Roxsyn Guitar Synthesizer vs ChordSmith

Introducing a revolutionary new way to turn your guitar or bass into a fully featured polyphonic synth: Roxsyn, the world’s first metamorphic guitar synthesizer. Expressive, fast and responsive to every nuance, it is a league apart from all other guitar synths to date. Unhappy with cold and temperamental guitar-to-MIDI synths that dominate the market, we developed a completely new approach to guitar synthesis. Our all-original technology synthesizes your guitar directly, without the use of MIDI notes. Rescued from being a poor keyboard substitute, your guitar suddenly becomes an integral part of the synth. It's alive! There is no pitch tracking involved. There are no pitch estimation errors, octave glitches, or garbled chords. There is no over-complicated G2M between your guitar and synth to destroy everything human about your playing. Instead, Roxsyn’s metamorphic sound generation technology retains all the personality of your sound: vibrato, slides, bends, dynamics, even extended technique. The result is a polyphonic synthesizer that is as fast and accurate as it is richly expressive. No need for special MIDI pickups or hardware, either: just plug into your favorite Lightning/USB audio interface, and start synthing! ::Powerful Synth Engine:: Roxsyn’s big synth heart is its three metamorphic signal generators (AKA oscillators). Each generator offers 5 unique waveforms, and has a 4+ octave range to cover a wide spectrum of frequencies. They also feature stereo panning, and can route into either of Roxsyn’s dual filter banks. You can even dial in your guitar directly into the synth engine for even bigger sounds. ::Dual Filter Banks:: Each containing four custom virtual-analog filter types and dedicated envelopes, the filter banks help sculpt the synth generators in countless new ways. The envelopes are specially designed for the guitar, and are driven by a fully adjustable automatic trigger generator controlled by your playing dynamics. Envelopes offer original features like finite-duration sustain stages, as well as the ability to receive or ignore trigger-off messages. They can also be triggered externally via MIDI controllers like an expression pedal. An additonal envelope controls the amplitude of the signal, giving you even more options in creating synth sounds. ::Arpeggiator:: Instantly transform sustained guitar notes into fast (or slow), complex patterns with Roxsyn’s powerful yet easy to use arp. There are 8 stepping algorithms to choose from, as well as settable note value, swing, and note repeats. You can even route the arp to any combination of the 3 voice generators — enabling you to layer a non-arpeggiated sound with an arp pattern. What's more, the arp can send trigger signals into any of Roxsyn’s 4 envelopes, and even reset the LFOs. So it’s also a handy rhythmic / trance tool as well! ::Modulation & FX:: Roxsyn’s user friendly modulation matrix lets you manipulate parameters (pitch, amplitude, filters, etc) using its two LFOs and mod envelope. Add subtle vibrato, even glide simulation, or go full-on berserk. LFOs each have 9 waveforms, and feature beat syncing. Each matrix row can take LFOs or the mod envelope as a modulator or control, and can even use external control sources. And if you like your synths on the spicy side, Roxsyn comes with top-notch stereo FX specially developed to evoke extra synthiness: Powerful algorithmic reverb with the sound of countless rooms, phasing, modulating, 2-channel delay, and graphic EQ. ::Pro Features:: 500+ factory presets with bass, lead, pad, arp sounds & more. Easily create & share your own presets. Audio Unit v3, Ableton Link. Native 64-bit processing at up to 96kHz. 160+ MIDI controllable parameters; MIDI learn & map save/share; tapedeck (in the standalone app), so you can record, loop & share your ideas on the go, and many more handy features.

ChordSmith is a chord finder, a chromatic tuner and a drum machine built for the same instrument — yours. Sixty of them, from six-string guitar and four-string bass through banjo, mandolin, ukulele, violin, cello and double bass, and on to the bouzouki, oud, guzheng, sitar, koto, nyckelharpa, balalaika, charango and kantele. CHORD FINDER Pick a chord and see how to play it on the instrument in your hands, in up to 100 voicings, ordered from the easiest shape upward. Change the tuning and the shapes change with it — every voicing is computed for the strings you actually have, not looked up in a table for standard tuning. DADGAD, drop D, open G and every other preset is one tap away. CHROMATIC TUNER Five displays to choose between: a sweep needle, a strobe for last-cent work, chromatic spokes, a continuous note strip, and one you will want to see for yourself. Every instrument carries its own tunings, drop and open included. Set your reference by ear as well as by number — play a note from a piano, a drone or another player's instrument and the app takes its pitch as the tonic, which is how you tune to an ensemble that is not at A=440. Haptic tuning lets you feel the tuning as a gentle tick: quick when you are far off, slowing as you close in, a steady pulse once you arrive. An optional soft cue marks the moment you lock on. Needle response sets how steady the reading is, from Responsive to Steady. Notes, cents and frequency read out in retro LED-style digits. METRONOME AND DRUM MACHINE Ten kits — standard, click, electric, 808, Latin, cajón, djembe, darbuka, tabla and taiko — and twenty-seven feels, from straight eighths and a swung shuffle through son and rumba clave, bossa nova, the reggae one-drop, bembé, tresillo, maqsum and malfuf. Tap tempo, a BPM counter, compound and odd meters, and an accent pattern you edit, so 7/8 sounds like the 7/8 you are counting. CHORD DETECTION Play a chord and the app names it, tracks the key as you go, and keeps a running transcript of what it heard. The spectrum analyser spans eight octaves, C0 to C8, and runs on the room rather than on a preset, so it works with no instrument selected at all. NINE TUNING SYSTEMS Equal temperament, and the ones that came before it: Werckmeister III, quarter-comma meantone, Vallotti, Young II, Kirnberger III and Pythagorean, with a temperament octave for tuning a piano, harpsichord or clavichord by ear. Quarter-tones as 24-TET for maqam, and Thai equidistant 7-TET for the krachappi, the phin and the saw. SIXTY INSTRUMENTS Guitar in six, seven and eight strings and the Russian seven; bass in four, five and six; ukulele in three sizes; mandolin, five-string and tenor banjo, violin, viola, cello, double bass and the Hardanger fiddle; cavaquinho, viola caipira, vihuela, guitarrón, bajo sexto, cuatro, charango, bandurria and laúd; Greek bouzouki in tetrachordo and trichordo, the Irish bouzouki, Turkish and Arabic oud, bağlama, gambus; erhu, pipa, guqin, guzheng, koto, gayageum, shamisen, sanshin; sitar, tanpura, veena and the Carnatic violin; balalaika, domra, dombra, morin khuur, nyckelharpa, kantele; krachappi, phin, saw duang, saw u and the đàn ghi-ta phím lõm; piano, harpsichord and clavichord. BOUGHT ONCE Fourteen days to try everything, then one purchase, yours for good. No subscription, no account, no advertising. The tuner and the detector run entirely on your device — nothing you play is recorded, uploaded, or sent anywhere. The app works with no network connection at all, which matters more in a rehearsal room than it does in a shop.