App
Segno
A recorder for acoustic instruments, on the phone you already carry.
Your iPhone has good microphones. What spoils the recording is the processing in front of them: the automatic level control that flattens a crescendo, and the compression that turns a hall into a phone call. Segno turns that off and keeps the original file exactly as it came off the microphone.
Coming soonto the App Store.
- Platforms
- iOS 17 and later
- Made for
- Conservatory students and applicants, teachers, and amateur and professional players.
- Languages
- English and Japanese
- Available in
- United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan
- Free
- Three takes of up to three minutes each, kept as long as you like
- Subscription
- Annual, billed every year · Monthly, billed every month
- No account
- No sign-up and no cloud. Recordings never leave the phone.
- 24-bit
- 48 kHz, uncompressed. The original file is never altered.
- Unedited
- Trim the start and the end. Nothing else, so an audition take stays one take.
Features
What it does
Everything here is in the shipping app. Nothing on this page describes something that is planned.
Nothing in the way
Segno records in the mode that turns off the processing meant for speech: no automatic gain, no dynamics processing. A pianissimo stays quiet and a fortissimo stays loud, which is the part a phone usually takes away.
A soundcheck before you play
Play the loudest passage for ten seconds. Segno tells you how much headroom is left, and if you are too close to the instrument it says so before you have recorded anything worth keeping.
Where to put the phone
A placement guide for each instrument: how far away, how high, and which side to face. For a grand piano that is about two metres from the open lid; for a trumpet it is off the axis of the bell.
Video without the compromise
Filming uses the same audio path as an audio-only take, so the sound does not get worse because you wanted a picture. Export as MP4 for a prescreening submission.
Compare, then decide
Switch between the original and the corrected version while it plays, matched for loudness so the louder one does not simply win. If you prefer the original, export the original.
It keeps recording
A call, an alarm or an unplugged pair of earphones pauses the take and Segno picks it up again, marking where the gap was. A two-hour concert is written to disk as it happens, not at the end.
The take
What you end up with
Every take keeps the original recording exactly as it came off the microphone. Everything else is a view of that file, applied while it plays or while it is exported.
- Original
- 48 kHz, 24-bit, uncompressed, written to disk as you record. Nothing is ever written back over it.
- Corrected
- The same take with microphone correction, gentle steady-noise reduction, stereo width and a safety limiter. No compressor, and nothing generated.
- Level
- An optional level match that moves the whole take up or down by one amount. The distance between loud and quiet is not touched.
- Gaps
- If a call or an alarm interrupted the take, where it happened and how long it lasted.
- Export
- WAV 24-bit, ALAC, AAC 256 kbps, or MP4 with video. Original or corrected, your choice at the moment you export.
The safety limiter has a ceiling of −1 dBTP and exists to stop a peak from clipping, not to make the take louder.
Privacy
Your records stay on the phone
There is no account, no sign-up and no cloud. A lesson, an audition take, a student playing badly on a Tuesday — none of that is ours to hold, and Segno has nowhere to send it.
Stays on the device
- Your recordings, both audio and video
- Take titles, notes, tags, the venue you typed, and which takes you marked as favourites
- Soundcheck results and the instrument preset you chose
- Your settings, including recording mode and video resolution
Leaves the device
- Your purchase receipt, an anonymous app identifier, and basic device information — to RevenueCat, our subscription provider
- The purchase itself — to Apple
The identifier used for your subscription is generated at random. It is not your name, your email or your phone number, and there is no account it could be matched against.
Questions
Before you ask
The rest of the questions, how to cancel, and how to reach a person are on the support page.
- Will it sound better than the camera app?
- That is the thing to test rather than take our word for. Record the same passage twice, once with your camera and once with Segno, and listen to the quiet bars. What Segno changes is that the automatic level control is off, so the difference between loud and quiet is the one you played.
- Can I submit the video to an audition?
- Segno exports MP4 with the audio recorded through the same path as an audio-only take. There is no cut editing — you can trim the start and the end and nothing else — so a take stays one unedited take, which is what prescreening rules usually ask for. Check the specific requirements of the school or competition yourself.
- Is it stereo?
- On iPhone the recording mode that turns off processing uses a single microphone, so those takes are mono. Segno also has a stereo mode, which uses the mode iOS offers for video: it combines several microphones, and the result is genuinely wider. Both are available, and the take records which one was used.
Notice
What this is not
Segno is a recording tool. It does not improve a performance, and it does not check that a recording meets the requirements of a school or competition. Check those requirements before you submit.