Appmuse

Needs to be updated.

please add audio bus to your app that's all it need to be great.

This app will give some a good introduction to Additive synthesis, once you get used to some of the quirks. For example, filter options are presented before wave options, which is backward to wave most are used to in signal flow. Also I think it could be made clearer to which partials you are selecting. (A simple spectrograph in the corner or background could help programming sounds on this app a lot). The sounds are good and great for pad, but like additive synthesis, if you aren't careful you can get a lot of mushy blurry sounds. My biggest complaint is that Virtual MIDI seems to be broken and that is way I give the app 3 starts. This app just will not play well with Genome (the stand to test VirtualMIDI and that isn't a great sign.). If they fix that I will gladly give the app more stars, but right now that is a deal breaker because if they do add AudioBus support, AudioBus will be worthless if you can't control MIDI in the app correctly. Show more

Great app, but please integrate with Audiobus. Also, it would be great if the tempo could be saved along with the preset.

This app is great but needs audiobus to be complete.

UPDATE: After having a chance to test this as part of an overall recording workflow, I found a few issues that make it difficult to use in conjunction with other apps. Pasting a recording made in Addictive into another app does seem to work fine, so that's good. However, here are some problems I encountered as part of a larger recording session: 1. Pasting audio from Auria into the Looper. It does paste but seems to play back at 2x speed. Audio pasted from Beatmaker 2 plays back at the right speed. Not sure why. Maybe something subtly different between Sonoma and Pasteboard standards? Tried different sample rates for Auria but they all convert to 44.1k when doing the ACP. 2. When I have a backing track playing (say from Auria) switching to Addictive silences that audio. So I can't hear the backing track to record over. This seems to be a common thing with synths that use CoreAudio, but I can't find a good work around. 3. I can paste audio into the looper (at least from BM2) and play/record over it, but the main recording also captures the looped audio. 4. The way the recorder works makes it a bit difficult to record something played over virtual MIDI (say, from Beatmaker 2). The metronone is always on (no way to turn it off?) and the number of bars it will record has to be set up front. So if I set up a virtual MIDI port and play using BM2 while recording in Addictive, the metronone is very hard to sync up with the existing backing tracks, and is annoying. While the count-in, metronone, and predetermined length are nice features especially for working within the app, it would be awesome to be able to turn them all OFF and just record quietly until manually stopped when using in conjunction with other apps. 5. This app does not seem to work well with Genome MIDI sequencer. It will only play back a monophonic sequence over v-midi. Anytime you have two or more notes at the same time (like a chord) it produces silence. This is still a really great standalone synth - one of the very best in terms of sound quality and ease of sound creation. I hope VirSyn can make a few tweaks to make it more useful as part of an overall recording workflow as I really want to be able to use it in mixes. The key is being able to hear the context of what you're making the recording for, whether it was created in Addicitive or some other app, be able to record Addictive's part, and then easily move that recording into something else for mixing, tweaking, and mastering. Addicitive is SO close to being able to do all of that, but needs a few tweaks. ORIGINAL REVIEW: Outstanding. The presets are an awesome demonstration of the synth's capabilities, and many are very useable. The ability to draw the harmonics that the oscillators will generate right there on the screen, at least to me, is mind boggling. You can generate extremely complex waveforms easily without using samples or being constrained to a list of pre fab choices. The effects are great. The author is not kidding about the new high end reverb. It makes a flat sine wave sound pretty rich. The arpeggiator is one of the best I've seen, on iOS, or otherwise. VERY flexible and powerful. I have not had a chance to test audio copy/paste yet, but that will be important to me. The looper seems to work well, and is a load of fun. I think the GUI is very well designed. After you get a handle on things, it's easy to navigate and there are not a gazillion pages. So far very stable, and the background audio works well. One suggestion - put some labels on the wave and filters. Either frequency, or on the wave editor, perhaps the harmonic number. Or perhaps some continuously updated display that appears like with the rotary controls that says what frequency and level you are at. One possible bug. If I turn off all of the harmonics including the fundamental I still seem to get the sound of the fundamental sine wave. Maybe this is by design so you never end up with something that doesn't generate sound. Or perhaps it's user error. Either way, outstanding job! I'll be using this one a lot! If you are a synthesizer fan, you should have this in your arsenal. A hardware synth with these capabilities and with a sound this lush would be very expensive. You can have this for the cost of a decent lunch! Show more

There are lots of subtractive synth apps. Having used Waldorfs extensively years ago, I was missing a really good wavetable synth on iOS. This one is really great! The presets show it off quite well Very lush and delicious sounds. CoreMIDI is working fine with iRig MIDI. I haven't had it long enough to know how well the programming of sounds works for me, so I'll update the review on that point later. However, the sound quality and the music it can create with existing sounds already justifies the five star rating. Thank you! Show more

There are so many usable presets/banks that you could spend hours exploring them. This app works great with Polychord. Keep some water and protein bars handy, and strap on an adult diaper, because you will get lost in this app in a very good way. If you are a knob twister, then there are many, many, many adjustments you can make, too. Show more

It's very fun to have additive synthesis on my iPad, but this app could be a lot better. There are some core things that should already be in it, and some things that would just make it a lot cooler, but aren't necessary. 1. The control parameters are very unintuitive. I realize you may not be able to fit sliders, which would be ideal, but there must be a better way. Perhaps a graphic representation that you can zoom in on? At the very least, the parameter amount shouldn't be below the knob where you can't see it because your finger is in the way. Have the number pop-up to the left of your finger when you're changing a knob! 2. I realize this may be an "analog" modeling artifact, but the oscillators are very inconsistent. Sometimes a key press is loud and sometimes it's soft, sometimes it's bright and sometimes it's dark. This is all with the velocity controls off, so it must be the phase of the oscillator or something. At least give us an option to sync them so we don't have to deal with the inconsistency. 3. Give us some better filter options and make the current filter options (which are admittedly cool) more intuitive and clear. They're currently confusing and don't seem to have a huge impact on sound. Give us a traditional filter selection (LPF, HPF, BPF) that you can draw like the wave forms! Now that would be cool. You could also include resonance and important things like that. Let us shift the frequency range more easily, make it more transparent. 4. This one is really basic. Organize your patches into banks that we can control and utilize. Having a long list of 200 patches isn't very useful. Let us organize them into different customizable categories. 5. Give us more modulation options. Let us FM the first wave with the second wave. That would be really cool. The sky is the limit. The more innovative sound creation techniques you include, the better your app with be. Do some, or all, of these things and your synth will be up there with the best of them. In the mean time, I suggest people check out Magellan, Grain Science, and Animoog to see what a really awesome iPad synth can be. Come back and get Addictive Synth when they've made some necessary improvements. Show more

And here I thought these good reviews were just hyperbole.... I plugged in a decent set of headphones and ran through the presets, and was blown away by the sound. Fantastic pads, punchy arps...this is the sort of stuff that I love in a synth...just fantastic. Yeah, I always wondered why they called it "Addictive". Now I know. I can't wait to dig into this! Show more