A week ago I made the review of CMP Grand Piano. Now it’s time to review Colossus Piano. I am very lucky because the developer sent me a redeem code to unlock all the in app purchases. Unfortunately, my iPad has not enough free space to download all of them. For example the Master peace of this App is Colossius Concert Grand 14tGb! All the in app purchases need around 30Gb of Free space to be downloaded, so I will post a review for each of the packs. In this App there an Electric Piano pack also… when I saw it I was a little bit intrigued. What’s about the the Fender Rhodes or the Wurlitzer Tremolo effect? No problem, 2 more knobs come with the Electric Piano pack: Tremolo frequency & Tremolo depth. More, 1 other knob, The Pad volume.... in fact, for each loaded instrument you can choose to add a Pad "sound" layer. (Violins). I like that even if the purists will find this function a little superfluous. Also, an Electronic Music mode. The 2 Tremolo knobs are replaced by one. A Tremolo speed. The Pianos installed from this set : 1 Electric Grand & Electric Mix. 2 FM Electric Grand & 1 FM Electric Mix. 3 Clarinets & 1 Reed Piano. 5 Fender Rhodes. 4 Wurlitzers. 1.6 Gb of stereo samples. (24 bit / 96 KHz) In use: I had a little problem with AUM App, perhaps due to my iPad (Air 1) and the memory uses by Colossius Piano. No problem with Audiobus and the Audio Unit version. Switching from an instrument to another as well as adding the Pad layer or using the Electronic mode takes a little time. With the Audio Unit version, it’s not a big “problem”. It is a little bit more annoying with the IAA version because of the lack of a presets library. (You have to swipe to select an instrument, and each time you swipe Colossius Piano load an instrument.) The Audio Unit version is very simple. Only the Presets library. No other features. The other features: (Stand Alone and IAA version) The built in keyboard can be enlarge. Note that I had a little problem when I tried to use it with Audiobus. (I had to hit the keyboard keys so hard, that I decided to use 2 Midi controller's Apps.) Another great feature is the Hermode Tuning: Makes the sound more brilliant by controlling the pitch of the notes in multivoiced music to better frequency ratios than with fixed tuning. Note that the polyphony can be set to up 140 voices. The MIDI velocity response curve can be set via the editor to fine tune your MIDI keyboard, you can save them as presets. Also, a Reverb: 18 presets. A great quality of processing… In the second page is dedicated to the Midi file player and recorder. Unlimited MIDI tracks. (You can import MIDI files via iTunes files sharing) I had a little bug here, when I was playing a Midi track and tried to switch from a Piano to another. Problem was resolved when I stopped the Midi file before to swipe to another Piano. To conclude, the Electric Piano Pack is really great I love the sound. I am really happy to have a Clavinet too! Take your time with this App and everything should be OK. A Killer sound set! A Must Have!
Review by Ed
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Speak Unit is unique in the App Store because it’s the only Audio Unit App that can speak text. Speak Unit is a Robot, and because of this he has a typical accent from the Robot’s Galaxy. He can talk 12 phrases of 150 characters. I love Robots. I love speak to text Apps. I love also the unique Apps. Because of this, a Killer Apps! A Must Have! Note that the Audio Unit version allows you to save all your phrases.
Review by Ed The App Store description starts with this: The second best sounding piano app in the App Store (after "Colossus Piano")! So, below the beginning of the Colossus Piano description: Colossus Piano sets a new standard in terms of realism, detail and overall quality of piano sounds on your iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. There are 8 acoustic piano models available as 8 individual in-app purchases, plus 5 E-Piano legends bundled as 1 sound set with this app, together those 13 piano models make up 30 Gigabyte of sound material. All keys of all piano models were recorded in full length with a recording quality of 24 bit and 96 kHz stereo. Now, let’s talk about CMP Grand. I do not know if you all know that I had to stop Apps4idevices for 3 long years. The first two years, I had no internet connection, and because of this, I missed a lot of new Apps, among others, Colossus Piano that I just discovered at the moment. So, it’s seems that Colossus Piano has replaced CMP Grand Piano. More Piano types and some features that you can find in the other Apps from Crudebyte like the ability to set the keyboard size and the great and unconventional Preset library. CMP Grand comes with a Grand Piano and a Jazz Piano. 1.7Gb of audio samples (real time disk streaming). 2 more pianos are available from the store: Concert Piano (1.6Gb) and Upright Pianimo (1.1Gb). Because of this the sound quality of these piano is just awesome! Another great feature is the Hermode Tuning: Makes the sound more brilliant by controlling the pitch of the notes in multivoiced music to better frequency ratios than with fixed tuning. Note that the polyphony can be set to up 140 voices. The MIDI velocity response curve can be set via the editor to fine tune your MIDI keyboard, you can save them as presets. Also, a Reverb (Echo / Reverb) with 17 presets is present in the App. A great quality of processing… In the second page a Midi file player and recorder. Unlimited MIDI tracks. (You can import MIDI files via iTunes files sharing) To conclude, CMP Grand was my favourite Piano App until that I am writing this review. I have now to go to my favourite Internet coffee in PinKlao to download Colossus Piano. My rating? Because of what the developer wrote in its App Store description, a Killer App but not a Must Have. The Must Have have should be Colossus Piano....
Review by Ed This is my favourite reverb from the App Store. I love it for its processing quality, for its versatility for the 4 band EQ and the Early Reflection Modeling parameters. Because all this Parameters you can use a big Reverb, even a huge one as a Taj Mahal like I used to do with my guitar. Below, the App Store description. A Killer App! A Must Have! A note: In the App Store description it's write Audiobus 2 compatible but AudioReverb is also Audiobus 3 compatible! 4 vidéos here: The first one is the Audio Unit version. v2.0.3 The second one is the IAA version. v1.1.2 The video 3 & 4 are My Love Story and Romeo and Juliet recording. 2 Songs that I play live. The Reverb is AudioReverb. App Store description: Studio quality reverb for AUv3 compatible hosts / Audiobus / Inter-app audio and songs from your iTunes music library. AudioReverb is an algorithmic reverberation app which combines the flexibility of vintage algorithmic reverbs with the sonic quality of convolution based reverbs. The creation of high quality reverb needs a realistic simulation of the important early reflections together with a smooth and colorless reverberation tail. The early reflections are the most important clue for the human ear to get a feeling about the dimension and character of a room. Most algorithmic reverbs offer a number of different algorithms to simulate different natural rooms like chamber, halls or artificial ones like plates. AudioReverb uses impulse responses from real acoustic spaces and classical reverb algorithms to emulate their acoustical properties. The resulting reverberation sets new standards in clarity and sense of space ! Use AudioReverb for enhancing your listening experience with your favourite iTunes songs. Use AudioReverb as professional reverb plugin to improve the quality of any Audiobus or Inter-app audio compatible App. • Smooth reverb tail generation. • Early Reflection Modelling. • 118 factory presets. • 4 Band Equalizer. • AudioUnit for AUv3 compatible hosts. • Inter-app audio compatible effect. • Audiobus 2 compatible as input/effect/output (requires iOS 7 or newer). • Reverberate any song in your iTunes library. • Low latency live usage with mic and headphones. • Audio recorder. • Upload to SoundCloud and File Export. • Audio pasteboard for exporting to other Apps Review by Ed BeatHawk is a 16 tracks Drum Machine, or Soundboard, or DrumPads, or Sequencer or a Workstation. The App is so well done that you can use it as you like. So well done that the Audio Unit version allows you to do exactly the same things that you can do with the Stand Alone version. Note that it is not so usual... On the main window, 16 Pads. On their left side, a Volume button: Tap it and play the selected Pad (track) with the 16 Pads. Each Pads come with a different volume setting (from 7 to 127). A Mute button allows you to Mute all the desired Pads. The Scale window turns BeatHawk into a real sequencer because of its two one octave keyboards. Yes, unlike a lot of Drum Machines, here you can play chords, select a scale and the root note as well. Top! A little further down, the Erase button, the Select and the Repeat (Pad) button. On the other side, the Edit window where you can load a Sample from the Library (you can also import your own samples from here),.set the pan, pitch, and gain of the selected Pad. Also, a Delay, a Reverb, a LP and HP Filter send slider. (The parameters for these 4 FXS can be found in preferences menu). A Record window where you can record the input signal, an ADSR window, a Sample window where you can Trim and Stretch a sample. The Pattern window where you can select a Pattern, copy it and paste it, set its length from 1 bar to 16 bars, and the shortcut to jump to the sequencer. Here also a great feature... depending of the way you are using BeatHawk, or the track you like to edit you can switch ftom a conventional sequencer (select a track and the grid editor will display the note's pitch on the vertical axis) or the "Drum Machine" sequencer where all the tracks are display on the grid. The song mode is really great too and here also a great feature which allows you to mute or not a track from a Pattern. In summary, BeatHawk is more than very well done... BeatHawk is very, very, very well done. Very very easy to use. You can automated all the parameters. The Audio Unit version is awesome and impressed me a lot... Before to say the magic quote, I have to talk about the online Store. so many Packs there.. so many kinds of packs... middle east, asia, vintage keynoards, piano,..(Check out the last section of the tutorial below). So, it's time to say the magic quote now: A Killer App, a Must Have!
Enkl is a monophonic synthesizer developed by Klevgränd produkter AB. (Among my favourite developer team). First a little overview. 2 Oscillators, 2 LFOs with an ADSR sections on the left and right side of the screen. 3 buttons at the top of the screen control how the two oscillators are combined;: added together, subtracted from one another or multiplied. In the middle of the screen, the last section where the signal will transit before to output, with an High Cut filter and an ADSR. An FX button will open a pop-up for the delay and EQ parameters. A ping Pong delay with a stereo width. EQ: 3 bands with the ability to set the cut-off points between the 3 bands. This is cool! Also on the top, a Legato and an Arpeggio switches. For the 2 Oscillators, 4 waveforms: triangle, sawtooth, square or noise. The filter button for each oscillator controls whether the central filter section is applied or not. The 3 pitch sliders control the octave, semitone and cent-level tuning. An independent LFO for each of the 2 oscillators: 5 waveform types with a button to switch between amplitude or frequency modulation of the oscillator, an ADSR envelope with a gain and frequency controls. For the keyboard: by default, a small, one-octave keyboard with 2 arrows on the left side to shift the octave. On the right side a magnifying glass icon. A Tap on it will display a larger keyboard with more options. A Scale, Key and Octave settings.When a note is touched, drag left or right to pitch bend.By touching and dragging the note’s Y-axis, the extended keyboard can affect filter or modulation. (It is possible to assign filter or modulation to the Y-axis). Now for the sound: I really love it! Great for Bass and Lead. In summary, Enkl is very well done, very easy to use. The keyboard is great and the generated sound top! It’s a very good option to create a Bass line sound very fast. A Killer little monophonic synthesizer!
Review by Ed This application simulates the acoustics of a room and reproduces the sound signals for the two ears of a virtual listener inside the room. The sound sources take their signals from the left and right input channels (coming from a microphone, Inter-App Audio, or the AUv3 host application) and can be moved in real time by dragging the loudspeaker symbols on the screen. The listener can be moved by dragging the head symbol. Alternatively, sliders can be used to set the positions (including along the vertical Z dimension), as well as source gains and the listener azimuth. The simulated acoustic environment can be chosen from three different rooms with different sizes. Current settings can be copied in a text format to and from the clipboard. The unique mirroring function lets you create a balanced stereo setup simply by pressing a button. Above, this is a part of the App Store description… There are 3 rooms, a small, a medium and large. There are no preset library in the Stand Alone and IAA version but the copy and paste feature only and perhaps that this option is much more better, because it’s not a Reverb. Or a Reverb that works in the opposite side... Here, the settings are for you, the listener and the 2 input sources. To be able to move the listener and the 2 input sources with you fingers, it's Top. You can easily follow the images from a movie while you are making the sound design, or even the soundtrack in a DAW like Auria. , it's top! . VirtualRoom AU can be used by sound engineers, sound designers, musicians, videos editor, even Djs. The processed signal is great, the UI too (you can work on several VirtualRoom plugins at the same time), so without any hesitation, VirtualRoom is a Killers App, a Must Have! Audio Unit (plugins) / IAA / Stand Alone Review by Ed Zeeon synth is the new release from Beep Street, after iSequence one of the first iOS workstation. GyroSynth a gesture synthesiser for iPhone. Sunrizer synth, a synthesiser which never leave my iPad and Impaktor. I use it for my live performances... So, Zeeon synth is a virtual analog synth. 2 layers plus a Noise layer. Each layers come with 2 oscillators. A Filter module, 2 LFO and a Drive. In the Panel 2 a Voice settings module, a Chorus, a Reverb and a Delay. With this, you have already a Killer Synthesiser for the generated sound. A versatile synthesiser. Great for the Bass, Lead sound, great for the Pad too. Certainly the best analog vintage synthesiser from the App Store. Despite this, this is not the highlight of Zeeon synth, the great 16 steps sequencer either... (Stand Alone version only) No, the highlight is the Matrix... The Matrix allows you to setnd 17 signal source to 42 targets! 8 slots are available for each layer! All the parameters of Zeeon synth can be controlled via MIDI.... I let you imagine what you can do with an external MIDI Controller and the Matrix... In summary, for the generated sound, it's a Killer App, a Must Have! With the Matrix it's a?. Euh,... it's a already the max rating.... It's an App that will stay in my iPad for the next 5 or ten years like Sunrizer.
Review by Ed Ruismaker FM description from the website developer: Ruismaker FM is like the crazy twin-sister to the classic Ruismaker drum synth. Instead of using virtual analog modelling, it sports a single, custom FM (‘Frequency Modulation’) synthesis engine capable of creating a vast bandwidth of different types of sounds. The theory behind FM is too complex to go into right here, but essentially it works by taking an oscillator (called ‘the carrier’, like a sine wave or a pulse wave) and changing its frequency so fast that all sorts of overtones - known as ‘sidebands’ - become audible in the signal. Although FM can be done using analog equipment, the most effective way to do it is using digital algorithms (analog’s charming quirkiness tends to introduce side effects that sometimes makes FM hard to control properly in a musical way). Ruismaker FM uses this type of digital FM synthesis to create percussive sounds. It is capable of creating powerful synth kicks, noisy snares and metallic hihats, but truly comes to life when doing more unconventional sounds (zaps, blips, whirrs, clicks, hollow or metallic effects) or even bass lines. Because it is designed to do percussion, it comes with some specific parameter behavior and waveforms that are optimised for percussive sounds and effects - typically not found on other FM synths. If you like to read the Ruismaker FM review, read the words in bold and underlined.only. If you like to read the Ruismaker review read all words excepted the underlined words. I already reviewed Troublemaker & Ruismaker from this developer. I will review soon, Ruismaker FM, the FM version of Ruismaker I hope that I will be able to review all the Apps from Brian Ross. If not, very very sad I will be, because a big fan of this developer I am… (one more time, I am talking like a Jedï…). I love the UI, I love the generated sound, I love the concept… I also love their User manual which allows me to save a lot of time while I am making my review and tutorial… So, Ruismaker FM… first, if you download this App, use an headphone, you will be able to listen to the quality of the generated signal. A lot of dynamics which is not so easy to find with in a Drum FM Synthesizer Machine and this even if you start to shape the sound of an instrument track. I love this… Ruismaker FM its two modules. Euh, no, it’s 2 Apps in one. A Midi Drum FM Synthesizer Machine and a Sequencer, an Euclidean Pattern sequencer… an Euclidean Midi Pattern sequencer… an Euclidean Polyrhythm Midi Pattern sequencer… I think that I have to make a little break and to give you some explanations… Why it’s not 2 modules, but 2 Apps? With the Audio Unit version, there is no sequencer as we have in the Stand Alone version and in the IAA one… does it means that we can not use the Ruismaker Euclidean Pattern sequencer? No… with Audiobus 3 you can load Ruismaker FM as a Midi input… at this moment, you can use it as midi sequencer to control another App, but you can also use it to control the Audio Unit version of Ruismaker FM loaded in Audiobus 3 or in another App. Check out the tutorial below… note that you can Tap on the GM keymap button located on the first parameters line of the Drum Synthetiser to play the 6 8 available instruments tracks with the Audiobus Midi keyboard or another one. Jump to the C4 octave of your MIDI Controller and play.. Now Euclidean. Euclid was a Greek mathematician from 300 B.C. who came up with an algorithm to calculate the Greatest Common Divisor (GCD) for any set of two numbers. http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~godfried/publications/banff.pdf. It means that this sequencer is not a classic sequencer… don’t try to tap on the grid,… no events will be added to it. Use the Beats button to add beats… set the number of steps for each of 6 8 available tracks from 1 to 32 and use the shift button to move all the selected tracks in an Euclidean style. Add an accent or not, use the Mutation button to add random beat to your track and if your not happy with this track, tap on the randomize button… you can also load a sequence from the Library or save yours. Before to conclude, let’s talk about the Drum FM Synthetiser. 6 8 instruments tracks. You can load 8 Snares, 8 Kicks if you like, or else and save this Preset. The first line of parameters are applied to all tracks instruments: Delay time & Feedback / Reverb and Volume. An edit button open a menu and allows you to randomize the parameters for all or the selected channel. To initialise a channel, to copy and paste it too. An High Pass and a Peaking filter are also present on this line a randomize button is also available. On the second line, the parameters for the selected track instrument: an Oscillator & Pitch, a Modulator with amount & Speed, Attack, Decay, Saturate, Tune / Decay / Personality / Drive / Bitcrush / Delay Send, Pan and Level. The line of Pads below allows you to play the sound of the selected track and select an Instrument preset. So, now my conclusion… I love the Drum Synthetiser… the generated sounds… I also love the sequencer… the possibilities that he can offer to an ex Punk, ex New Wave, ex Rocker and old Electro music lover. I remember the day I listened to the first Tom York solo album… the Eraser… the Drum programming… so far from me… my internal Drum Machine programming system. And it’s too bad because, I love this kind of rhythms so much… Euh, no, it’s was too bad…. Now, I will use the Ruismaker App… a Killer App. A Must Have!
Review by Ed Italizer is made to create sound & Fx for Dub and Reggae. To generate the sound Fx, a monophonic Synthesiser: On the left side of the screen, a wave frequency rotating knob, a wave selector (Sine, Saw, Square, Triangle, Noise), a a 4-pole lowpass filter and 2 LFOs with a frequency selection for each. (LFO 1 sin LFO 2 square). This is for the synthesizer engine. (Note that it’s not a conventional synthesizer. You can not play note with it but you can trigger the sound with an external keyboard, or another App or the built in keyboard of the AUM and the Audiobus App). A great emulation of a Tape delay is also present with a Tap Tempo. In addition Italizer comes with a customizable X/y Pad. A latch mode, a Loop for the delay (feedback), a Trigger switch and a sync feature. Italizer comes with the Ableton Link feature and all the parameters can be controlled via MIDI, like all the other Apps from Numerical. Italizer is really easy to use and can generate all the sound Fx that we can hear in a Dub track, from the Siren sound, the loop delay, the noises, all the sound Fx. To make my video I used a track from The Clash: Bankrobber, and I had a lot of fun to play with it. I am not a specialist in Dub or Reggae, but I am sure that Italizer can be a Must Have for Dub or Reggae band in live or studio. A Killer App, a Must Have! Review by Ed |
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