Comparison

ePipes Drones vs StrandOrgan

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

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.

Highlights
  • Authentic drone sounds
  • Tunable pitch and tuning
  • Adjustable volume and reverb
  • Multiple pipe types (Highland, Border, Smallpipes)
  • MIDI chanter testing
  • Settings saved on exit
Features
Read full description

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.

About

StrandOrgan

Experience the rich sounds of the Strand pipe organ and Carillon from your MIDI keyboard on iOS or macOS. This app provides high-quality samples for musical exploration and performance.

Highlights
  • Strand pipe organ samples
  • Carillon sounds
  • MIDI keyboard support
  • iOS and macOS compatibility
  • Creative Commons licensed samples
Read full description

StrandOrgan lets you play Lars Palo's sample set of the Strand pipe organ of the church in Kalvträsk, Sweden, on a MIDI keyboard attached to your iOS or macOS device. The Kalvträsk Church sampleset is provided by Lars Palo under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/. If you would like to use the sampleset with other software, you can get it at http://www.familjenpalo.se/vpo/download. Starting with version 10.0, the app also offers Carillon sounds. These are derived from the Lurie Carillon recordings that are freely available at https://gobluebells.wordpress.com/2016/09/21/lurie-carillon-samples/ . For more information, please consult the app support page http://polaron.de/StrandOrgan/ , the Napo documentation at http://polaron.de/Napo/ and in particular the Napo user manual at http://polaron.de/Napo/manual . For hearing sound examples of the app, please visit the support page http://polaron.de/StrandOrgan/ .

Screenshots

ePipes Drones2 screens
StrandOrgan2 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: StrandOrgan at 4.6 against ePipes Drones's 2.0. StrandOrgan also leads on review sentiment (88% vs 63%) and ratings volume (33 vs 4). ePipes Drones's advantage is iOS requirement (10.0 vs 12.5.6). 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

StrandOrgan holds the better App Store score, 4.6 against 2.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: StrandOrgan has 33 ratings behind it against 4, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 63% of ePipes Drones's written reviews are positive against 88% of StrandOrgan's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 4 months. Both last shipped on November 1, 2026.

Scorecard5 real differences · 5 level
ePipes Drones versus StrandOrgan: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterePipes DronesStrandOrgan
PriceFreeFree
Rating2.0 (4 ratings)4.6 (33 ratings) — better
Positive reviews62.5% of reviews87.7% of reviews — better
Number of ratings433 — better
Update frequencyEvery 4 monthsEvery 4 months
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac — better
Requires iOS10.0 — better12.5.6
Further details — not scored
Size5 MB860 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperMichael EskinMarkus Sigg

Customer experience

ePipes Drones

All ratings4 ratings
Positive25.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative75.0%
Written reviews16 reviews
Positive62.5%
Neutral12.5%
Negative25.0%

StrandOrgan

All ratings33 ratings
Positive87.9%
Neutral6.1%
Negative6.1%
Written reviews65 reviews
Positive87.7%
Neutral1.5%
Negative10.8%

Bugs and requests

ePipes Drones

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

StrandOrgan

Reported bugs

6 issues
  • Trumpet sounds out of tune (resolved by settings)
  • Image of a horn popping up
  • Demo tunes not working
  • Stops make a noise when selecting them
  • Login screen freezes
Show 1 more
  • No sound

Requested features

10 requests
  • Add more stops
  • Add pedals
  • Add organ song Gigue Fugue by Johann S Bach
  • AUv3 Version for Logic Pro
  • Plugin for Cubasis
Show 5 more
  • Add MIDI input channel specification
  • More organs to sample
  • More different organs
  • MIDI out for sound
  • Time-limited fully functional demo

In-app purchases

None

ePipes Drones

No in-app purchases

None

StrandOrgan

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is ePipes Drones free?
ePipes Drones is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is StrandOrgan free?
StrandOrgan is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, ePipes Drones or StrandOrgan?
StrandOrgan is rated higher. ePipes Drones averages 2.0 out of 5 from 4 ratings, while StrandOrgan averages 4.6 from 33 ratings.
Do ePipes Drones or StrandOrgan have ads?
Neither ePipes Drones nor StrandOrgan shows ads.
Which is updated more often, ePipes Drones or StrandOrgan?
ePipes Drones ships an update every 4 months, and StrandOrgan every 4 months. Most recently, ePipes Drones was updated on November 1, 2026 and StrandOrgan on November 1, 2026.

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