MIDIRack vs Anima Synthesizer

MIDIRack is a MIDI toolkit for iPad. Build a custom touch surface from the KB-1 keyboard suite, an all-new sequencer suite, knobs, faders, buttons and more — then unlock a visual MIDI processing graph (one time in-app purchase) and wire it into anything, from a simple custom controller to a full-on groovebox or a self-playing generative composer. Play it on its own and send MIDI anywhere, as an AUv3 plugin in your favourite host or a standalone instrument. THE BASE APP — PERFORMANCE SURFACE Design a custom control surface on a snapping grid: • The KB-1 keyboard suite — piano, diatonic chord pads, scale-locked keyboard, MPE Seaboard ribbon, MPE Strings grid (4ths), and a 4×4 GM drum-pad grid. Each is its own routable node with latch and octave shift. Successor to the KB-1 Expressive Keyboard Suite. • A suite of sequencers — drum, melody, chord, analog and CC step grids and a Matrix note grid, with a moving playhead, swing and microtiming. Per-step velocity, probability, tie and trigger conditions; pattern chaining and 4-pad scene switching for full arrangements; a knob-per-step analog machine that re-roots live as you play. • Knobs, faders, XY pads, buttons and live visualizers — bind to raw MIDI CC or graph parameters. On its own: a rich custom control surface builder — send MIDI and CC to any synth, app or hardware, no graph required. WITH YOUR DESKTOP DAW Expressive MPE hardware costs hundreds. MIDIRack turns the iPad you already own into a controller for Logic, Live, Bitwig, Cubase or any desktop DAW: • Two MPE surfaces — the Seaboard ribbon and the Strings grid send per-note pitch bend, slide and pressure to any MPE-capable instrument on your desk. • A controller that changes per track — MPE ribbon for the lead, drum pads for the beat, chord pads for the progression, faders mapped to CC for a mix move. Rearrange in seconds; save a surface per project. • Sequence it too — clock the step lanes to your DAW and drive its tracks. • Easy to connect — one USB cable to a Mac via IDAM (Inter-Device Audio and MIDI), or wirelessly over Bluetooth MIDI. No driver, no helper app. UNLOCK — MIDI GRAPH (in-app purchase) Wire MIDI In → processors → MIDI Out on a visual canvas: • 60+ node kinds — arpeggiators, scale/key quantizers, transposers, chords, echoes, swing, humanize, euclidean rhythms, random/generative melodies, LFOs, CC tools, an analog knob-per-step sequencer, a Matrix sequencer and a Counter. • Built-in instruments — Synth, Drums, a Sampler and a loop Slicer make sound right in the graph; no external synth required. • Emergence generators — Conway's Game of Life, Turing machine, Wolfram rules, Markov, bouncing balls, Lorenz attractor — for evolving, living patterns. • Presets — factory patches grouped by category (control surfaces, generators, keyboards, utilities): Amen Engine, Starfield, Conway Choir, Turing Bass, Cellular Drums… Save your own. ROUTING & MPE • MIDI Out exposes all 16 channels plus an MPE connector — multitimbral, multi-instrument setups. The built-in synth responds to MPE. • Every keyboard is its own node — process and route each one independently. PLAYS OUT OF THE BOX • Built-in polyphonic synth, drum kit, sampler & slicer or send MIDI to your gear via CoreMIDI and an always-on virtual port.

Anima is a physical modeling instrument. Sound happens the way it happens in the physical world: a breath excites an object, and the object rings out into a room. That is the whole interface, left to right: ENERGY, OBJECT, ROOM. The object is a modal resonator: twenty-four coupled resonances per voice whose frequencies, loudness, and decay follow physical laws you bend with the controls. Make it wood, glass, or metal. Stretch its partials from strings through piano wire into bells. Touch it at the edge, or hollow it out at the center. Blow at it, press it, strike it with a mallet that hits harder the higher you raise it. Push Inertia far enough and the note ignites and sings on its own breath. The controls are bold glyphs, shapes whose form is the value. No numbers at rest: the panel is a picture of the current sound, and it glides into a new shape when you load a preset. On an iPad the three sections share the screen; on an iPhone they sit side by side, a swipe apart, with the ribbon always under your fingers. Every control is easy to grasp and none of them stop at what the label says; finding what else a knob can do is part of the instrument. The ROOM is a morphable space: Size sets the echo's time, Regen goes all the way into self-oscillation, and Blur melts the repeats into a wash. Delay at one end, reverb at the other, one knob between them. Because every mode frequency is computed from the note, nothing ties Anima to the usual twelve pitches: it plays any tuning an MPE controller can send. Anima is the companion instrument to Hexatone; route Hexatone's MPE into it and per-note microtuning just works, with no configuration. - Standalone app and AUv3 instrument (AUM, Logic, GarageBand, Cubasis, Loopy Pro), on iPhone and iPad; your sound saves with the session - MPE with zero setup: per-note pressure is breath (press into a note and it can ignite), and the slide axis goes wherever you route it, any mix of the ENERGY and OBJECT controls, per note - Every control answers a fixed MIDI CC, so any hardware controller reaches the whole instrument with no mapping; pick a MIDI channel in the app, or play on all of them - Sustain pedal (CC64), MIDI Program Change, Glide, and 1 to 64 voices (at 1 it is a true mono synth) - A ribbon keyboard for true microtonal play (multitouch, per-finger glide, Hold to build chords, Snap or Loose), and a piano with properly wide black keys when you want the familiar - 55 factory presets in banks, including packs by Red Sky Lullaby and Hoavi; save your own, or copy any sound as text and send it to a friend - Undo and redo for every gesture, and the full manual lives inside the app - Collects no data; nothing leaves your device One purchase, iPhone and iPad. Headphones or a real speaker recommended: the low end of the breath is real.