kineticSynth vs Percussive Synth
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
kineticSynth
Transform your phone into a virtual musical instrument that responds to your movements. Explore unique ways to create music with high-fidelity sound and intuitive controls. Perfect for aspiring musicians and sound enthusiasts.
- Motion-controlled instrument playback
- Virtual 37-key synthesizer
- Drum pad simulation
- Bass drone control
- Hi-fidelity 44kHz sound
- Instrument tutorial videos
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Use the phone as a virtual musical instrument, producing sounds depending on how you move it in the air. Every instrument has a help video demonstrating how the instrument is “played”. Hitting and sustaining the keys of a 37-keys keyboard synthesizer, or hitting drums as if with a drumstick, or controlling the buzz of a bass drone, it’s a completely new musical experience that feels natural like a real musical instrument! All in 44kHz hi-fidelity sound. Everyone can now sweep that filter like a pro electronic producer!
Percussive Synth
Create rhythms and melodies with a versatile sequencer and virtual analog synth engine. Experiment with sound design, record your creations, and export them for use in DAWs. Supports Ableton Link and MIDI.
- Virtual analog synth engine
- Unique sequencer with odd subdivisions
- Four independent synth voices
- Record and export audio as .wav
- Ableton Link support
- MIDI input/output
- Synth as AudioUnit
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Percussive synth will accompany you while you jam, be your groove experimentation space, or be your source of recording material you may export and mix in a DAW. Fine control over many virtual analog synth parameters allows for vast sonic experimentation potential. And unique sequencer implementation equipped with such potential creates an exceptional user experience. The app consists of the sequencer and the synths engine: SEQUENCER A rhythm or a melody can be created using the sequencer. Tap notes into one of the four tracks, one track for each voice of the synthesizer. Set note's pitch and velocity using knobs. Or don't, and rely on a global track's pitch setting. Each synthesizer voice has a completely independent set of parameter values, so you get four different synths playing polyphony. One of the cool features of the sequencer is the ability to switch between straight and odd subdivisions - a note can be one-fourth of the bar, but also one-sixth, and one-tenth. Also, notes can overlap and re-trigger after overlap ends, which allows for creating weird rhythms when used with odd subdivisions. And if you're into drone music - BPM can go over 9000. SYNTHS The basis of each voice is two oscillators and a white noise generator. Each oscillator can produce a square, saw, triangle, or sine wave shape. The second oscillator's frequency can be discretely shifted from -2 to +2 octaves, or smoothly offset using the "osc2 freq" knob. Oscillators' frequency can glide to a higher or a lower value - "decay time" will set the duration of this glide, and "decay amt" the frequency destination - it's quantized to octaves and fifths. A mix of these sound sources goes into the low-pass filter. The filter's cut-off frequency can be dynamically controlled by ADSR (attack, decay, sustain, release) module. The amount and direction of this control are set by the "env" knob. The second ADSR module controls the volume envelope. OTHER FEATURES - Sequencer and synths modules have separate preset managers and undo histories - Audio can be recorded and exported as .wav files from the app - Recording's start and end time can be quantized to the sequencer transport's start and stop - Synth can be used as separate AudioUnit - Ableton Link support - MIDI io, CC mapping - Export preset files - Toggle between quadratic and linear ADSR - Toggle velocity sensitivity in knobs Some of the amazing feedback from our precious users: "I can’t stop playing with the app and love using Record in stand-alone for doing quick exports with live tweaks" "Really Good work man, different from my habitual drums seq plays, and this is good" "Definitely some lovely sound coming out of this" "The sequencer looks very unique and interesting for odd and glitchy tunes" "I have only scratched the surface of it. Going to be awesome for sure. Wow high praise indeed. Can hardly wait to play some more. Enjoy!" "The sequencer in the standalone is really interesting and fun to play" "Still diving in. Lots of fun. The flexible simplicity of the sequencer with wide range of bpm is really cool. So far the sounds make me believe i am existing in an apocalyptic 80s film" "Recently purchased your app and i love it so so much. I do all my jams in AUM and have been looking for an interesting sequencer, found yours and i love it! "
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: kineticSynth at 5.0 against Percussive Synth's 3.9. Percussive Synth's advantage is ratings volume (9 vs 2). On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
kineticSynth holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 3.9. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 2 and 9 respectively.
kineticSynth ships an update every 3 weeks, Percussive Synth monthly. The most recent releases landed on September 28, 2026 and October 4, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | kineticSynth | Percussive Synth |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better | 3.9 (9 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | — | 50.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 2 | 9 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks — better | Monthly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 11.0 — better | 12 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 121 MB | 94 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Stefan Nikolov | Vadym Rostok |
Customer experience
kineticSynth
Percussive Synth
In-app purchases
kineticSynth
No in-app purchases
Percussive Synth
No in-app purchases




