Docs

Sound and volume

Every click Metronomo makes is synthesized on the spot — there are no samples in the app. What a click sounds like comes from two things: the accent level of the slot it lands on, and which of the two timbres is selected.

The five levels

An accent level sets both loudness and pitch. Louder is also higher, so a bar reads as shape rather than as volume alone.

Tick and Soft carry the same gain deliberately. Tick is distinguished by pitch, not by being quieter, which keeps a busy subdivision row audible instead of letting it fade under the beats.

Two timbres

Settings → Preferences → Beat picks between them, and the choice belongs to the device rather than to a Groove.

Percussive is the default: a short, dry woodblock — a fundamental with an inharmonic partial above it and a filtered noise attack, ringing out in well under a tenth of a second.

Tonal is a pitched click: a triangle tone with a second tone an octave below it for body, giving a fuller and slightly louder sound than the woodblock.

The two run on separate pitch tables, so a level’s tone changes with the timbre:

The alarm is the exception to all of this. It is always tonal — a short tone sweeping upward — whichever timbre is set, so it stays distinct from the click it interrupts.

Volume

The volume slider runs from silent to full, with a switch at its left that mutes and unmutes. Muting remembers where the slider was and puts it back on unmute, so the switch is not a way to lose your level.

Volume belongs to the device, not the Groove. It is not part of what a Groove saves, it does not change when you load one, and it is not in the export file. A Groove that was loud on your device is not loud by definition when it lands somewhere else.