Soundbrenner Core

As an amateur musician and part-time music teacher, I’ve had my eyes on Soundbrenner for quite a while. A few weeks ago, I decided to invest in the Soundbrenner Core – primarily to try the digital metronome.

The product mainly has four features: metronome, decibel reader, tuner and wristwatch.


METRONOME

I was really keen on trying a digital metronome and it’s a brand new experience for me compared to mechanical metronomes. It took me a few sessions to get used to it, but now I love it. It’s easy to customize, both by using the watch and the app, and the colour-coding is a pretty clever and useful feature. I’ve tried using the Soundbrenner Core on different body parts and come to the conclusion that I prefer having it on my wrist. The vibrations are very distinct, which I really like. No matter the sound level around you or how much you move, you’ll still feel the vibrations.


DECIBEL READER

I’m constantly concerned about my hearing (just like all musicians are!?). However, I’ve never owned a decibel reader and didn’t quite understand that I could make use of one. The Soundbrenner Core’s decibel reader is a great feature. It constantly monitors the sound level around you and vibrates when the sound reaches a hazardous level. It’s like having a caring and good old friend on my wrist.


TUNER

You can stick the device right on to the guitar, which especially my students find really cool. As a tuner, it’s definitely adequate, but maybe not comparable to a premium stand-alone solution.


WRISTWATCH

It has all the basic features expected from a smart watch for everyday use – good battery life-span (with fast rechargeability), time/date and smartphone notifications. I'd say it's a very intuitive system and even my three year old daughter understands how to navigate in it.


CONCLUSION

What I haven’t mentioned yet is that the Soundbrenner Core looks and feels really good, which off-course is important if you’re gonna wear it every day.

I bought it because I wanted to try a digital metronome, but I find the other features very useful as well. You can probably get better stand-alone decibel readers, tuners and wristwatches, but the metronome is a world-class feature and the combination of all four makes the Soundbrenner Core well worth the investment!

I don’t really do reviews that often, but in times like these I think you should highlight when you find products that are awesome. So a bit about myself/gear. I play a bit of everything but I’m pretty good at guitar, piano and ukulele. The main reason for buying the Core was to get something to rely on and get my rhythm to the next level. I just needed something to help me tight things up. Some times i loose the tempo/pace without noticing it myself, but after recording i realised that this happens a lot when I jam or play on my own.

So, I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now and it's been pretty fantastic even if you take the price in consideration, it’s def worth it for the features you get. Firstly, in terms of keeping time and pace I doubt there's any better experience than the core's vibrating metronome. I’ve used a lot of metronomes since I was a kid and for me it’s really difficult to practice to a normal metronome. This experience was very different to me. It's so much more convenient to feel the beat instead of using a click track, and the watch allows you to adjust settings like the accents and subdivisions really easily.

What’s even cooler is the having a guitar tuner on your wrist everywhere you go since I'm always misplacing my clipon tuner... I did find the tuner to be a bit jumpy but after updating the firmware to the latest version it was dead on. So far I’ve used it for my guitar and ukelel. I found the decibel meter to be useful on occasions when I wanted to find out how loud my surroundings were, but it's not a feature I would use daily. Still a nice addition to have given the price of the Core though. Overall I'm really happy with the Soundbrenner Core. There are a few minor bugs that I hope will be addressed in future software updates, but aside from that I love it, and I would def recommend it.

The unboxing was very nice, and the quality of the product is easy to see. But...

As much as I understand Soundbrenner's need for monetisation, depriving the users from using metronome functionality (like the increasing tempo) unless they pay more money feels wrong. After all, I have just paid more than €200 for a metronome, so I expected it to be full of features out of the box. The video lessons? The collections of songs? Those are add-ons that I'll evaluate later if I want to pay for them or not. But the metronome that I bought cannot do basic things that even software metronomes can, unless I pay even more money.

The android application looks promising, but it's still far from perfect:
- It asks for permissions that I just don't understand. Location? Does the app really need to know my location to pair with the Core? I find that very, very hard to believe.
- It led me to believe that registration was indispensable. And it asked me for things like my main instrument (I play two), my main genre (I don't have one), and my skill level (what for?). All those things I'm not comfortable discussing with my metronome's maker, to be honest.
- The synchronisation is not perfect (e.g. when I start the metronome from the phone and stop it from the device, sometimes the application doesn't get updated).
- The worst part, though, is that the application sits there, draining battery happily, and I can't remove the notification (unless I remove the notifications permission). I really would have preferred a less intrusive application, and a device that doesn't depend that much on my mobile phone. Luckily I have a smartphone, what if I didn't?

I asked the same questions to their technical support, and they gave out-of-the-box answers, that didn't answer any of my concerns. I'm, to be honest, a bit disappointed.

In itself, the concept and idea of the product is outstanding. But for me the vibration is clearly too weak. Unfortunately I didn't really notice it when playing (drums, piano and guitar). The Smartwatch function is also not yet available, but according to the manufacturer it should be implemented this year. Maybe it is also due to my person that I perceive the vibration as too weak.
The tuner function is a very nice feauture for guitarists, because you always have a tuner with you that works reliably.