SynthMaster 2

What it does

A two-layer synth for iPad, running standalone or as an AUv3. Each layer carries two oscillators that can be a wavetable, a plain waveform or an imported sample, with a filter, envelopes, LFOs, an arp sequencer, routing and effects behind them. The browser holds 1840 presets and filters them by instrument type, attribute and sound designer, covering bass, bowed strings, brass, drums, guitar, mallets, organs, pianos, reeds, sound effects, leads, pads and vocals. An in-app shop sells more banks, and a SynthMaster owner on desktop can bring their existing presets across.

In the demo

Jade works through the preset banks at length, then opens the sounds she likes to see how they were built, editing an arp sequence, swapping an oscillator to a sample and muting layers. She loads it into GarageBand as an AUv3 and keeps duplicating tracks, reaching ten running instances on a 2018 iPad without a crash.

Worth knowing

Notes hang occasionally, which is what the panic button is for, and one sticks during the demo. Patch building from scratch is only sketched here, so the video is mostly the preset library.