Comparison

Tabla Drum Grid vs HotMix Listen

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

Head to head
About

Tabla Drum Grid

Features
Read full description

Tabla is a tactile, no-fuss 16-step drum machine for sketching beats, jamming, and prototyping grooves on the go. A clean grid, eight drum voices, and the controls you actually use — all on one stage. No accounts, no banners, no upsells. KEY FEATURES • 16-step grid with 8 drum tracks: Kick, Snare, Hat, Clap, Open Hat, Cowbell, Perc, Tom • Tap to toggle steps, long-press to add an accent • Six built-in presets: Boom Bap, Trap, House, Disco, Breakbeat, Bossa • BPM control from 60 to 200 with smooth tempo nudges • Swing slider from 50% to 75% for that human pocket • Per-track Mixer with volume, mute and solo on every voice • Save your own patterns and recall them in one tap • Mono synth-style sample engine — punchy, low-latency, no streaming DESIGNED FOR FLOW Whether you are roughing out a beat in a coffee shop, locking in a tempo before band practice, or laying down ideas on the train, Tabla stays out of the way and just keeps the grid alive. PRIVACY No tracking. No accounts. Your patterns live on your device.

About

HotMix Listen

Features
Read full description

HotMix turns an iPhone or iPad into a personal monitor mixer for production sound — no belt pack required. It connects to the HotMix Server on your Mac and streams up to 32 live channels over local Wi-Fi. Everyone on the crew mixes their own blend on their own device, so the producer's mix and the boom op's mix can look nothing alike. WHAT YOU CAN DO • Tap a tile to drop a channel into your mix. Long-press for a fader. Taps respond right away — every channel is already streaming, so nothing waits on the network. • Read live captions of what each mic is saying, transcribed on the server. Because each channel is one mic, the speaker labels are exact — no guessing who said what. • Save a mix as a Scene and bring it back with one tap. Handy when you jump between an interview setup and a wide. • Star the channels you care about to pin them to the top, and sort the grid the way you work. • On iPad, Auto tile size goes compact for big casts, so 32 channels still fit on one screen. • On iPhone, captions keep running on the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island while the app is in the background. You decide whether a locked screen shows full dialogue or just the speaker's name. • A jitter buffer, adjustable from 40 to 200 ms, rides out Wi-Fi hiccups, and the app reconnects on its own if the signal drops. There's no login, no account, and nothing leaves your network. HotMix finds the server automatically once you're on the same Wi-Fi. HotMix needs the HotMix Server companion app for macOS and a local Wi-Fi network. Use wired headphones or in-ear monitors for the lowest latency — Bluetooth adds too much delay for monitoring.

Screenshots

Tabla Drum Grid3 screens
HotMix Listen4 screens

Verdict

The call

Tabla Drum Grid and HotMix Listen are too close to call on the numbers: across 5 compared parameters — price, ads, in-app purchases and device support among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.

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

CostPrice Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Ads Ā· Monetization

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

ScorecardNo meaningful differences
Tabla Drum Grid versus HotMix Listen: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterTabla Drum GridHotMix Listen
PriceFreeFree
Update frequency—Every 2 days
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad — better
Requires iOS17.017.0
Further details — not scored
Size0 MB19 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperLinh Phan Nhat KhanhSetSync Central

In-app purchases

None

Tabla Drum Grid

No in-app purchases

None

HotMix Listen

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Tabla Drum Grid free?
Tabla Drum Grid is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is HotMix Listen free?
HotMix Listen is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Tabla Drum Grid or HotMix Listen have ads?
Neither Tabla Drum Grid nor HotMix Listen shows ads.

Other comparisons