Hideously Beautiful

This guy is ugly. Maybe even fugly. Its got a pretty terrible feel to it in terms of looks and UI, but it sounds flippin great!! Im fairly new to synthesizers, but I have had a career as a professional recording, performing musician here in Seattle so I am not new to music production. However, I have always been produced rather than self producing (couldnt juggle both, and having a producer always improved my output) but Ive gigged and had studio time with many synth players so Im very familiar with synthesized sounds. Over the last five years I have learned synthesizing with a full set of Moogerfoogers, two outboard hardware Moog synths, two Moog theremins, a Streichhfett string/pad synth modules, a Kaossilator Pro, a Voicelive Pro 2, a Beatstep Pro, a U87, SM7B, 12 outboard signal chain modules in two separate API 500 series lunchboxes filled with Neve, SSL, HA, Moog, preamps, compressors, EQ, filters, bass/subsonic synth resonance modules, a delay, a tape emulation, and a control voltage mixer patchbay. Now that I have familiarized myself with the fundamental usages of hardware synths, I have fallen in love with iOS music production. The sound quality of many of the current top apps are definitely good enough for professional use.

I own as use a just about every iOS music/sound production app, and this one sounds really impressive. Most of the presets are pretty stylized towards electronic music, which works great for my own music. It really stimulates my creativity with just the presets alone so Ive yet to dig into its guts and tweak since Ive only had it for two days now. I agree with another review that criticized the file management system. So far Ive been having trouble even finding pretty basic features. An app like this ends up in my queue because I know that I am going to have to spend some time watching videos and reading manuals. I dont mind doing it, but its so time-consuming and it takes me away from my workflow. So many other sound and music production apps have terrific user interfacing designs, so it obviously can be done. I wish it wasnt so hard on the eyes, and its somewhat frustrating to have such a beautiful piece of hardware like the iPad Air 2 only to have your screen filled with a low resolution looking design. If they are able to spruce things up a bit and implement a more intuitive file management system and general user interface that would make this app but total sleeper.

kotihu-at-gmail-dot-com about Caustic