Comparison

Drone Meditations vs Finger Shruti

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

Head to head
About

Drone Meditations

This app offers a sophisticated drone synthesizer for creating ambient music, sound healing, and meditative soundscapes. It features four oscillators per patch, extensive modulation options, and multiple tuning systems, providing a deep and authentic instrument for drone music enthusiasts.

Highlights
  • Four oscillators per patch with multiple waveform options
  • Per-voice filter, drive, FM, chorus, delay, and reverb effects
  • Twenty multi-target LFOs with tempo-locked rates
  • Per-voice timing envelopes for dynamic sound shaping
  • Six distinct tuning systems
  • Over 110 presets and 48 artist tributes
  • Live cymatics visualization with pinch-to-zoom
Features
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A deep four-oscillator drone synthesizer for meditation, sound healing, and ambient composition. Inspired by Pauline Oliveros, Éliane Radigue, Stars of the Lid, William Basinski, and the long-form drone tradition. Real synthesis, real tuning systems, real cymatics — designed for listeners who want to go deep. Most "drone apps" give you a few sliders and call it ambient. Drone Meditations gives you a real instrument. SOUNDS YOU CAN SIT WITH FOR HOURS • Four oscillators per patch — sine, triangle, sawtooth, square, white / pink noise, granular pink, or loaded sample • Per-voice filter (LP / HP / BP), drive, cross-osc FM, stereo chorus, three-mode delay with musical timing, stereo Schroeder reverb • Twenty multi-target LFOs per patch (five per voice). LFOs 1–4 hit amp / pan / cutoff / Q / pitch / FM / FX-Mix; LFO 5 has its own row of granular + FX targets (grain, delay, reverb). Each LFO's rate can lock to a musical subdivision of the tempo. • Per-voice timing envelopes — fade in over minutes, fade out later, repeat N times or forever. Rotate harmonically across 20 minutes without touching a slider. • Six tuning systems: 12-TET, just intonation, Pythagorean, Lou Harrison Free JI, Wendy Carlos α/β/γ, Harry Partch 43-tone DESIGNED FOR THE DRONE TRADITION • 110+ presets across Drone Artists, Developer Patches, Solfeggio, Natural Resonance, Cymatics, Mystic & Composers, and Binaural categories — plus an INIT preset pinned at the top • 48 Drone Artists tributes — Oliveros, Riley, Radigue, Stars of the Lid, Sunn O))), Basinski, Niblock, Palestine, Budd, Coltrane, and more — capturing each artist's waveforms, FX, and tuning, not just their pitches • 21 Developer Patches showcasing granular sampling, BPM-locked grain density, FX-Mix LFO swells, and the JG hybrid pad/groove series • Modal chord category — the 7 diatonic modes plus Harmonic and Melodic Minor — with quantize-to-scale so pitch-modulated voices arpeggiate across all 7 mode degrees • Auto-morph between any two presets over 30 s to 60 min • 25 scripted meditation journeys (Deep Listening, Heavy Resonance, Minimalist Arc, and 22 more) • Tune to Room — global LISTEN snaps the chord root to a pitch from the mic; per-strip ear icon snaps just one voice LIVE CYMATICS THAT BREATHE WITH THE AUDIO • Physically-calibrated Chladni patterns fit from real plate- vibration footage. The renderer crossfades between two adjacent eigenmodes bracketing each voice's live frequency — vibrato breathes between physical modes, not styled animation. • Pinch to zoom; tap to enter fullscreen Performance mode with a drifting sand-particle simulation along the nodal lines • Cymatic snapshot gallery + spectrum-analyzer alternative GRANULAR + TEMPO • Granular waveform: pink noise chopped into Hann-windowed grains with size, density, jitter, stereo spread, per-voice overlap • Granular sampling: same scheduler on any loaded sample — freeze a bansuri forever, smear a chord into a tape-decay cloud • BPM-quantized density (½ → 1/32T) locks grain spacing to the global tempo. Per-LFO rate sync extends musical subdivisions to LFO speed. Metronome click toggle for an audible reference. RECORD, SHARE, AND COMPOSE • Mastered session recording: 24-bit WAV + AAC M4A sidecar with loudness normalization, automatic fades, embedded metadata • Per-voice mic record captures into a voice's sample slot — normalized, granular-ready, with the current frequency as the sample's reference pitch • 50+ bundled samples: bansuri, organ, piano, storm, tide, forest, urban, cosmic • Cross-device preset sharing via .dronepreset files — AirDrop a patch between web, iPhone, and iPad, samples embedded inline. iCloud auto-syncs samples-free presets across devices. One-time purchase. No subscription, no accounts, no tracking. Free web version: dronemeditations.com

About

Finger Shruti

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Finger Shruti — Play the Shruti Box with Your Fingertips Finger Shruti is a musical instrument app that brings the mechanism and playing feel of the Indian shruti box to your iPhone. A shruti box is a traditional drone instrument that produces sustained tones by opening the reeds of the desired notes and sending air through the instrument with bellows. It is often used in Indian music, vocal practice, meditation, yoga, and sound bath settings to provide a continuous tonal foundation. With Finger Shruti, you can select the notes you want to sound and play by swiping up and down on the screen. Swiping changes the AIR value, allowing you to control the sound in a way that feels similar to operating a real shruti box. You can also select multiple notes at the same time to create richer drones and harmonies. The app supports switching between A = 440 Hz and A = 432 Hz, so you can choose the tuning that best suits your preference and practice. Finger Shruti includes a 3-minute free trial. During the trial, you can use all performance features. If you would like to continue playing after that, you can unlock the full version with a one-time in-app purchase. Whether you use it for singing, meditation, yoga, sound exploration, or simply enjoying sustained tones, Finger Shruti offers a simple and tactile way to experience this unique instrument.

Screenshots

Drone Meditations4 screens
Finger Shruti3 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Finger Shruti at Free against Drone Meditations's $14.99. Finger Shruti also leads on update cadence (every 2 days vs every 3 weeks). Drone Meditations's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1). On ads, device support and iOS requirement 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

Finger Shruti is free to download; Drone Meditations costs $14.99 up front. Finger Shruti sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Drone Meditations asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Drone Meditations ships an update every 3 weeks, Finger Shruti every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on October 31, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 6 level
Drone Meditations versus Finger Shruti: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterDrone MeditationsFinger Shruti
Price$14.99Free — better
Rating5.0 (1 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings1 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 3 weeksEvery 2 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationPaid—
DevicesiPhone, iPad — betteriPhone
Requires iOS17.017.0
Further details — not scored
Size131 MB42 MB
Age rating17+4+
DeveloperJOSE ANTONIO GUDEMagari Kikaku LLC.

In-app purchases

None

Drone Meditations

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

Finger Shruti

One-time1
  • Finger Shruti Full Version$4.99

Questions

Is Drone Meditations free?
Drone Meditations costs $14.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Finger Shruti free?
Finger Shruti is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Drone Meditations or Finger Shruti have ads?
Neither Drone Meditations nor Finger Shruti shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Drone Meditations or Finger Shruti?
Drone Meditations ships an update every 3 weeks, and Finger Shruti every 2 days. Most recently, Drone Meditations was updated on October 31, 2026 and Finger Shruti on October 25, 2026.

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