Audio Object vs Loop Breaker

Audio Object is a pocket-sized music instrument for iPhone. It looks and works like a small piece of hardware — a wooden body with an instrument panel on each face. Pull the wood edge and the body rotates to the next face. WHAT IT DOES - Four-track looper with bar-quantized recording and per-loop trim - Three-voice drum machine as the click track — kick, snare, hi-hat with a per-step accent grid - Eight-pad sampler with grid, auto, and tap chopping, two switchable banks, three-band EQ, varispeed tuning - Project save, load, and WAV stem export with tempo map - Streams audio to any Mac DAW over USB (Inter-Device Audio & MIDI) - Sends MIDI clock over USB — Ableton, Logic, and Bitwig lock transport to the phone - Records stereo from any Core Audio interface (iRig, Focusrite, MOTU, and others) HOW IT WORKS Six faces. Perform pads on one, sampler on another, click and time signature on a third, projects on the back, I/O on top, master on the bottom. No menus, no tabs. Every control lives on the body. The click track is not a metronome. It is a three-voice drum machine with per-step accents, subdivisions from quarter notes to swing, and time signatures from 3/4 to 12/8. Set up a kick-snare-hat pattern, press record, loop on the beat. The sampler holds eight pads across two banks. Record from the mic or load from Files. Chop by grid, by transient, or by tapping markers. Each pad carries a three-band EQ, varispeed pitch, and an amplitude envelope. All eight play polyphonically. Recording quantizes to the bar, the beat, or runs free. A dedicated loop-adjust face trims each loop to the sample — drag the region brackets, snap to the grid, hear the result while the brackets move. Plug the phone into a Mac over USB. Audio Object appears as an audio input and MIDI clock source. The DAW locks transport to the phone's tempo. No drivers, no setup. Plug a USB audio interface into the phone. Audio Object names the device on screen and records through its preamps at up to 48 kHz stereo. WHAT IS NEXT A synthesizer — bass, chord, and lead modes — is in development for the next major release.

Loop Breaker is a gamified audio processing environment that periodically forces you to make choices about how your audio loops should change and how your compositions should unfold. This is primarily achieved through a modifier system; every few bars, a new modifier appears in a queue. You must decide which of your loops should be affected by the modifier. If you make no choice, Loop Breaker will decide for you. Change is the only constant. Modifiers include standard audio effects like reverb, delay, chorus, filters, granular delay, auto-pan, and tremolo. Each of these effects has multiple parameters that are set on the fly and include various onset times. Other modifiers effect loop playback: you can change the playback speed, reverse playback direction, time-stretch, re-pitch, move loop brackets via the parts system, and slice loops and then shuffle, arpeggiate, or repeat them. Modifiers stack. Within minutes, your loops will wander down their own paths and recombine to create something previously unimaginable. Loop Breaker also contains a robust probability system for controlling how likely it is that modifier types will appear in the queue and how likely it is that an individual loop will be targeted for modification, should you cede decision-making responsibilities to Loop Breaker. The probability system responds to MIDI CC messages, so you can dynamically change probability settings with MIDI controllers, automation lanes in your DAW, or via modulation sources. Loop Breaker also contains a preset system for saving and recalling modifier stacks. Take your explorations as far as you want, save a new preset, and then recall it later on, even between sessions. Like the pads and probability system, presets also can be controlled via MIDI. Still not enough exploratory madness for you? Record and resample the audio output and then re-apply it to a pad or process it further in your DAW. Loop Breaker works both as a standalone app and as a AUv3 plug-in. Loop Breaker knows that you have a hard drive full of 4-bar loops that you never turned into finished compositions. Loop Breaker wants to help. Loop Breaker wants to make sure you don't get stuck in a loop.