Sunrizer synth for Android

I very rarely write reviews …( no time ) but gees I got to give credit where credit is due . This is probably one of the best 5 synths for the Mobile bar none. GET IT, YOU WONT REGRET IT ! ;)

It’s been a while since I’ve used any iOS synths with all this hardware laying around. But I just picked up my Mobile to check out something on the App Store when I noticed Sunrizer had an update available. I’m happy to see BeepStreet supporting this app since I purchased it in 2012. The sound quality, layout, touch response, and everything as a whole is superb. I bond with this synth every time I use it. Not many soft-synths make me feel a connection like Sunrizer does. When I feel that connection, I can easily lose track of time... and that’s the sign of a great synth!

This is in some ways a really good, good-sounding synthesizer. Why, then, the crappy “rating” (whatever those don’t mean)? I’ve reached the point of disgust with music apps that change my preset names and change my actual settings. The name change here is the imposition of capitalization where the developer wants to see it. The setting changes happen while I configure patches, fighting the interface to get where I want to go. The GUI here, as in many synthesizers, pushes the user toward settings the developer prefers - or, more correctly, away from setting the developer would prefer we did not use. In many cases, such fractional note or frequency or MIDI or, more typically (and uselessly), such frowned-upon percentage values are available through the GUI, though they are a battle to find. In this app, as in most music apps, we cannot type in the value we want to use. No, we fiddle with the GUI. This is fine for fooling around, but if you know what you are looking for, the battle is not amusing. What is worse is that after battling the interface to achieve a setting, the app very often promptly loses that setting, replacing it either immediately or after a restart with values the developer, Google, or someone else prefers. For the user paying for the device and the software, what becomes plain is that what the user wants to do with an app is only acceptable so long as that usage falls within some unspoken set of limits on what characters can appear in what combinations in a given app. I have heard the theory that floating-point processing is to blame for supposedly minor settings changes, because of rounding. Well, no. Floating-point processing is historically tied to surveillance and spying, but the changes this processing produces tend to be consistent and, indeed, minor. The changes in settings (and sometimes text) we see in App Store software like - for many increasingly annoying years - Sunrizer are not minor and they are not inaudible. And the changes vary from developer to developer, with a few commonalities more more related to certain ranges of ANSI/Unicode values than to number-rounding errors. It may be the settings changes devolve to Google and nation-state surveillance practices. Or they could be one of the sad DRM things Google and other tech companies do to appease the copyright lobby and to make themselves feel better about software cracking. Whatever - it makes little difference to me right now where all the blame belongs. But then the infuriating jumpiness of the GUI displays, in which getting a desired value can be a nasty business, still falls squarely on Beep Street, as do the crashes I get if I battle with a preset for too long. This is on a current-OS, not-old pad using OLD software. The funny thing is, I like this developer, and left a rating review in response to the current update. Then I went to edit some patches. I struggled, as usual, then crashed - despite nothing else being on at all and frequent saving - again as usual. I want to like this app. Alas, in practice I do not - and the reasons are in the front of my mind once again.

After all these years it’s nice to see this synth is not abandoned

Let me start out by saying this was one of my first iOS synth app purchases back in 2012. Over the years this app still is in my top ten of ‘must have’ apps for audio production. I own at least 100 or more audio apps, own ten iOS devices, and have been beta testing apps since 2012 so I would like to think I know a little bit about audio apps (or most apps in general). IMHO- Beepstreat makes some of the best apps in town. This app still gets the support and attention it deserves. I am not just a fangirl but a user of this app who after all these years still uses it on the weekly. It is not everyday that an app this good is very affordable, updated, sounds great, is easy to use, and solid.