Tonic Synth vs Shruti Bot

Eight sound engines in one instrument — and a whole preset community living inside it. Physical modeling, virtual analog, 3D wavetable, 6-operator FM and a full SoundFont player: stack up to three engines per sound, each with its own filter, envelope and modulation. Play it standalone on iPhone, iPad and Mac, or load it as an AUv3 plug-in — instrument and effect — in your favorite host. One purchase. No subscription, no ads, nothing locked behind a paywall. • TONICA — THE SOUND COMMUNITY Your next signature sound might come from a player on the other side of the world. Browse what the community publishes without ever leaving the app: one tap auditions it under your fingers, two taps keep it. Love an author? Take their whole collection at once, into a bank named after them. And publish yours with a single tap — no account, no sign-up, no cost. • THREE OSCILLATORS Up to three independent layers — each with its own source, filter, envelope and modulation, plus mute/solo and keyboard split. From a simple patch to a fat, detuned stack on one spread knob. The Vector pad morphs across all three layers in real time: draw a path and the sound travels it on its own. • SOUND ENGINES Per layer: physical modeling (string, modal, wind, bowed), virtual analog (sine, saw, square, triangle, pulse and super-saw, with sub-oscillator and noise), wavetables up to 128 frames, SoundFont (.sf2 and compressed .sf3) and 6-operator FM that opens .syx cartridges. Record anything through the mic and turn it into a wavetable — or draw the waveform with your finger and hear it instantly, on a 3D landscape you can drag, rotate and resize. • FILTERS Eight analog-modeled voicings — LP/HP/BP/Notch, 12 or 24 dB per octave, resonance into self-oscillation, drive and 4× oversampling. From warm ladder to creamy SVF, from acid squelch to screaming resonance. • ARPEGGIATOR & SEQUENCER A step editor with a live playhead: ties, ratchets, accents and per-step probability, polymetric rhythm masks, capture of what you just played, swing, gate mode, key range and per-layer arping. Imports .mid patterns, follows MIDI Clock, and with Hold the pattern runs by itself. • EFFECTS RACK Chorus, tempo-synced ping-pong delay, 6-type FDN reverb, 5-band EQ, compressor and a Flanger/Phaser module — each one switchable and routable per layer. • BUILT FOR THE STAGE Six scenes (A–F) swap the entire patch live without cutting the sound: the note ringing out finishes naturally while the next one already speaks with the new tone. Switched apps mid-set? A sustain pedal left down or a mod wheel parked halfway no longer hijacks your sound — every control starts working again the moment you move it. The MIDI filter decides what each pedal, wheel or controller is allowed to do, and can target one specific device when there's more than one keyboard in the rack. Program Change and Bank Select switch sounds from your controller. MIDI Learn on any control, over USB or Bluetooth. • YOUR LIBRARY 280+ factory sounds in banks, and your own collection beside them: favorites, renaming, saving, tagging and search by name, tag or bank. Two file formats of its own — one to share sounds (.tpr) and one for a full library backup (.tbk). Double-click a file, or receive one by AirDrop, and it merges straight in without duplicating anything. • WHERE IT RUNS iPhone, iPad and Mac, from a single purchase. As an AUv3 it runs in the major recording apps on iOS and macOS. Using software that doesn't load AUv3 yet? See rsjb.com.br/support for the route other users have already proven. Thank you for playing with RSJB - made by musicians for musicians! Follow the news at www.rsjb.com.br/en

Shruti Bot is a shruti box you can actually tune. Ten reeds, laid out the way a real box is — the low Pa and Sa drone pair, the full middle saptak from Sa to Ni, and the upper Sa. Every reed sits at its just-intonation ratio against the tonic, not the tempered approximation, so the drone locks together the way the instrument is supposed to. Pull up the bellows and it breathes. At zero no air moves at all and the box is silent; push it up and the drone gets louder and pumps harder, until the breathing turns into an audible tremolo riding on top of the tone. Pressure opens the timbre as well as the volume, so a stroke sounds like air moving rather than a fader going up. THE REEDS • Ten stops — Pa and Sa below, Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni across the middle, Sa above • Just intonation throughout — 3/2, 9/8, 5/4, 4/3, 5/3, 15/8 against the tonic • A tapered tuning peg on every reed, plus or minus 100 cents, turned by hand • Detune two neighbouring reeds and they beat against each other — real acoustic summing, not an effect • A mixer fader per reed, independent of the stops, for balancing what's already sounding THE KEY • Any tonic across all twelve pitch classes, octaves 1 through 6 • A peg for each key, arranged as a keyboard • Every pitch class keeps its own microtonal trim, so you can build a tuning that isn't twelve-tone equal temperament and it stays put • The current note and its offset are always on screen MOVEMENT • Two free-running LFOs on every reed — one for tuning, one for level • They run at their own rates and drift in and out of phase, so the beating keeps reorganising and the drone never quite repeats • Set them slow and the box simply sounds alive THE CHAMBER • A swept resonance that moves like a body cavity rather than a filter sweep • Stereo chorus, the point where the drone opens out of the centre • Tape delay with a real moving head — sliding the time bends the pitch the way tape does, and the repeats darken as they recirculate • Plate-style reverb from a quarter second to six TWO INSTRUMENTS Tap the logo. Shruti Bot 2 replaces the reeds with four analogue oscillators — sine, triangle, saw and pulse — with phase shaping on each, from slow comb sweeps to full PWM. Everything else carries straight over: the same tuning, the same reeds switched on, the same effects. Only the sound source changes. No accounts. No subscriptions. No ads. No network. Nothing leaves your device.