# Spectral Eye — user reviews > 56 indexed App Store user reviews of Spectral Eye by Secret Base Design, rated 4.90/5 from 82 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/spectral-eye/id546934084/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/spectral-eye/id546934084.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 78 · 4★ 2 · 3★ 0 · 2★ 0 · 1★ 2 ## Newest reviews (17 of 56) ### 5/5 — Gold! *2022-08-02, version 2.0* This app helped my tremendously for my ear training! ### 5/5 — Spiral Graph FTW *2022-06-30, version 2.0* Just try it ### 5/5 — It hears very well *2021-12-19, version 2.0* I likewatching the rings go round n round. Up the scales and down tothe ground. Ill definitely be checking out more of your apps! ### 5/5 — Brilliant! *2020-09-27, version 2.0* OMG! 😳 It’s so magical! I think this measurement technique must be implemented on all modern devices. It’s absolutely genius, simple and so much explanatory! Everyone can learn a lot about sound, notes tones and voice tuning just by interacting with this amazing tool! ### 5/5 — See the sounds around you *2020-09-17, version 2.0* A fantastic app. So simple but does exactly what it’s supposed to do. No frills and yet it has a lovely interface. It’s a lot of fun to see what makes up the sounds that surround you. 5 stars ### 5/5 — Awesome Info Panel with Actual Information *2020-08-30, version 2.0* This is a really neat way to interact with sound and music. It took a little bit, and a look at the info pane, to “get it,” but now that I do, this is proving to be a fantastic tool with sound design. Especially when aiming for complex synth sounds intending to suggest, but not state, different timbres to hint at, say a trumpet, but not to BE a trumpet. And in fact can help super nerds actually veer away from specific instrument “sounds,” by allowing them/us to see which harmonics to avoid. To say nothing about how it can help tune a drum set or drum machine. Truly a stellar bit of kit for anyone into sound for the sake of sound. This means musicians, physicists, sound designers, and anyone who wants to understand what makes THAT wobble, that drives them/us good-mad, better than the other wobble that just annoys them/us or makes us bad-mad. I’d love to see a graphics update, but for free I’m not even remotely complaining. I also ask that you make a way that people who DO want to throw resources at you be given at least some way to do so. Not necessarily with a purchase. It probably wouldn’t be employed a lot, so it would be imprudent to create a specific commercial account, but a simple means of sending a couple bucks here and there would help you see that people DO appreciate developers, and that we want you to keep developing. Some of us also get how evil certain... let’s call them “business arrangements,” can be. How many times can a dollar be taxed before the one being taxed has to pay more than the dollar earned? [rhetorical] Developers: thanks for the stellar tool, and for making it free, AND free of ads! I’ve actually been just quitting anything that ads AT me anymore, and the ads that open something?!? Bad-mad for sure! I’ve also avoided “in app purchase,” apps for a long, long time. At least since the first few burned me. I find both approaches to be dishonest. DRM is another nightmare too vast a topic to get into. The ultra short version is that spending resources (time, money, creativity, at least) on inconveniencing the people who actually support the product and/or developer takes resources from making an app or product, or service, or support, or anything that can take something from good to OMG TAKE MY MONEY. I want apps that inspire OMG TMM, and these days products have to overcome product abandonment burns too. Sorry this is so long, I don’t get out much. ### 5/5 — Dear Dev, can you make this open source? *2020-08-08, version 2.0* I wish this, exactly this, was included in every synth. Because trying to recreate a specific sound using pretty much any synth is soooo much more difficult without a spectrum analizer such as this. But it's fairly rare to find any on the app store that actually show the notes, and the octives, in such an easy layout such as this. But I mainly came here to say, that it's 2020. Audiobus 3 is here. Auv3 is here too. Add some ios versions later, and sadly, this app kind of only works with the mic now. If you launch it with AUM... Well... It doesn't launch at all. AUM gives an error and suggests you try again. And if you launch it with Audiobus 3, it actually launches, but it receives no audio from Audiobus... It just continue to receive mic, and Audiobus thinks this app is "asleep". So I'm still using it, with just the mic. I play back audio through my phones speaker, lol. Not ideal, but it's still the best, and it's free. This app needs to be updated, but maybe the dev doesn't have time. Any chance it could be released as open source? Then maybe someone else would be willing to update it, to keep it functioning fully? ### 5/5 — It’s fun and gives a different perspective *2020-07-05, version 2.0* I’m enjoying it. ### 5/5 — absolutely worth everything *2020-05-12, version 2.0* great tool for visualizing sound frequencies. Analyzing music. It‘s for me (and I tested a lot) the best app of that kind in the app store! ❤️👏 ### 5/5 — Works *2020-02-04, version 2.0* Thanks What’s the red dot below the spectral eye for? ### 5/5 — This is my all-time favorite app *2019-12-14, version 2.0* All that needs to be said. ### 5/5 — Gos Bless You *2019-11-17, version 2.0* ... For trying your heart beats. ### 5/5 — Great analysis tool! *2019-08-20, version 2.0* Great way to have a look at song harmonics! Would love to see a circle of fifth version!!! Maybe a pro version? I‘m in for 5 bucks! ### 5/5 — Super... *2019-05-09, version 2.0* DOPE ! ### 5/5 — Spectrum Analysis Readable *2019-04-08, version 2.0* Finally someone had the genius to arrange a graph of soundwaves for musicians not technicians - thank you so much ! ### 5/5 — Nice app! *2019-02-21, version 2.0* Useful for study notes and armony ### 5/5 — iOS 12 *2018-10-26, version 2.0* Does not seem to work anymore. Please fix! - I would really like to pay for this app, if background core-midi-out would work. Thanks anyway. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Is it working?? *2025-08-20, version 2.0* Not for me… ### 1/5 — Was great but no update so microphone stays on 24/7/365 *2024-02-29, version 2.0* This app used to be great but now it does not present a choice to use the microphone only when the app is active. You have to turn the mic on in the iPhone Settings Spectral Eye app settings to get it to work. There is no option in the app to only let the app use the mic when the app is open. If you close the app the app still keeps the microphone connected, until you go back to iPhone Settings Spectral Eye app settings to manually turn the microphone off. The multistep process takes all the fun out of it, and the microphone staying on after you close the app seems creepy. Sorry to complain but this app should be pulled from the store if development and updates are dead. Thank you. ### 2/5 — Could be very good. *2016-04-04, version 1.3* But since the "pro version" is not available in the UK App Store, it kind of makes this app pointless. Shame...until we can go pro here in Blighty. ### 2/5 — Pretty but not very useful. *2014-01-03, version 1.3* No frequencies on chart. Graphs flash by in real time, way too quickly to see what range an instrument is using. Amplitude is size of dots, much harder to follow and less exact than bar graphs. It does not match concert pitch, which the authors point out. Without freqs and accurate notes, it's a toy. GREAT IDEA and fun to play with, but not a meaningful tool for mixing or production. ### 2/5 — Brilliant Ideal! *2012-09-02, version 1.0* Brilliant concept but it doesn't work right. Even in a silent, quiet room it's display is reacting like I am standing in the middle of a marching band that's playing at full volume. What's with that? Two stars for the design concept but that's all since it really doesn't work right...at least on my New iPad. Glad it was free. It should support landscape mode and have a maximizable screen display the removes everything except for the actual meter graphics. A hold from time feature that has already suggested would be a good addition. Also, the help doesn't explain what the small, thin white lines are that shorten and disappear. ### 3/5 — Great Idea *2012-11-09, version 1.0* Well, I can say it's a great idea, because I had the very same idea. I haven't written such an app yet, but I intend to. Some of the problems I anticipated are realized in this app. One of them is that FFT divisions don't line up with musical notes well. FFT is linear, and sound is logarithmic. You can see this by looking at the spiral. The higher notes have many dots between them. The lower notes each share a dot. The result is that it is somewhat useful for middle C and higher, but the octave below middle C is passable, and octaves below that are not that useful. This is very apparent when listening to music. The melody is usually easy to follow, but the bass line is muddy, if even discernible at all. Ideally, it should dance well visually with the melody. This may require some sort of encoding to a logarithmic data set where the FFT can be applied. Having said all this, I will be bringing the app to the club the next time I go to listen to some music. An FFT with finer resolution would also solve the problem, but, of course, there is a trade off between FFT resolution and performance. Use too high a resolution, and you won't be able to use a high enough sampling rate. I'd also like to see things besides octaves modeled. For example, thirds and fifths are important in music, too. These could be modeled with tighter spirals. Or maybe dots of a different color shown third away, etc. There are all sorts of possibilities. ### 4/5 — The way to sound freedom *2023-10-14, version 2.0* Most excellent app and further development from the company worth investing.thank you ### 4/5 — Gracias *2013-07-09, version 1.2* What an app! It's multidimensional and layers deep. I will have to explore further it's use on actual live mixes. ### 4/5 — Does what is says on the bottle *2012-08-17, version 1.0* It's great to have a different perspective on the flow and interaction of sound frequencies. Other FFT apps are just like the hardware yet lacking. The development story of this one is interesting before even using the display. I'm still to experiment further, but that old 'instant gratification' like the old days of synth, it pleases instantly. ### 5/5 — Best app ever *2026-04-11, version 2.0* This is my favorite app of all time. If it goes away I’m gonna pay someone to build a similar app for me. ## Most praised reviews (9 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Great for drums *2026-02-15, version 2.0* This is the most reliable and accurate tuner I've found so far. I mainly use it to identify the pitch of drums and cowbells. I love it. ### 5/5 — Too bad, it’s so good *2026-02-10, version 2.0* A really great app but not updated in years and hasn’t flushed out its potential. Nonetheless, an excellent tool. One of my only negative remarks is that one can’t use 432hz as pitch tuning rather than “concert” 440hz. ### 5/5 — Extraordinary ! *2025-01-19, version 2.0* … Meant in the nicest possible way: This App is innovative, amusing, and useful Thank You for making it, and for giving it free ### 5/5 — Thank you, this is wonderfull *2023-11-29, version 2.0* I am writing this review because they made this app free to use and thus free to enjoy. Its like a part of humanity in us that just wants to share the joy like a celebration of life. Thank you, I love science and sound is amazing, not prticularly for hearing it but that sound is ripples of pressure through the air, higher frequencies make closer ripples, low base makes long ripples, louder sounds increase the pressure, quiter is less pressure. So you can scientifically create the pressure and size within the air, but one really cool thing you can do with these pressure ripples is reflect them back to their source, and if you get the distance between the source and the reflection surface to be a distance that is a multiple of the width of a ripple then you get what looks like sound standing still, you would need some fog and light to see it, but its called a standing wave and you could place little nurf pelletts in the standing wave and the standing wave will hold them in place, if your reflecting vertically else they will fall but vertical floating balls is what many people like to dramatize the effect by calling it levitation and indeed is entertaining. Its not the toy aspect that is interesting, its the contemplation of what you have actuallly done that would seem impossible, a strip of pressurized air that has no walls yet does not leak. Imagination can lead us to what we could do with that. I hope you enjoyed my small add-on knowlege. Thank you Developers! ### 5/5 — Thank you, thank you, thank you *2023-10-06, version 2.0* I’m so glad this app exists. I would buy a device just to have this app on it. Please to not let this app be in the graveyard. 🙏🙏🙏 Thank you, thank you, thank you. ### 5/5 — Eye opening! *2023-07-31, version 2.0* Fun to use and interesting to see the relationship between harmonics and primary tones. Check this one out. ### 5/5 — Love this App! *2023-05-22, version 2.0* Simplicity and excellence! Thx for creating this!! ### 5/5 — Like a sonic Swiss Army knife *2023-01-21, version 2.0* I have found this app incredibly useful over the years; it’s gone with me on many adventures into the woods, as I figure out and fine tune my skills and experiment on various flutes. I use it to tune my instruments. I’ve discovered all kinds of neat relationships in the structures of sound. It’s helped me to fine tune and understand my voice. If there was a device that only had this app on it, and it was unavailable on the App Store, I would buy it. Dear developer, please don’t let this app die. 🙏❤️🤙 ### 5/5 — Fun and useful *2022-09-07, version 2.0* So, right off, this is almost the best guitar tuner I’ve used. If it would show the octave number of a note that would be very useful. Not strictly necessary assuming the strings aren’t totally out of tune, but it would be handy for full restringing. I get that the red dot at the bottom lets you adjust the number of components of the output as you slide it left and right, but moving it up and down does something to the volume I think, but only got the current note. Not sure this feature adds much. --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-07-04.*