ePipes Drones vs WARBL Configuration Tool
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
ePipes Drones
This app provides tunable, authentic-sounding drones for Scottish Highland, Border, and Smallpipes. It's designed for musicians learning bagpipes, offering high-fidelity studio recordings for practice. Adjust volume, pitch, tuning, and reverb to enhance your playing experience.
- Authentic drone sounds
- Tunable pitch and tuning
- Adjustable volume and reverb
- Multiple pipe types (Highland, Border, Smallpipes)
- MIDI chanter testing
- Settings saved on exit
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ePipes Drones is a tunable, authentic sounding set of Scottish Highland, Border Pipes, and Smallpipes drones. This app is for musicians who are learning to play the Scottish bagpipes and want high-quality sets of tunable drones to play along with on their practice chanters. The sounds are provided by ePipes.co.uk in Glasgow, Scotland, from extremely high-fidelity studio recordings of three very fine instruments. Touch the ePipes logo to switch the drones on and off. Select the drone type using the drone selector. Available drone types are Great Highland, Border, and Smallpipes. Set the volume using the Drone Volume slider. The pitch may be transposed in semitone increments +/- one octave in using the Tranpose slider. Additionally, the Tuning slider may be used to fine-tune the drone +/- 50 cents in one-cent increments The Reverb slider sets how much reverb effect is added to the sound. All settings are saved when the app exits and restored the next time it is run. MIDI Chanter Test Features: Test your MIDI Chanter by setting the MIDI channels for the chanter and drones channels. Any MIDI Note-On message note numbers received on those channels will be displayed at the bottom of the screen. This value can be used to determine the MIDI offset value from 67 for the chanter in my other MIDI-enabled apps that default to the Fagerstrom Technopipes standard of the bottom note being MIDI note 67 (G3) as a zero offset.
WARBL Configuration Tool
This tool allows musicians to customize and configure their WARBL MIDI wind controller. Adjust air pressure sensitivity, vibrato, expression, and save up to three instrument presets. Connect wirelessly or via USB to design your unique wind instrument sound.
- MIDI controller configuration
- Air pressure sensitivity adjustment
- Vibrato and pitch bend control
- Save instrument presets
- Programmable buttons
- Wireless and USB connectivity
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WARBL and WARBL2 are plug-and-play USB (and BTLE) MIDI wind controllers that allows the traditional musician to practice with headphones using familiar playing techniques. Designed to simulate a variety of open-tonehole wind instruments such as tin whistles, flutes, and bagpipes, WARBL has optical sensors and real toneholes for continuous finger sensing and realistic feel. An air-pressure sensor allows playing with breath or a bagpipe bag. WARBL does not produce any sound on its own. It is designed to control hardware MIDI sound modules or MIDI sound module apps running on an iOS device, for example AppCordions "Celtic Sounds" or Roland Sound Canvas. The WARBL Configuration Tool allows complete control over the air pressure sensitivity, vibrato/pitch bend, expression, and many other settings. You may adjust and save settings to design the instrument of your choice. The WARBL supports saving three preset instrument configurations, for example, Whistle, Uilleann Pipes, and Great Highland Bagpipes. The buttons on the back of the WARBL may be programmed to switch between the instrument preset configurations, change the octave, send MIDI messages, and many other options. To use, just plug in your WARBL to an Apple USB Camera Adapter connected to the Lightning port on your device, run the app, touch "Connect WARBL" at the top of the control panel and begin configuring your WARBL. Or if you have a WARBL2 with BTLE, press the BT MIDI button on the navigation bar to manage the connection to your WARBL wirelessly. When connected, the status at the top of the page will show "WARBL Connected" and you'll see MIDI event information on the display. Touch the yellow “info” buttons for instructions on using each section of the Configuration Tool.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: WARBL Configuration Tool at 5.0 against ePipes Drones's 2.0. ePipes Drones's advantage is update cadence (every 4 months vs every 15 months) and iOS requirement (10.0 vs 12.0). On price, ratings volume, 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.
WARBL Configuration Tool holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 2.0. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 4 and 6 respectively.
ePipes Drones ships an update every 4 months, WARBL Configuration Tool every 15 months. The most recent releases landed on September 17, 2026 and September 29, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | ePipes Drones | WARBL Configuration Tool |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 2.0 (4 ratings) | 5.0 (6 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 62.5% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 4 | 6 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 4 months — better | Every 15 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 10.0 — better | 12.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 5 MB | 1 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Michael Eskin | Sonosaurus LLC |
Customer experience
ePipes Drones
WARBL Configuration Tool
In-app purchases
ePipes Drones
No in-app purchases
WARBL Configuration Tool
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is ePipes Drones free?
Is WARBL Configuration Tool free?
Which has better reviews, ePipes Drones or WARBL Configuration Tool?
Do ePipes Drones or WARBL Configuration Tool have ads?
Which is updated more often, ePipes Drones or WARBL Configuration Tool?
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