Comparison

Orphion vs ABDCTN

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

Head to head
About

Orphion

Create expressive music and melodies with a unique virtual instrument. Explore your creativity through intuitive finger movements on virtual pads, generating sounds between string and percussion. Ideal for both beginners and experienced musicians.

Highlights
  • Unique string and percussion sound
  • Expressive polyphonic music
  • Intuitive finger pad interaction
  • Customizable pad layouts
  • MIDI and Audiobus support
  • Multiple articulations
Features
Read full description

## Featured by Apple as "Band in your Hand" and 'Explore your creativity' ## Orphion is a musical instrument with a unique sound between string instrument and percussion. Everyone can play expressive, wonderful sounds and easy or virtuosic melodies on it just by moving fingers on virtual pads. This video shows you more: https://vimeo.com/35131490 What can I do with it? • Express the sounds you feel • Play polyphonic music very expressively • Crazy drumming • Dream and relax • Create soundscapes and melodies without musical knowledge • Visually explore music and music theory Features: • Different articulations from soft to plucked to hardly slapped • Natural interaction • Extend your ways of expression as a percussionist, guitarist, pianist or other musician • 15 transposable pad layouts with different tonalities from easy to complex • 8 individual voices for 8 fingers • MIDI support: Play your favorite synth with the revolutionary Orphion interface • Audiobus support: Stream live audio from Orphion directly to other Audiobus-compatible apps • Orphion Editor (availible as upgrade): Create and share your own custom pad layouts. Download new pad layouts from Orphion Universe What others say about Orphion: "We love this instrument! So cool. Great for Deep House, IDM, Ambient, and whatever!" - iPadloops "A simple but profoundly beautiful and expressive music app" - Evolutionaryarts.org "Orphion is very customizable and flexible — truly functioning as a full-fledged electronic instrument" - Harrison Weber, The next web Follow on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Orphion or Twitter: https://twitter.com/OrphionApp

About

ABDCTN

This app generates classic sci-fi synthesizer sounds live from oscillators, filters, and envelopes. Interact with a visual farm interface where elements control sound parameters. Create unique sounds by bending, stretching, and rebuilding them.

Highlights
  • Live sound generation
  • Visual instrument interface
  • Interactive sound manipulation
  • Customizable oscillators and filters
  • Automated sound sequencing
  • AUv3 instrument support
Features
Read full description

Every science-fiction film had a sound department, and somewhere in it stood a synthesizer. ABDCTN is that synthesizer, rebuilt for your phone and your iPad: not a collection of recordings of those sounds, but the machine that makes them. Theremins, saucers, tractor beams, alarms, talking computers, and everything in between, generated live from oscillators, filters and envelopes. Each sound is a starting point, yours to bend, stretch and rebuild until it is one nobody has heard before. THE PICTURE IS THE INSTRUMENT There are no knobs, no sliders, no menus. The whole screen is a farm at night, and everything on it is a control. The fence is the keyboard: planks are white keys, flower pots are black keys. The alien on the left is the envelope: pull its body for attack, stretch its neck for decay, lift and reach its hands for sustain and release. The alien on the right is the filter. Lift the cow's tail to detune, lift the whole cow into the beam and the reverb grows. Slide the barn door for volume. Raise the chimney for drive. Tap the hayloft window to crush the bits. The clouds are the LFO: how much, how fast, what shape. Drag the saucer higher and the echo follows. Tap a light on the saucer to choose a sound, tap the moon to change the bank. THE RAY GUN A ray gun hangs next to the moon, and it makes the farm play itself. Tap the gun to choose the ray's speed. Light blue sweeps every second, cyan every three seconds and pink every ten. Tap once more for static, which erases. Hold the gun and it comes off its hook. Point its tip at anything on the farm, and whatever lights up yellow can be hit: an alien's legs, neck or either hand, the cow or her tail, the saucer's dome, the barn door, the chimney, the hayloft window or a cloud. Let go and that part turns the ray's colour. It then sweeps from one end of its range to the other on its own, in time with the sound. The filter opens and closes, the cow floats up into the reverb and sinks back, the window flickers the crusher on and off, and the third cloud steps through the LFO shapes. Shoot as many parts as you like, each at its own speed. Touch a swept part and it holds still under your finger. Shoot a part with static to stop its ray, or double-tap the gun to clear every ray on the sound. Rays are saved with each sound and in your presets. In a host, every ray is an automatable parameter. Every edit is remembered per sound. Hold a light to take a sound back to the factory. A REAL SYNTHESIZER Two oscillators with band-limited saw and pulse, an endless Shepard stack for lifts that never stop rising, noise and ring modulation. A state-variable filter that sweeps from low-pass through band-pass to high-pass, with envelope, key tracking and LFO. Real stereo: the oscillators spread across the field, voices sit where their keys are, a ping-pong tape echo bounces between the speakers, a spring-like reverb on each side. IN THE STUDIO Works as an AUv3 instrument in AUM, Drambo, Logic Pro, GarageBand and other hosts, with the same picture inside the host and every control exposed as an automatable parameter. MIDI 2.0 with full MPE: per-note pitch bend, pressure and timbre, so expressive controllers play it the way they were meant to. A hold latch keeps chords sounding with no fingers on the screen, and the instrument keeps playing in the background from a MIDI keyboard. Save and load your own presets from the transmission log. Pay once, own it. No subscription, no ads, no account, no tracking, nothing leaves your device. Somewhere a cow is rising slowly into the light. She sounds wonderful.

Screenshots

ABDCTN1 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: ABDCTN at 5.0 against Orphion's 4.0. ABDCTN also leads on in-app purchases (none vs 1) and update cadence (daily vs every 2 months). Orphion's advantage is ratings volume (33 vs 5) and price ($3.99 vs $4.99). On ads and device support 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

Orphion costs $3.99 and ABDCTN $4.99 up front. Orphion sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. ABDCTN asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

ABDCTN holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Orphion has 33 ratings behind it against 5, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 85% of Orphion's written reviews are positive against 100% of ABDCTN's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Orphion ships an update every 2 months, ABDCTN daily. The most recent releases landed on November 1, 2026 and November 10, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard8 real differences · 2 level
Orphion versus ABDCTN: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterOrphionABDCTN
Price$3.99 — better$4.99
Rating4.0 (33 ratings)5.0 (5 ratings) — better
Positive reviews84.7% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings33 — better5
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsDaily — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases — betterPaid
DevicesiPadiPhone, iPad — better
Requires iOS7.0 — better18.0
Further details — not scored
Size27 MB2 MB
Age rating4+9+
DeveloperBastus TrumpLASZLO DOBROVOLSZKI

Customer experience

Orphion

All ratings31 ratings
Positive71.0%
Neutral9.7%
Negative19.4%
Written reviews111 reviews
Positive84.7%
Neutral6.3%
Negative9.0%

ABDCTN

All ratings4 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Bugs and requests

Orphion

Reported bugs

14 issues
  • Audio crackling and distortion on iPadOS 18 and M4 devices
  • App crashes on startup with recent iPad OS versions
  • UI elements out of place on iPad mini
  • MIDI not working in AUM and other DAWs
  • Virtual MIDI instruments not detected when loaded as IAA
Show 9 more
  • App stops playing audio when iPad is closed
  • Bluetooth headphone connectivity issues
  • Orientation stuck on iOS 11+
  • Pad sensitivity issues after iOS 8 update
  • Velocity feature removed after forced Apple update
  • App crashes intermittently even after reboot
  • Incompatibility with newer iPad models (10.5 inch)
  • SoundCloud upload function non-functional
  • Forum support page returns errors

Requested features

15 requests
  • Recording and export functionality
  • Additional sound patches and voices
  • Custom scale and layout editor
  • Pitch bend and modulation wheel controls
  • AudioCopy/Paste support
Show 10 more
  • AirPlay support for wireless speaker output
  • More velocity increment options
  • Adjustable timbre per touch type
  • Finer sensitivity slider adjustment
  • Support for different scales (Dorian, Hijazkiar, etc.)
  • Sequencing and arranging features
  • iPhone version of the app
  • More pad layout options
  • CC support for different synths
  • Mono output option

ABDCTN

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Orphion

One-time1
  • Orphion Editor$0.99
None

ABDCTN

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Orphion free?
Orphion costs $3.99, and also offers in-app purchases.
Is ABDCTN free?
ABDCTN costs $4.99, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Orphion or ABDCTN?
ABDCTN is rated higher. Orphion averages 4.0 out of 5 from 33 ratings, while ABDCTN averages 5.0 from 5 ratings.
Do Orphion or ABDCTN have ads?
Neither Orphion nor ABDCTN shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Orphion or ABDCTN?
Orphion ships an update every 2 months, and ABDCTN daily. Most recently, Orphion was updated on November 1, 2026 and ABDCTN on November 10, 2026.

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