FabFilter Twin 3 vs ChordSmith

Since its first release in 2005, FabFilter Twin has been famous for its filter quality and oscillator sound. FabFilter Twin 3 expands and improves on its predecessors in every area, including a complete redesign of the GUI and workflow, more and better oscillators and filters, a radically powered-up modulation system, an all-new FX section, and much more. Sonically versatile, supremely intuitive, and spectacularly ‘analog’, Twin 3 is a dream instrument for creating synth sounds of all kinds, from basses, leads, and pads to plucks, drums, effects, and beyond. The Twin 3 app lets you play via the on-screen keyboard or a MIDI keyboard connected to your iPad. To use Twin 3 as a plug-in, you need an AUv3-compatible host app like Auria, AUM or Cubasis. Twin 3 will appear in the list of Audio Unit extensions for instrument plug-ins in the host app. Key features: - Virtual analog synth featuring four flexible oscillators, four filters, six FX modules, and a vast modulation system with a wealth of flexible source signal generators, drag and drop source/target routing, and no limit to the number of modulation assignments that can be made - Fully redesigned, greatly simplified interface with easier workflow - Completely overhauled modulation system with redesigned modulation sources, and floating slot and FX panels - All-new FX section, housing Reverb, Delay, Chorus, Phaser, Drive, and Compressor modules - Arpeggiator with Groove/Legato controls, note order, latch options, and more - Full-featured preset browser, with tags, favorites, and search and filter functions, and new factory preset library - Per Oscillator polyphony mode: each incoming note triggers a different oscillator - Bell, Shelf, and Notch vintage-style EQ filter shapes - 6dB/octave filter slope option - Modulatable filter Cutoff/Peak Offset knobs knobs, for adjusting all filters at once - High Quality mode — 4x oversampling - Transient mode turns Envelope Followers into transient detectors - Curve adjustment handles for EG Attack, Decay, and Release stages - Slider mode (vertical-only operation) and Range setting (toggles between bipolar and unipolar behavior) for XY controllers - Hide all modulation sources except for XY controllers and Sliders at a click - Native sustain pedal support - Even better oscillator and filter sound quality, with analog-modelled drift - Maximum number of voices doubled from 32 to 64 - Lower minimum Envelope Generator Attack, Decay, and Release times - Maximum number of XY controllers/Sliders increased to six - Envelope Generator Threshold, XLFO Balance, and Frequency Offset made available as modulation targets - Modulation sources can be renamed - Maximum number of modulation slots increased to 100 - Legato mode for MIDI-triggered XLFO - Range options added to MIDI Sources: Negative (-1 to 0), Centered (-1 to 1), and Positive (0 to 1) - Carefully designed and curated factory presets, plus the ability to save your own presets - Undo/redo and A/B comparison "FabFilter Twin is one of the best virtual analogues we've heard so far, and at this price point it's well worth the investment!" — Computer Music "Once I found FabFilter Twin, I immediately noticed how great it works and how amazing it sounds!" — George Morel

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. 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 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.