Fugue Machine Rubato User Reviews

Customer Experience

Positive experience74.6% of reviews
Neutral6.3% of reviews
Negative experience19.0% of reviews

~ Based on 63 written reviews from the US App Store.

What users say

Is Fugue Machine Rubato Safe?

Fugue Machine Rubato appears safe based on user ratings. AppsHunter Safety Score for Fugue Machine Rubato is 90/100.

This assessment is based on 67 user ratings, with an App Store average of 4.8/5.

Safety Analysis

95.5% of ratings point to a safe experience
1.5% of ratings suggest some concerns
3.0% of ratings point to a risky experience

~ Based on 67 App Store ratings for Fugue Machine Rubato.

Is Fugue Machine Rubato Legit?

Fugue Machine Rubato appears to be a legitimate app. AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for Fugue Machine Rubato is 83/100.

Based on 83 of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data.

Top reviews

revised / Very good program / 4 stars due to difficult to see but if he clears this up - 10 stars

Just received a response from the developer (thank you!) and to bring my crashing issue up to date:
i was running multiple instances (3) of FMR and using 3 instances of the Pianoteq demo. My machine is an iPad M1 with 16gb RAM so it shouldn’t crash on what I consider to be a light load. Although I’m using iOS Logic Pro, that can have its own issues with processing, I believe the problem was with Pianoteq. It seems that the protection on the demo versions somehow are demanding a lot of processing power as when I finally purchased the product the crashing (and distortion) was gone. I don’t know how far I can push it but running as many as 5 instances of each app causes no issues.
Not mentioned earlier the problem was cos occurring in AUM.
I’m not giving this 5 stars because the color of the app still makes it difficult for this senior to see the settings and values.
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Response from developer

I'm not getting any crash reports. My first thoughts are that it may be an issue with Logic or the device running low on RAM. Feel free to email me at fuguemachinerubato@alexandernaut.com and I can try to help figure out what's going on. More color options and documentation will be worked on in the near future.

etwas entäuschend

Die Oberfläche ist kontrastarm und unübersichtlich. Gerade im Vergleich zur „alten“ Fugue Machine.

Karamba 🧑‍🚀 🛸

Was für ein komplexer und aufregend-intuitiv bedienbarer Monster-Sequenzer. 🧌
Mit seinen vielen einstellbaren Verläufen, welche nochmal mit Automationen beeinflusst werden können, fliegt man durch Galaxiencluster benachbarter Universen.
Und dann noch für Mac verfügbar - ein Träumchen.
Etwas klein im unteren Menübereich, trotz 13er IPad - hier würde ich mir ein Fenster zum nach oben verschieben oder nen Zoom wünschen.
Danke für diese wunderbare Neuauflage❕
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Needs more scale options, note bending,and better documentation

The lack of scale/modes/tuning is frustrating.

Please PLEASE add more scales …. There should be at least 30 scales and tunings to choose from

In many ways it’s a great tool that offers solutions to help create complex rhythmic phrasing / sequencing.

¿ Is there a way to bend notes ?
¿ Why is there NOT an easy / simple way to BEND notes?

Bending notes is very VERY important for expression.
Please implement that or explain how to glissando/bend pitches


The manual does not offer much information.

You can only have maximum 128 steps to a sequence !!!
Increasing that would be appreciated.
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Response from developer

Thanks for the message, will be getting back to rubato soon 🌀

interesting but unpolished

I’ve been using fugue machine rubato pretty regularly on both iPad and macOS.
The basic premise is interesting but there’s some major UX hurdles encountered pretty quickly.

There’s many nested menus hidden under multiple modifier buttons. Trying to save a pattern or protect has like 40 ways to easily lose all your work and one multi step process to save it. Ableton Link does not function with Ableton Live, pressing stop just resets the pattern.
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Response from developer

If you're referring to the menus within the popovers, those menus are contextual for specific parameters — essentially right click menus. The main parameters are all on the main interface. Every change you make to the sequencer is automatically written to disk and accessible in the Snapshots menu. The most recent 100 changes are stored, persisted between pattern changes, app terminations, etc.. This was designed to allow you to quickly change patterns without "Are you Sure?" menus, without worrying about losing your work if you intended to save. Ableton Link does work on my end, I just tested it again to verify. Please feel free to email fuguemachinerubato@alexandernaut.com if you'd like help troubleshooting.

interesting but poor usability

Seems like an interesting and promising app but the documentation is still very basic for such a complex app and the UI is quite bad (small text, low contrast, three-finger-tap on small button, how?).
Contacted support over a month ago but no reaction.
I hope for a future update to significantly improve overall usability. Until then, there fortunately are others apps making music with is actually fun.
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Response from developer

Apologies for missing your email, it seems to have slipped through the cracks on my end. I've been focused on some other projects recently, but will be getting back to Rubato soon. The manual, text, and contrast will be addressed. Re: 3-finger-tap on a small button, if you're referring to the shift buttons, you can tap down on the shift button and pan your finger anywhere on the screen and it will remained pressed. So you can put one finger down at a time and pan it out of the way for the next finger. This was designed to have parity between the iOS and Mac versions and to have modifiers on a touchscreen without having 4 separate modifier buttons. I find it hilarious that it actually works well, but for the record, 2/3-finger shift operations can mostly be achieved in other ways on a touchscreen

Amazing but..

I want to give this 5 stars, but I can’t do anything with this cool sequence I just did on my phone, there’s no way to render it to audio or midi or inter app audio or load this as an audio unit or anything which makes it worthless.. add any one of those and I’ll change this to a 5 star, but for a 20 something dollar app I expect at least one of those options
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Response from developer

It runs very well as an AUv3 MIDI plugin, just gotta make sure the AUv3 host supports MIDI plugins and if so, how to add them. IAA is deprecated, so I didn’t support it. And bouncing to MIDI is planned for a future update. Feel free to email me at alexander@alexandernaut.com if you have any questions

Impressive

Had this app, upon ChatGPT recommending the classic one, just a couple of days ago. I didn’t know this monster of a MIDI app existed.
2 days in, with zero knowledge, and I’m already having a blast!

Response from developer

🙏

Innovative Sequencer

I’m pretty satisfied with this unique sequencer. It’s one of a kind and will be one of the few sequencers I’ll use out of the 10 I already have. It’s feature packed and the layout is well designed. Alex added lots of his own presets to get things moving but for the price I REALLY wish this app had the ability to import midi files, as I literally have thousands of them. Also, I agree with the other reviewer who is asking for a randomization feature. I’ll give this app 5 stars if these two requests are implemented.
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Needs more scale options, note bending,and better documentation

In many ways it’s a great tool that offers solutions to help create complex rhythmic phrasing / sequencing.

¿ Is there a way to bend notes ?
¿ Why is there NOT an easy / simple way to BEND notes?

Bending notes is very VERY important for expression.
Please implement that or explain how to glissando/bend pitches


The manual does not offer much information.

You can only have maximum 128 steps to a sequence !!!
Increasing that would be appreciated.

The lack of scale/modes/tuning is frustrating.

Please PLEASE add more scales …. There should be at least 30 scales and tunings to choose from
Show more

Stellar app let down by lack of MIDI input

A very deep app, capable of totally unique sequences. The glaring omission is the lack of midi keyboard inputting of notes - it REALLY REALLY needs this - it’s the only thing holding back the app - I want to connect my Axis49 hexagonal midi controller via USB!

Great progression

I had the demo, but never had enough time to get really deep into this. Since the price dropped, I bought it and I’ve been working with it for hours and hours. It’s quite deep and I had to look into the manual which isn’t quite finished, for more information. I find it quite musical now much more than the first one. If you’ve got an Apple Pencil, it makes using this quite a lot better. And as people have been saying, the printing could be much easier if it was white. Anyway I think it’s a WOW sequencer and I have got a lot to compare to.
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Innovative

If you dig it, you will love it!

Nice idea, but hard to use

I really like the idea and the output is great. The big problem I have is the UI. The background is black. The text is a darkish gray and very small. It’s very very hard to read. I can make the window larger, but the text stays the same size. Why does the text have to be gray on a black background? This is on my iMac with a 27” screen. Great idea, but the app is very hard to use. If I could read the text I’d give the app five stars.
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Mind bending time bending

Go past the inbuilt sound engine and route some MIDI… fugue machine rubato will take you to new planes!! It’s such a deep and rich system to explore…

Solid and unique

Any video of this software will quickly demonstrate that its output can be captivating. The interface is excellent and feels only a little cramped on iPhone. However, it lacks support for batch operations or other quality of life features which might ease an otherwise tedious and repetitive workflow. Documentation is good but incomplete, and interface elements such as menus can be idiosyncratic; the learning process remains mostly intuitive. MIDI support is robust, and routing works well in Cubasis. The app is overall elegant, flexible and stable.
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Doesn’t work as AUv3 in Ableton

Despite saying that it supports AUv3 on Mac it doesn’t work in Ableton as a plugin. Misleading description at best.

Bad beginning

The first thing I wanted to do was: a preset with eight playheads running, to edit one playhead. However, in order to listen to what a single playhead is actually doing you need to disable the other seven playheads one by one (!!), instead of hitting a solo button, which obviously has been forgotten to provide. If you take this basic action further, listen to all the playheads and repeatedly pick one to fine-tune the settings you literally have to do hundreds of clicks or taps for simple editing. Next thing: the fonts are too small with no contrast, partly barely readable.
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Response from developer

The solo/mute buttons are in the global module. Tap the globe button in the bottom toolbar to show the global module, then tap the grabber button on the right side of the module to show its second page of parameters. There you'll find solo/mute buttons for the playheads, effects, midi outputs, and drum triggers.

Totally unique

Original and inspiring take on composing, learning curve is real but worth it!
I’d request midi import, and more note names to extend composing power

Incredible, just needs..

So unique, learning curve is might take 3 days.
Logic Pro on ipad is fiddly and the manual and tutorials need more work.
But get this , it's incredible