Polychord vs SampleWiz
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Polychord
Create music with an intuitive interface that makes playing chords easy for everyone. Explore songwriting, strum and solo with confidence, and even add auto-accompaniment. Advanced MIDI features allow integration with popular music production software.
- Play chords from diverse palettes
- Strum and solo in key
- Auto-accompaniment band feature
- MIDI control for DAWs
- Songwriting tools
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Polychord turns your iPad into a chord instrument — a full band at your fingertips. Nine chord circles hold every chord in your key — arranged so the right one is always under your fingers. Tap a circle to hear it, and the ring around it offers the colors: sevenths, sixths, suspensions. Strum across the keys like a harp. You can't hit a wrong note, and you never have to stop and think. Flip on Auto Accompany and a rhythm section falls in behind you: bass and drums that follow every chord change you make, in styles from folk to funk to krautrock. One finger becomes a band. When something good happens, hit record. Loop, layer, and bounce it to audio, or export multi-track MIDI with chords, strum, bass, arpeggiator, and drums on separate tracks, ready for your DAW. In the studio, Polychord comes with you. The AUv3 MIDI-effect plugin puts the chord grid inside DAWs like Logic Pro that support MIDI effects, and MIDI in and out means it can play — or be played by — everything else you own. Whether you've played for twenty years or never learned an instrument, Polychord closes the gap between imagining music and making it. FEATURES • Nine chord circles covering the full harmony of any major or minor key • Chord palettes for folk, jazz, gospel, bossa nova, soul, cinematic, and more • Strum keys with pitch bend • Auto Accompany: bass lines and drum patterns that follow your chords • Arpeggiator with adjustable direction, rate, and octave span • Built-in wavetable synth with ADSR envelopes, filter, delay, and bitcrusher • Record performances and bounce to audio • Multi-track MIDI export: chords, strum, bass, arpeggiator, and drums on separate tracks • MIDI out to any app or hardware; MIDI in to trigger chords from a keyboard • You can even split your MIDI output to trigger multiple instruments at once in DAWs like Logic • AUv3 MIDI-effect plugin: play the chord grid inside your favorite host • AUv3 works in DAWs like Logic Pro that support MIDI effect plug-ins Polychord is a one-time purchase. No subscription, no in-app purchases, no account. Your music stays yours.
SampleWiz
Record, manipulate, and play back sounds using various sampling techniques. Explore classic, granular, and modern synthesis modes to create unique musical instruments and expressive performances.
- Multiple sampling modes (classic, granular, modern)
- Real-time waveform editing
- Jordan Rudess signature sound presets
- Resampling capabilities
- Expressive playing surface modes
- Advanced pitch rounding
- Finger vibrato effect
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SampleWiz was awarded Music Making App of the Year for 2011 by the Music Industries Association! Capture your sonic universe! Listen… Record… Create… Jordan says: In creating this instrument I wanted to create something that would appeal to the sonic explorer in all of us. Creating a sampler for iOS devices has allowed us to push the boundaries of traditional sampling instruments. From playing a selection of my signature sounds on the SampleWiz keyboard (JR lead anyone?) to getting up close and personal with sounds by playing directly on the waveform screen, our mission was to blow your mind, put a smile on your face, and expand your creativity. In creating SampleWiz, we have created partnerships with leading sound developers in addition to my personally selected onboard presets. "Inspiring! Just when you thought nothing could be new in the world of sampling, along comes SampleWiz to fire up the neurons of our creativity in new ways. I love the the new realtime interactive noises I can get by 'touching the sound'...the crazy and unique stuff you can do with it is really expressive and fresh!" - Eric Persing, Founder of Spectrasonics "SampleWiz gets you playing instantly, and if you like to sample, there's no quicker or more fun way to go from recording to playing your own samples. Amazing controls, easy to understand yet deep enough to let you create musical voices! And it comes with a library of great sounds from Jordan Rudess. SampleWiz is a wiz if ever there was!" - David Mash, VP of Technology and Education, Berklee College of Music We have poured our hearts and minds into this and driven our families, bandmates, and friends insane by sampling everything that moves. I hope you enjoy this very expressive and wild music app creation! *Choose from three different sampling modes: classic, granular, and modern. *Classic - the traditional method of sampling where the sound will speed up and slow down as you go higher or lower than the recorded pitch. *Granular - Wizdom Music's own take on a granular synthesis engine. Adjust grain size and speed while the entire range of notes maintain the same speed. *Modern - explore new sampling possibilities using Dirac technology to allow formants and time to be adjusted automatically over a device-selected range. *Up to 10 seconds per sample. *Jordan Rudess presets from his private collection. *Resample anything that you play on the playing surface to create all new samples derived from your existing presets! *Three playing surface modes allow you to play on the keyboard, wave-edit screen, and the ADSR window. *Wizdom Music's Advanced Pitch Rounding for initial attack as well as after a slide. *Every note you play is an independent event allowing powerful, expressive control of pitch and amplitude. *Finger vibrato effect allows you to use vibrato even when pitch lock is activated! *Unique visuals for each sampling mode. A glow tracks your fingers and respond to the amount of amplitude of every note you play. *Choose from many different scales and customize your own. *Play your samples forward or reverse! *Looping options include standard looping as well as back-and-forth looping. *Allows trimming of samples. *Unique visualization of the amplitude envelope on the ADSR page. *FX include delay with a choice of tap-tempo, BPM, and seconds control over the rate. *Have two keyboards on the screen, each with its own range and scale! *Unique hold mode where every held note can be in a different synthesis mode! *Share your presets with friends by mailing them as SampleWiz files or standard audio files. *Play directly on the waveform and hear the audio that is right under your finger. Slide each finger separately in any direction to change pitch and position in the sample. *MAPI AudioCopy/AudioPaste allows sharing of audio with top audio apps. *Load your own audio files with iTunes file sharing. *Onboard help screens explain every parameter. Touch the question mark to activate.
Screenshots
Verdict
Polychord and SampleWiz both sit at 4.4 stars, but that hides the real split: 75% of Polychord's written reviews are positive against 63% of SampleWiz's. SampleWiz's advantage is device support (3 vs 1) and iOS requirement (8.0 vs 15.0). On price, rating, ratings volume and update cadence 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
Polychord costs $9.99 and SampleWiz $9.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.4 for Polychord against 4.4 for SampleWiz. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 39 and 16 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 75% of Polychord's written reviews are positive against 63% of SampleWiz's.
Polychord ships an update every 2 months, SampleWiz every 3 months. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and November 1, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Polychord | SampleWiz |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $9.99 | $9.99 |
| Rating | 4.4 (39 ratings) | 4.4 (16 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 74.8% of reviews — better | 62.6% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 39 — better | 16 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months — better | Every 3 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Paid |
| Devices | iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 | 8.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 23 MB | 18 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Apposite | Wizdom Music LLC |
Customer experience
Polychord
SampleWiz
User reviews
Polychord
From 39 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🎵 Intuitive chord progression interface
- 🎹 Excellent MIDI controller functionality
- 🎸 Digital Omnichord replacement
- 📱 Audiobus integration support
- 🎼 Great for music theory learning
Room to improve
- ⚠️ App no longer actively developed
- 🐛 Frequent crashes and stability issues
- 📦 Limited built-in sound variety
- 🔄 Compatibility issues with newer iOS versions
- 🎚️ Limited chord selection at once (3x3 grid)
SampleWiz
From 16 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Intuitive and easy to use
- 🎨 Powerful sound creation and manipulation capabilities
- 🎹 Excellent for live performance
- 🎶 High-quality sound and presets
- 💡 Innovative features like granular and modern sampling modes
Room to improve
- 🐛 Crashes and stability issues, especially on newer iOS versions
- 🔋 High battery consumption
- 📱 Limited functionality on smaller devices like iPhone
- 🎨 Outdated or distracting visual design elements
Bugs and requests
Polychord
Reported bugs
10 issues- App crashes during recording
- Incompatible with iOS 8+ on older devices
- MIDI off messages not sent properly
- Sporadic glitches with Logic Pro and GarageBand
- Sound occasionally disappears until app restart
Show 5 moreShow fewer
- Strum keys disappear or become unresponsive
- Record button resets project
- Chord release affects all sustained chords
- Visual glitches on Retina display
- App not receiving updates for compatibility
Requested features
20 requests- Custom chord creation and palette selection
- Copy and paste functionality
- Save and load configurations/presets
- Additional instrument sounds and drum kits
- Retina display support
Show 15 moreShow fewer
- Metronome and click track
- Recording improvements (overdub, undo)
- Visual chord progression tracker
- Velocity control via accelerometer
- Chord builder for custom chords
- Master tune control
- Extended chord types (M9, m9, M13, etc.)
- Slash chords support
- More scales (bebop, mixolydian, etc.)
- Strum keys with note labels
- Full iPad width strum section
- AUv3 plugin support
- Inverted chord options
- MIDI channel routing
- Audio copy/paste support
SampleWiz
Reported bugs
3 issues- Crashes on launch or after short usage
- Compatibility issues with newer iOS versions
- Unreliable sample playback and export
Requested features
5 requests- Add Audiobus and Inter-App Audio support
- Increase sample recording time
- Implement MIDI controller support
- Allow importing custom samples from iTunes/Dropbox
- Add more effects and modulation options
In-app purchases
Polychord
No in-app purchases
SampleWiz
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Polychord free?
Is SampleWiz free?
Which has better reviews, Polychord or SampleWiz?
Do Polychord or SampleWiz have ads?
Which is updated more often, Polychord or SampleWiz?
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