Final Touch, A Complete Mastering System For iPad, Now Available

final-touch-ipad-masteringPositive Grid, the makers of mobile apps BIAS and JamUp, have released Final Touch, described as a ‘complete mastering system for iPad’.

Final touch combines Maximizer, Pre and Post Equalizer, 4-Band Dynamics, Stereo Imager, Reverb and Dithering into one integrated app.

Here’s the official video intro:

Features:

  • Complete professional mastering system powered by Positive Grid’s high-end signal-processing algorithms
  • Pre and Post Linear-Phase Equalizers, each offering eight bands and five filter types
  • Multiband Dynamics with four independent bands of compression/limiting
  • Stereo Imager adjusts the width and balance of your mix’s soundstage
  • Reverb provides state-of-the-art Room, Hall and Plate algorithms
  • Maximizer transparently limits peaks to make your mix louder
  • Dithering and Noise-Shaping preserves your mix’s depth and nuance
  • Stereo and mid-side processing
  • High-resolution, multi-colored metering with accurate readouts
  • Each module can be independently bypassed
  • Bypass switches for individual EQ bands
  • Left, right, mid and side channels can be independently soloed or bypassed
  • Waveform overview of your mix, with draggable playback cursor
  • 100 factory presets and unlimited user presets
  • Global and module-based presets
  • Drag and drop modules to rearrange their order in the signal path
  • Pristine, high-resolution sound (double-precision, 64-bit calculation)
  • No rounding or truncation except when calculations are performed
  • Share via Email, Dropbox, iTunes, SoundCloud and FTP
  • Streamlined project management: browse multiple projects with one simple tap
  • Workflow optimized for mobile and desktop data transfers
  • Supports Inter-App Audio and Audiobus routing system (works with many other audio apps)
  • Supports iPad 2, iPad mini and newer iPad devices
  • Designed for iOS 7

Final Touch is available now for US $19.99 in the App Store.

If you’ve used Final Touch, let us know what you think of it!

39 thoughts on “Final Touch, A Complete Mastering System For iPad, Now Available”

  2. I simply can’t figure out who on earth this is aimed at. I’m sure there is an audience out there for it, but I can’t get my head around why anyone would use a less powerful mobile device for a process that sort of requires a static studio environment.

    1. Hi – I am a house music hobbyist, and though I’ve been making tracks for several years, I’ve never created something I felt quite worthy of paying a mastering service. I have hours of music I *personally* love to listen to. Now, I can tell that the quality of my tracks isn’t perfect, but – it’s a hobby, I don’t want to shell out $250 or more for mastering software of doubtful quality, let alone thousands for hardware. I do Schmastering (per DJTechTools…) to my tracks, and that makes some difference, (especially with that nice free W1 limiter I’ve got) but I’d be totally down to try out a $20 app on my iPad. Maybe this’ll be the app that helps me learn enough to see the value in more professional tools? That’s why I love iPad audio apps – they’ve been a low-entry opportunity for me to try out stuff I otherwise wouldn’t attempt. At this point, I do most everything in the DAW just because I’ve learned to like the interface so much, but I’ve cut my teeth on lots of iPad apps, and they’ve really opened doors for me.

      Yeah, I’ll probably check this one out too. 🙂

  3. Not everyone needs Bob Clearmountain to take care of the next Toto release at AIR Lyndhurst Hall. I’m not saying that there isn’t an art to mastering (there is—and I respect people who kick ass at it and are also somehow able to either afford or have access to rare $5000 compressors and mic pres) or that using more powerful tools might not prove advantageous over this in ways, but it seems possible that a “good enough” master can be gotten from decent software, perceptive ears, and a little know-how. Does that track that someone wants to put up on Soundcloud for fun really require a fully outfitted studio in order to pass your master-muster? Or maybe, shockingly, it’s that your standards aren’t that crucial to him or her.

    I’m too lazy to Google, but it wouldn’t surprise me if I were to find early references to people in the early 90s bashing ProTools because “How can you do this one thing we did this one way all along with THIS???”

    Me? I think it’s cool that better solutions to important processes like mastering are arising on mobile devices.

    1. >but it wouldn’t surprise me if I were to find early references to people in the early 90s bashing ProTools
      >because “How can you do this one thing we did this one way all along with THIS???”

      I was there, and yes they did. I got all kinds of crap for buying a ProTools 3 rig because “digital will never replace tape decks”, and “nobody will ever make good music on computers”. So it cracks me up to see people bashing iPads now, which by the way are more powerful out of the box with about $50 worth of software and a sub $200 interface than that 10k+ ProTools system was back in the day (not counting the $2500 Mac quadra it needed to run).

      About this same time I was bashing mp3, because I thought people would never want to listen to low-res crap. Ooops! I couldn’t have been more wrong, and I have never since made the mistake of expecting people to choose quality over affordable convenience.

  4. It is the right question. For WHOM? (I don’t think I’ve ever typed “whom” before, but I think it is right.)

    Here are some possibilities. Perhaps a person who:
    1. has finished mixes and a $20 iTunes gift card.
    2. thinks the word “Mastering” just sounds empowering
    3. may need temporary masters for a demo or promo thing.
    4. is learning about mastering.
    5. edits sample libraries
    6. has badly recorded tracks that need special attention before mixing
    7. is touching up audio for video
    8. can’t afford proper mastering

    Still, even with all those, I’d much rather use a computer and a DAW, and/or Audacity– because they are familiar (and I don’t love working with the iPad’s touchscreen).

    For $20 though, this is an impressive features list for folks who like to work that way. Better have some damn good headphones & monitor rig though if the work is going to matter.

    Postive Grid’s BIAS & JAMUP are still a little glitchy on my iPad 4. I really hoping they keeping improving their apps though, because they are pretty impressive.

  5. Hmmm…..well for me it would mean I’d need to plug my iPad into my studio monitors to do any kind of …… ehhh…… ‘mastering’. So at that point I’m already in my studio with much more powerful tools that I am use too. So it would not make any sense for me to buy this app. (but apps making sense haven’t prevented me from buying a lot of em in the past 🙂

  6. These developers are doing the world a huge favour, because what I’ve heard from “iOS musicians” who have released “albums” doesn’t sound close to being properly mastered. If they are keen to keep it “wireless”, then I reckon positive grids app will help make the best of a bad bargain.

    The video of this app DOES look good, so why not encourage amateurs with a taste of what a pro tool can be?

  7. Kind of in agreement with most comments here but this could be a useful tool for having spectrum analysis and EQ tools on the move. Having visual feedback and seeing how tracks translate to various systems in a portable device could be very helpfull for some producers / engineers, being able to bounce per system / sound source and do an average master mix could be fairly effective. Looks a nice UI but won’t be purchasing.

  8. so many features for $20. if this were a plugin for $20 it would be useful. my main concern is the quality of the limiter etc. i would experiment with mobile mastering, just because…. why not

  9. The practical question is “How much ‘mastering engineer’ do you really have in you?” Mastering is about a unique, creative finesse that’s partly mechanical and partly musical. That includes engineers who can hear that all a track may need is a little compression, an EQ fix at a squawky spot or a reverb tweak. Its another form of synthesis. I say its a well-appointed app that’s more than adequate for pad-oriented goals. Dissing this too readily is a sign that you don’t yet understand how profoundly effective easily-had things like light compression per track and careful EQing can be. Remember, you can also take it home and dump it into a DAW for deeper massaging. Pads are too underpowered for hefty projects, but small muscles matter as much as big ones do. Are you man enough to meet the Junior Mastering Engineer’s Provocational Challenge? 🙂

  10. I am meeting more iOS7 musicians all the time… many of them have a seemingly limitless studio on their iPad. They are using the 48-track version of Auria, every synth and drum app on earth, effects galore, and they are adding more all the time. They are the crazies who will buy and use this app. Not that it isn’t overkill because I agree with all the other posts here – I’m just saying there is a growing segment of musicians that are totally fixated on their iPad studios, and this shows that there are developers who cater to them. It’s cool in a way… better to have (more options) than to have not, etc. And for $20 I mean that’s barely beer money.

    1. Well I popped for Final Touch last night and I gotta say I love it. I use Sound Forge on my studio computer and this is similar but with far better graphics. Very, very intuitive… it brings mastering down to Earth and has a logical interface that just about anybody can use. Handy presets give you a leg up on getting started and the program comes with a demo wav file for experimenting. It’s a better app than I expected both functionally and in design. If you are determined to have a full-blown iPad production studio then Final Touch is a good investment.

  11. There is certainly a target market for this. Case in point: 5 million people (on youtube) watched Jimmy Fallon and Billy Joel use his iPad for a music performance last week. Loopy HD (the app he used) is suddenly now in top grossing apps list (#47 today) in ALL of iTunes, not just music category.

    So loads of people are suddenly interested in using their iPads to make music. A portion of them will be inclined to post videos, etc of their creations. A small portion of that group will make something of decent quality, and a portion of that group will ask themselves “If I can record songs on my iPad, I wonder if I can master them?” They’ll find this app and be elated.

    There is also a small segment of music-makers who are dedicated to (or can only afford) iPad music creation. The market may be relatively small but it is there. and its growing.

  12. I understand the “what’s the point” argument

    But just the thought that a recording studio w/mastering is almost available to anyone in any part of the world…. someone out there is going to do something amazing at some point … and it would not have been possible without affordable apps and tech like this (ex. 3rd world country).

    I can’t wait.

    Really psyched for this app. It’s a good thing.

  13. Another advantage is that you can buy this app and years later when you buy a new, faster iPad, you can run it with no problems. We can only hope they keep their quality and updates robust.

  15. it looks like Ozone for iPad. i think the thing that remains is that you still have to know what you’re doing with a program like this, aside from cranking the volume up, mastering is still a very specialized skill and takes a lot of work. what amazes me is the price, kind of like Traktor, for those of us who purchased the full version, using it with our original Lemurs then the apps come out for $1. 🙂

  16. Isn’t this kind of like the Grand Prix in a Volkswagen Beetle? Which is OK as long as everyone else is driving a Beetle. But nobody plays Beetle Bug Racing any more. Does an iPad have eight or sixteen gigabytes of RAM? Eight core i7 processor? SLI graphics with four gigabytes of GDDR5? And how, exactly, do you connect an iPad to a set of KRKs? Through Bluetooth? Yeah, no worries about latency there.

      1. Dude, why bother explaining what a cable is to him? He thinks you need “SLI graphics with four gigabytes of GDDR5” to be able to make music. Perhaps he doesn’t realize that people were recording, mixing, and mastering solely in the box over ten years ago, when PCs with his required specs didn’t even exist. I bought a PC in 2003 that had similar specs to my phone from 2010.

        Also, don’t bring up games, ’cause he’d tell you that you need the same massive rig to be able to play anything fun. He’d freak if he only knew what an NES is, that people played/loved it, and that the processor ran as slow as it did and didn’t have multiple cores.

  17. I don’t get the kill joy attitude of some people here.

    No one is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to buy this app.

    Some of us actually like the limitations that ipad apps provide us with.

    1. They are just mad because now anybody can learn how to master, not just the people with enough money to have expensive tools and studios. And that means they won’t be special very much longer.

  18. This is a great app to learn the basics of mastering cheaply for novices & kids starting out, and probably is pretty useful for basic mastering of tracks also. For $20, it isn’t going to be Ozone 5, but thats not the point.

    The touch interface on this seems great too. At $20 its a steal, assuming it sounds as good as the video makes out.

  20. I’ve just started using Slate Digital’s FG-X at the end of my mastering chain. Only cost me $79, but is already one of the best investments I’ve made in plugins. I now no longer feel the need for multiband compressors and maximisers. I’m sure something like this would be good for iPad only producers, although I’d be curious to hear how good it sounded.

  21. I honestly don’t see why so much hate is here. I’m a guitar player who recently got interested in synths, and after drooling at some SSL mixing consoles and modulars, thought it might be neat to see what the eye candy can do. That being said, I’m a college student and only do music as a hobby. I can (and will) buy an iPad with a lot of features, get an interface for audio and midi, get a virtual (and thus good enough for a hobbyist) version of a Oberheim SEM, Moog Minimoog, Korg MS20 and Monopoly, TR808, assortment of Korg Gadgets, a VCS matrix synth emu, as well as a mixing console, samplers, and Moog made apps, all for under 1-2k? Then be able to record and mix all of those things on the go or in studio/bedroom? That would be something that I would probably never be able to afford if I was to get hardware equivalents. So why is so much negative attention going towards it? We get it, some of you will never touch software. It’s your bank account that’s taking the hit, not mine.

  22. It’s getting to be a real drag reading comments here lately. This is my favorite site for synth news… I start my day with it. But try as I do “not” to read the comments… I end up doing just that and before I know it… a product that interested me has me questioning my sanity.

    1. Some musicians can be surprisingly snobbish about what they use to do their thing. In the end, it’s about a good song that someone else wants to hear. I could buy the best gear in the world and take tons of time to master it (no pun), but if I don’t know how to write music that engages people in some way, then I’m just entertaining myself by spending lots of money on gear.

      On the flip side, a great song, even if it’s not mastered to the degree required by the finger-wagging Mastering Police on here, could end up going somewhere and making people happy or making them think.

      So much of the expensive side of music-making involves things that 98% of listeners do not care about and wouldn’t even be able to discern. They don’t care and couldn’t tell if they’re hearing a $100K modular synth, a Microbrute, or a $50 VST on a track, or if the song has been mastered using a rare and expensive piece of equipment vs. the Fabfilter bundle.

    2. Oh, and Steve? There is a good rule of thumb about the interwebz: NEVER READ THE COMMENTS. 😉

      I’m bad at following that rule, though. Take care.

  25. I can see two positive results.
    1) I tried it, and now I have a basic understanding of Mastering, I really like it, and I am going to seriously study it and get a better rig together.

    Or

    2) Mastering is seriously not my thing and a lot harder than I imagined. I will happily pay someone to handle that aspect of my album/single/whatever.

    $20 is a relatively cheap life lesson if it is learned well.

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