Core Synth HD

free version is super obnoxious with the ads. i kind of liked the sound though, so i upgraded to pro. not much in the way of extra features there. still like the base sound synthesizer, so as a simple noisemaker it is kind of fun, but it has a LOT of that microclickiness/glitching at the start/end of sounds played, regardless of attack setting, making it of limited use. feels a little slopped together overall. the sound is cool enough that it could be a good app with a bit of developer TLC, but in its current state ... eh.

I was looking for a synth similar to the Octave Kat that served as my first synth so I could teach my 4 year old sound design. (That's not as crazy as it may sound). Unfortunately this little app lacks a few things I would want... Detuning on both osc's would have been nice, the fine tuning was hard to control (never could dial in a value less than 4 and that was a pain), you can't seem to map anything but an LFO to the mod wheel (my first thought is to use the mod wheel to alter the filter), no noise!?! That's a crying shame, the best part of learning synthesis is making spooky wind and thunder sounds... Heh. The graphics are a bit meh, seems like it could have been a bit more vintage looking, but that's me being picky. The bottom line is that it generally it sounds weak and less than impressive.

I was looking for a synth similar to the Octave Kat that served as my first synth so I could teach my 4 year old sound design. (That's not as crazy as it may sound). Unfortunately this little app lacks a few things I would want... Detuning on both osc's would have been nice, the fine tuning was hard to control (never could dial in a value less than 4 and that was a pain), you can't seem to map anything but an LFO to the mod wheel (my first thought is to use the mod wheel to alter the filter), no noise!?! That's a crying shame, the best part of learning synthesis is making spooky wind and thunder sounds... Heh. The graphics are a bit meh, seems like it could have been a bit more vintage looking, but that's me being picky. The bottom line is that it generally it sounds weak and less than impressive.

First off, it's a very useful teaching tool. A very simple visual layout of the basic tools needed for subtractive synthesis. Novice synth explorers can get comfortable quickly. But... The numbering system for the Oscillator Octaves is backwards. 16' is supposed to be the Lowest Octave and 1' should be the Highest Octave. (On a real pipe organ,a 16' pipe is much lower in pitch than a 1' pipe. That's where these values came from.)

For retro sounds and current lead sounds it's awesome, but it needs to be able to produce sine waves for sub basses. It could also use a polyphony option, but that isn't really necessary. Besides those two things, however, this is a great app and I suggest it.