RhythmReel vs A«iD
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
RhythmReel
This app synchronizes your videos and Live Photos with music, making them react dynamically to the beat. You can use existing clips or record new ones, and import audio files or let the microphone capture sound. It offers creative overlays and multi-clip functionality for engaging video creation.
- Real-time audio-reactive video playback
- Works with any video or Live Photo
- Record new clips
- Microphone input or import audio
- Live waveform visualizer
- Text overlay reacting to audio
- Multi-clip playlist mode
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RhythmReel is an iPhone app that makes your videos and Live Photos move to music. When the beat drops, your video jumps forward. When it quiets, it eases back. Pick any clip from your camera roll or record a short video in the app. Play music out loud through your speakers and the microphone picks it up automatically. Or import an audio file directly. Short clips work especially well. Live Photos are perfect. Free to download. A one-time purchase removes the watermark and unlocks high-resolution export. FEATURES • Real-time audio-reactive video playback • Works with any video or Live Photo from your camera roll • Record a new clip from the front or rear camera • Microphone input or import audio files • Live waveform visualizer overlay • Text overlay that reacts to the audio • Multi-clip playlist mode • Export as .mp4, share anywhere Made by Evan Roth, a Berlin-based artist whose work is in the permanent collection of MoMA.
A«iD
This app synthesizes video in real time, reacting to audio input. It offers a modular chain of effects to manipulate visuals, allowing for custom masks and intricate distortions. Create unique, psychedelic visual experiences inspired by vintage video synthesizers.
- Audio-reactive video synthesis
- Modular effects chain
- Customizable masks (SVG, PNG, PDF)
- Real-time feedback and distortion
- Color manipulation and remap
- CRT phosphor and DV tape emulation
- Edge detection and raster effects
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A«iD is an audio-reactive video synthesizer inspired by Eric Siegel's legendary EVS Electronic Video Synthesizer from the 1970s. ——— THE CHAIN ——— Modules process the video signal in real time. Stack them in any order, tap to open controls, drag to reorder, long-press to bypass. GEOMETRY SOURCE — Generate a synthetic shape and composite it over the signal. Circle, diamond, bar, cross, ring, triangle, hexagon — or load your own SVG, PNG, or PDF as a custom mask. Position, size, hue, and edge softness are all independently audio-modulatable. FEEDBACK — Route the processed signal back into itself. Pinch and rotate on the canvas to control zoom and spin in real time. KEYER — Unified luma and chroma key in a single module. Cut foreground from background by luminance or isolate a color as a matte. Tap the eyedropper to sample any color directly from the screen. Pairs visually with COMPOSITE in the chain — the signal knows where it's going. COMPOSITE — Layer the processed chain behind a clean camera cut using luma and chroma mattes simultaneously. COLOR MATRIX — Rotate, invert, and cross-channel the RGB color space. Strange colors guaranteed. HUE LFO — Oscillate the hue channel at tempo-synced rates. Psychedelic pulsing locked to the beat. PHOSPHOR DECAY — Emulate CRT phosphor persistence. Past frames linger like burned afterimages. BURN ECHO — Additive frame echo that saturates toward white. Motion leaves a scorched trail. DV TAPE — Analog dropout and compression artifacts from the era of consumer DV camcorders. HALATION — Film halation glow on bright areas. Warm blooming on highlights. CHROMA SMEAR — Horizontal chroma bleed and compression fringing. SCAN DISPLACE — Rutt/Etra-inspired raster displacement. Each scanline shifts horizontally by audio frequency content mapped to vertical position — bass warps the bottom, treble the top. The entire frame becomes a spectrum warp field. EDGE OUTLINE — Sobel edge detection with colored glow, inspired by Stephen Beck's Direct Video Synthesizer. Flat areas go dark; edges light up in the chosen hue and bloom outward. COLORMAP — Remap luminance to color. Five palettes: Thermal (heat vision), Psychedelic (full hue rotation, classic Siegel PCS), Phosphor (P1 green CRT), Ice, and Neon. Every pixel's brightness becomes a new color. RASTER BEND — Distort the scan lines. Warp the geometry of the image itself. MIRROR — Fold, flip, and tile the frame into kaleidoscopic symmetry. TILE — Repeat, scale, and rearrange the frame in a grid. POSTERIZE — Reduce color depth. Hard edges, flat planes, screen-print aesthetics. TRANSFORM — Rotate, scale, and reposition with full affine control. CHANNEL MIX — Blend and cross-route RGB channels independently. ENCODER — NTSC-style composite encoding. Color bleeding and luminance separation. ——— AUDIO REACTOR ——— Every knob can be wired to the live audio signal. A»iD listens constantly and extracts amplitude, bass, mid and treble bands, beat phase, BPM, onset triggers, and spectral centroid. Seven LFOs run at BPM subdivisions. Open the Patch Bay to wire any source to any parameter in any module. Stack multiple sources on one knob. Set amount and polarity per patch. ——— RANDOMIZE ——— Shake the device (or hit the die) to randomize the whole chain. Palette Lock freezes hue and saturation through dice rolls. Sleeper Mode locks each module's bypass state — sleeping modules stay asleep, active modules stay awake. Everything re-rolls around your intention. ——— SYNC & CONTROL ——— ABLETON LINK — Lock BPM and beat phase with Ableton Live, AUM, Loopy, and any Link-compatible app on your network. MIDI — Auto-learns CC from any wired or Bluetooth MIDI controller. Long-press any knob to assign. OSC — Receive /aid/ messages from TouchOSC or Max/MSP over Wi-Fi.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: A«iD at none against RhythmReel's 1. A«iD also leads on update cadence (every 8 days vs every 3 weeks). On price, rating, review sentiment and ratings volume 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. RhythmReel sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. A«iD asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for RhythmReel against 5.0 for A«iD. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 8 and 3 respectively. Written reviews split almost evenly too, at 100% and 100% positive.
RhythmReel ships an update every 3 weeks, A«iD every 8 days. The most recent releases landed on September 18, 2026 and September 20, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | RhythmReel | A«iD |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (8 ratings) | 5.0 (3 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 8 — better | 3 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks | Every 8 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 35 MB | 68 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Evan Andrew Roth | JOEL CHRISTOPHER RAKOWSKI |
Customer experience
RhythmReel
A«iD
In-app purchases
RhythmReel
- Remove Watermark & High-Res Export$2.99
A«iD
No in-app purchases









