Comparison

PocketDAW vs Wave Slicer

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

Head to head
About

PocketDAW

Features
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PocketDAW brings vocal recording, arrangement, mixing, lyric writing, and export into one local-first workspace for iPhone and iPad. BUILD A VOCAL SESSION Import a beat into project-owned storage, record vocals while existing tracks play, and arrange up to 32 audio tracks. Keep the playhead centered while clips move behind it, zoom or fit the timeline, and choose a comfortable track height. Tap tracks and clips for contextual controls. Move, duplicate, precisely trim, split, fade, and crossfade clips. Shape tracks with gain, pan, mute, and solo, with project Undo and Redo. MIX WITH CONTROL Use built-in Studio EQ and Vocal Compressor, adjustable sends, Aux returns, delay, subgroup routing, Master EQ and compression, peak limiting, and peak, RMS, LUFS, and true-peak metering. Preview evidence-backed local gain and mix recommendations before applying or rejecting them. WRITE BESIDE YOUR MUSIC Create lyric documents and sections with offline exact, slant, internal, compound, and multisyllabic rhyme cues. Explore deterministic suggestions, syllable and stress facts, an offline dictionary and thesaurus, project pronunciations, search, custom themes, draft history, timeline links, and a transport-aware teleprompter. DELIVER YOUR WORK Export a 24-bit Mix WAV, choose from three loudness and true-peak-aware Mastered WAV profiles, or create aligned dry, wet, Aux, and subgroup stem packages with reconstruction metadata. LOCAL-FIRST BY DEFAULT Projects and core analysis stay on your device. PocketDAW has no account, ads, analytics, or social feed. Optional Studio Assistant chat connects to a server you choose and control on a reachable local or private network. Before Send, the app shows the destination, model, and shared context. Names, saved lyrics, and conversation history require separate sharing choices; any text you enter in a message is part of that message. Raw audio and file paths are never sent. Supported project edits require review and Apply, and local chat history can be cleared.

About

Wave Slicer

Features
Read full description

Wave Slicer cuts a sound down to the piece you actually want. Load a track, record something, or send a file to it from anywhere on your phone โ€” then zoom in until you can see the individual samples and cut exactly there. WHAT IT DOES A waveform that stays smooth on a ten-minute file and keeps going down to sample level. Drag the edges of a selection, slide the whole selection along, or draw a new one. Every edge snaps to a zero crossing, so a cut never clicks. A full effect chain that you hear while you turn it. Transpose by semitones, high-pass and low-pass with resonance, tanh saturation, bitcrush and sample rate reduction, echo with feedback, and a reverb that can ring out for eight seconds past the end of the slice. An amplitude envelope you draw by hand. Tap to add a point, drag to move it, bend the curve between two points. The same envelope drawing as the pitch curve in Drum Rack. Fades on both ends, and a loop crossfade that folds the tail over the head so a loop comes round without a seam. Export as a 16 or 24-bit WAV, with TPDF dither on 16-bit. The file lands where you choose to save it, named so you can find it again in a DAW browser. Record straight from the microphone when you want to sample something in the room. Echo cancellation and noise suppression stay off, because those are built for speech and ruin anything worth sampling. Twelve sounds are built in to start with, including two drum loops on the grid, so there is something to cut the moment you open it. WHAT IT DOES NOT DO No account. No sign-in. No advertising. No analytics. No tracking. Audio you load, record or export never leaves your device. The app asks the internet for exactly one thing: a small text file holding the current links shown on the last screen. FROM THE LAB Wave Slicer is part of Lumlux Art Lab, a set of free browser tools for people who make music. The same slicer runs on the website, so you can try it before installing anything. Made in Antwerp by FDR-Sound.

Screenshots

PocketDAW4 screens
Wave Slicer4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is iOS requirement: Wave Slicer at 15.0 against PocketDAW's 18.0. On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

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

UpkeepUpdate frequency

PocketDAW ships an update every 2 days, Wave Slicer every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on October 4, 2026 and October 16, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard1 real difference ยท 5 level
PocketDAW versus Wave Slicer: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPocketDAWWave Slicer
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 2 days โ€” betterEvery 4 days
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, iPod โ€” better
Requires iOS18.015.0 โ€” better
Further details โ€” not scored
Size47 MB20 MB
Age rating9+4+
DeveloperMICHAEL DWAYNE WILLIAMSFrank De Rop

In-app purchases

None

PocketDAW

No in-app purchases

None

Wave Slicer

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is PocketDAW free?
PocketDAW is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Wave Slicer free?
Wave Slicer is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do PocketDAW or Wave Slicer have ads?
Neither PocketDAW nor Wave Slicer shows ads.
Which is updated more often, PocketDAW or Wave Slicer?
PocketDAW ships an update every 2 days, and Wave Slicer every 4 days. Most recently, PocketDAW was updated on October 4, 2026 and Wave Slicer on October 16, 2026.

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