there is (or was) a gap in the DJ market for a very small portable DJ controller of this type – and the iPhone/iPod Touch seemed like the perfect hardware to create this for, as it is a piece of hardware a lot of DJs already own, is relatively cheap to develop for, and provides fairly good audio support (something that is lacking in several other handheld devices).

“The actual development of the application was all done within Inklen. The base of the code had already been written, so it was just a matter of creating a nicer interface for the iPhone, and setting up the application’s configuration menus. After this I showed it to a few DJ friends, and a few DJs that work with Inklen, and they all wanted copies of it – so I knew we were onto something good.”

Despite having only recently been released, Nick is encouraged by early interest in the app.

“It is still too early to tell regarding the app’s uptake – as it has only been released for a week so far. We have been pleasantly surprised by the amount of interest and the spread of news across websites and blogs (and soon to be print media). I think that the exposure alone that it has already created for us has made it a worthwhile investment for the business.”

Despite the gold-rush for some developers over at Apple’s App Store, Nick is not expecting to hang up his headphones on the back of the app alone.

“At this point I don’t really see the iPhone being the major focus of our business. Tonetable is really an application that is for a fairly small and specific market (i.e. bedroom/professional DJs), so it doesn’t have the broad appeal of the sort of iPhone apps that reportedly make their developers hundreds of thousands of dollars. We do plan to continue developing Tonetable, and have some exciting new features and improvements planned for the future.

“I don’t own an iPhone personally. I do own an iPod Touch however, and this is what I use as my primary development device. We have DJs spread out around the world that test Tonetable for us on their iPhones, and I don’t carry around a cellphone too often, so haven’t felt the need to get one yet. I do use my iPod Touch quite often for gaming – though generally only for puzzle or strategy games.”

Any budding DJs out there in iPhonewzealand-land? What do you think of Tonetable? Let us know in the comments.