LayR

What it does

A multi-timbral synthesizer in three tiers. A performance holds any number of instruments, each with its own MIDI channel and crossfading keyboard span, and each instrument holds up to 128 layers. A layer is a full synth: a dual oscillator morphing between two shapes, two state variable filters, a wave folder, two LFOs, two loopable ADSR envelopes running past 100 seconds, a random generator, and stereo delay, reverb and EQ on the output. An eight track, sixteen step arpeggio sequencer sits alongside, and any parameter can take a MIDI CC.

In the demo

Jade moves through the preset banks of pads, drones, effects, arps, keys and leads, each carrying a note on the range it suits. She then clears the screen, builds a layer from a sine wave, stretches the oscillator morph across 100 seconds, snaps tuning by double tap and sequences an arpeggio across three MIDI channels.

Worth knowing

How many layers run at once depends on the device, and a CPU percentage sits at the bottom of the screen. Jade had bought it the day before and says one show cannot cover it, pointing at the developer’s own hour-long tutorials.