It’s time for yet an announcement for all you API lovers out there; a library making it really easy to implement SoundCloud streaming in your Cocoa apps. It’s built specially for the iPhone SDK 3.+ but should work for desktop Mac apps as well.

The library is a vital part of the SoundCloud iPhone app and will be used in the upcoming CitySound iPhone app as well. It’s written by Ullrich Schäfer and open source under the Apache License version 2.0.

To sum up, this library…

• makes it easy to implement the non trivial task of streaming audio in Cocoa apps
• nicely integrates with the existing Cocoa wrapper for the SoundCloud API
• supports streaming of public and OAuth protected tracks
• fits in commercial apps as well as music hack day mashups etc.

Head over to github and check out the source code along with the demo application.

Feedback, questions, and suggestions are welcome in the SoundCloud API Google group!

FiRe, the popular iPhone field recorder app by our friends at Audiofile Engineering has been updated to version 1.3.0.

The new version adds features like input processing effects powered by iZotope, expanded metadata support, file encoding, and more. The SoundCloud integration has also been polished to make it even smoother to export your iPhone recordings to the cloud.

Check out all the new features and get FiRe 1.3.0 in the App Store.

Record anywhere and upload to SoundCloud straight from the app.

What a nice surprise! Late last night, we received an email from SoundCloud user Vitaliy Pronkin informing us that he just added a SoundCloud integration to the iPhone app he developed: SoundGrid. Here’s what it does:

SoundGrid aims to be the most advanced matrix sequencer for iPhone / iPod Touch to create stunning audio-visual performances in a moment and wherever you are. It was inspired by famous Yamaha Tenori-On and popular ToneMatrix webapp by André Michelle.

That is so cool! We’re big fans of the Tenori-On and André has been a long-time SoundCloud user and friend. We’re psyched to see Vitaliy bringing all of this together. He goes on saying:

In the last version ability to record tracks was added and obviously I decided to support direct export to Soundcloud (thank you for great service btw). All exported tracks can be found here and also there’s special group to which users encouraged to add their creations.

Below, you’ll find a couple of examples – of course – in a SoundCloud player. Nice!

Watch the video to see the app in action:

Very well done, Vitaliy! Thanks for the heads-up on this one and for the support to export to SoundCloud. We’re stoked.

We just received the word about a cool new music creation application for the iPhone called JR Hexatone Pro that supports direct export to your SoundCloud account.

The app was developed by Amidio, a company specialised in the creation of music apps for the iPhone. Here’s how they describe JR Hexatone:

It’s a loop generation tool that uses artificial intelligence and advanced randomization algorithms to produce constantly changing sonic structures. The app is able to create and modify many type of drum loops, melodic sequences or rhythm patterns in realtime. You can also engage built-in Stutter or Chorus effects and control them with the iPhone’s accelerometer.

The application comes with a vast library of original samples and loop presets. Your loops get exported as .WAV files and you can export to your SoundCloud account or hard drive.

To export to SoundCloud, click Menu -> More ->File Manager-> select sample/track and click the SoundCloud logo in the lower-right.

Here’s Jordan Rudess introducing the app in a 10-minute video.

Direct link to the iPhone App Store: JR Hexatone Pro

Another great hack created during Musichackday in London was the iPhone Music Visualiser by Matt Biddulph and George J Cook. It’s a pretty cool music visualizer for the iPhone that let’s you browse tracks on SoundCloud (using our API) and then launch a custom visualiser for a track of your choosing on your iPhone.

The visualiser is actually sending the track over to Echonest, a great audio analysis web service, and uses that data to drive the cocos2d-based visualisation. Check out the video to the right to see it in action! Note for example how the particle systems grow bigger once the track loudness goes up.

The project is open-source so feel free to go and fork it for your own needs.

We’re super excited to announce FiRe, an iPhone application by Audiofile Engineering that turns your iPhone into a professional field recorder! Now the greatest thing about FiRe (we think) is that you can upload your recorded sounds straight to SoundCloud from your iPhone (using our open API). Simply tap the “Upload to My Account” button after you’re done recording, and the sound will be on its way to the cloud. That’s pretty neat!

Aside from the awesome SoundCloud integration, FiRe is packed with pro audio recording features. Location tagging, overdubbing, waveform editing, and Broadcast WAVE metadata make FiRe a powerful tool for journalists and musicians.

FiRe also supports stereo recording with external microphones such as the BLUE Mikey and Alesis ProTrack. If the internal mic is used for mono recordings, then the screen rotates 180 degrees, allowing users to best position the device for optimum directional pickup. Users can scroll the live waveform display with the touch of a finger or navigate it with a system of configurable double-taps.

To run FiRe you’ll need an iPhone 3G, iPod Touch (second generation) or a first Generation iPhone with the headset plugged in. Read more over at CNET or Create Digital Music.

Tomorrow Thursday our two iPhone heroes Gernot and Ullrich will show off the SoundCloud Cocoa API wrapper at CocoaHeads Berlin. If you happen to be in Berlin it’s a great chance to get a deeper look at our API and how you can use it to build iPhone or Cocoa apps with cool audio sharing features.

UPDATE: Slides have been added.

We’re really excited about the release of our brand new Cocoa/iPhone development kit, built by Ullrich and Gernot! This means you can really easily integrate SoundCloud in any Cocoa-based (iPhone 2.0+, Mac OS X 10.5+) application, complete with oAuth-based authentication, asynchronous requests and uploads with a progressbar. We have only begun to imagine what kind of cool audio sharing apps could be built using this little toolbox…

So if you’re an iPhone-hacker, don’t hesitate to download the source and start hacking!

We’ve also taken the opportunity to upgrade pretty much all of our API pages. We’ve moved all code and documentation over to Github, so it’s easier than ever to browse and fork it. Since long time there’s already a complete Python wrapper for our API, and now it’s been better documented as well.