Sounding Tides vs Rubberband
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side β with what reviewers say about each.
Sounding Tides
This app transforms 50 years of tidal data into an interactive musical experience. Users can manipulate sound layers, wave visuals, and data timelines to create unique sonic representations of tidal heights.
- Interactive musical composition
- Translates tidal data into sound
- Mix sound layers (sine wave, noise, piano)
- Adjust wave visuals
- Scroll through 50 years of data
- Create unique sonifications
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Sounding Tides Erik Griswold and Rebecca Cunningham Sounding Tides is an interactive musical composition that translates 50 years of scientific data into sound. In Sounding Tides, the record of tide heights from Brisbane river is represented as sound waves, white noise, and piano samples. By live mixing sound layers, wave visuals, and scrolling through the decades, you can create your own colourful sonifications of the tides. How to use the App Use the vertical faders to mix volume of sine wave, noise, and piano layers, and change the colour and texture of the visuals. Use horizontal faders to change the speed and scroll through 50 years of tidal data. Credits Created by composer Erik Griswold and climate social scientist Rebecca Cunningham. App coding and design by Steve Berrick. Sounding Tides was created for Curiocity Brisbane 2022.
Rubberband
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RUBBERBAND is not a keyboard. It's an elastic surface where every line is a magnet: you glide, and GRAVITY pulls notes toward the scale. All the way up, you can't play out of tune. At zero, it's free glissando. In between, your ear decides. A microtonal synth built to be both an instant toy and a serious instrument β played like a theremin or a ribbon controller, tuned like the world. THE WORLD'S TUNINGS RUBBERBAND truly speaks microtonality β not an effect, the heart of the instrument. Arabic maqam, Turkish makam, Persian dastgah, just intonation, just blues and barbershop, klezmer modes, Southeast-Asian equiheptatonic, xenharmonic temperaments (19- and 31-TET, the harmonic series), Western scales β with region-adjustable neutral tuning. The engine thinks in cents: any tuning on Earth is within reach. 36 VOICES Plucked strings, basses, bowed instruments (violin, cello, kamancheh, sarangi), bells and bars, synth voices, the RUBBERβSTRING morph, the instruments of the East (oud, qanun, santur, ney, zurna, duduk), and granular clouds. Every voice is physically modelled and rendered in real time β no samples. EXPRESSIVE UNDER THE FINGER (MPE) Pressure is dynamics; gliding along a string changes the colour, from sul tasto to ponticello; vertical is pitch. Tilt the phone and it becomes an axis of expression. MPE MIDI out drives your other synths with the same gestures. LISTEN TO THE ROOM RUBBERBAND hears the music around you, detects the key, and tunes to it. Play along with anyone, in tune. ALSO A DRONE holding the tonic under your playing, a sympathetic halo that rings the neighbouring strings, a LOOPER to stack loops, and recording your takes straight to your device. IN YOUR LANGUAGE Full interface in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), German, Turkish, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Korean and Arabic β with real musician vocabulary in each, not machine translation. Haptics, Metal rendering, fully native. No account, no ads, no data collected β the microphone is analysed locally and never recorded or sent. FREE, THEN PRO Start free: the full elastic surface, starter voices, and a taste of the world's tunings. The RUBBERBAND PRO unlock (one-time purchase) opens all 36 voices, the full catalogue of world tunings, recording and sharing, MPE MIDI output, MOTION and LISTEN. One-time purchase. No subscription.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Sounding Tides at none against Rubberband's 2. Sounding Tides also leads on update cadence (every 2 days vs monthly) and iOS requirement (9.0 vs 17.0). On price, ads and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price Β· Rating Β· Positive reviews Β· Number of ratings Β· Update frequency Β· Ads Β· In-app purchases Β· Monetization Β· Best chart rank Β· Devices Β· Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Rubberband sells 2 one-off in-app purchases. Sounding Tides asks for nothing beyond the download.
Sounding Tides ships an update every 2 days, Rubberband monthly. The most recent releases landed on November 3, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Sounding Tides | Rubberband |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Positive reviews | 0.0% of reviews | β |
| Update frequency | Every 2 days β better | Monthly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No β better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free | β |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod β better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 9.0 β better | 17.0 |
| Further details β not scored | ||
| Size | 95 MB | 3 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Steve Berrick | Thinkspark |
In-app purchases
Sounding Tides
No in-app purchases
Rubberband
- RUBBERBAND PRO$12.99
- RUBBERBAND STUDIO$12.99







