Longwave Ambience vs Nyquist Player
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Longwave Ambience
Read full descriptionHide full description
Longwave is a living ambient audio environment that evolves as you listen. At its core is a real-time visualizer - a constellation of particles and waveforms driven by the music itself. Choose a preset and let it run: the sound shifts, breathes, and surprises. PRESETS Each preset shapes the sonic character of the experience. From the bright, structured counterpoint of Baroque Garden to the vast reverb tails of Cathedral to the slow textural drift of Deep Ambient. A customization panel lets you tune the balance to your own taste. NARRATIVE EPISODES Browse seasons of narrative audio — immersive storytelling woven through the ambient bed. Episodes play in their own time, with long ambient stretches between segments. There's no feed to scroll, no algorithm to game. Just listen. THE COLLECTION Hidden within the ambient stream are rare sound clips: field recordings, processed textures, found sounds. Discover them as you listen. Each one is catalogued in your collection, a growing archive of sonic surprises across 83 possible entries. Longwave is free and contains no ads, no subscriptions, and no in-app purchases.
Nyquist Player
A file-first music player for audiophiles with large local libraries. It offers bit-perfect playback, true gapless transitions, and advanced track analysis tools. Stream to network receivers and manage huge libraries with ease.
- Bit-perfect playback
- True gapless transitions
- Network streaming (UPnP/DLNA)
- Advanced track analysis
- On-device search
- Large library management
- NAS support
- Portable playlists
Read full descriptionHide full description
Nyquist is a native, file-first music player for audiophiles who keep large local libraries on SSDs, external drives, and NAS shares. It is not a streaming app — it is a fast, precise playback tool built for people who care about sample rates, bit depth, and an honest signal path. WHY NYQUIST • Bit-perfect intent — On macOS, Nyquist matches your DAC's hardware sample rate to each file (44.1 → 88.2/176.4, 48 → 96/192) and waits for the clock to re-lock so CoreAudio performs no resampling. No cross-family conversions are ever forced on your music. • True gapless playback — Sample-accurate transitions between tracks of the same format, so albums by Pink Floyd, Tool, Daft Punk, live sets, and classical recordings flow without a single gap. • Network play — Discover UPnP/DLNA receivers on your network (Denon, HEOS, and friends) and stream the original file straight to them, with gapless hand-off on receivers that support it. Network devices sit right next to your DACs in the output picker. • Track analysis — A built-in lab for every file: a whole-track waveform with peak, RMS, and dynamic-range readouts; EBU R128 / BS.1770 integrated loudness with ReplayGain; a long-term spectrum that exposes upsampled "hi-res" and lossy-sourced "lossless" files; a full spectrogram; plus live spectrum, level meters, and a stereo goniometer — each with a plain-language verdict. • On-device search — A private, persistent index of your saved locations, with filters by file type and metadata field (title, artist, album, genre, composer, label, year, format). Nothing leaves your device. • Built for huge libraries — Folder-first browsing that behaves like a high-performance file browser, not a slow database. Lazy-loaded discovery means no full-library scan before you can press play, even across 50,000+ tracks. A topology view classifies your folders into artists, albums, EPs, singles, live sets, compilations, box sets, and discs. • NAS-aware — Add SMB shares directly or through the Files app. Remote tracks start instantly while a background copy makes seeks immediate, and the next track is prefetched for seamless rotation. • Playlists — Organize your music into groups and playlists saved as portable .m3u8 files in a folder you choose. Point every device at the same folder — including a NAS share added through the Files app — and your playlists stay in sync across Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Build them from tracks, whole folders, or the current queue, then reorder and edit them anywhere. • Background playback — On iPhone and iPad, playback keeps going when you lock the screen or switch apps, with working lock-screen and Control Center transport — including while streaming to a network receiver. • Flexible volume — On iPhone and iPad the slider follows your device's system volume; on macOS, choose software gain, your DAC's own hardware volume (bit-perfect at any level), or a fixed 100% for maximum purity. An optional limiter caps the level across every output — even against the hardware volume buttons — to prevent accidental loud jumps. • Exclusive (hog) mode — Optionally take exclusive ownership of your DAC during playback on macOS. • Flexible output routing — On macOS, choose the exact CoreAudio output device (USB DAC, built-in, and more); your choice is remembered across launches. On iPhone and iPad, send audio to AirPlay, Bluetooth, or wired outputs with the system route picker. • Deep technical transparency — Inspect format, sample rate, bit depth (with FLAC/ALAC recovery), channel count, codec, and a live signal-path view showing source rate, output rate, and bit-perfect / resampling / exclusive status. • Memory-friendly — Tracks are streamed from disk frame-by-frame, never decoded whole into RAM, so even 24/192 material stays light on resources. SUPPORTED FORMATS FLAC, ALAC, MP3, AIFF, WAV, and AAC today. The engine is format-agnostic, with DSD and SACD ISO planned.
Screenshots
Verdict
Longwave Ambience and Nyquist Player 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 · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
| Parameter | Longwave Ambience | Nyquist Player |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | — | 4.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | — | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | — | 1 — better |
| Update frequency | — | Every 2 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | — | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 — better | 17.6 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 3 MB | 13 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | See-through Lab LLC | Jose De Jesus Garfias |
In-app purchases
Longwave Ambience
No in-app purchases
Nyquist Player
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Longwave Ambience free?
Is Nyquist Player free?
Do Longwave Ambience or Nyquist Player have ads?
Other comparisons















