Audio Object vs midi
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Audio Object
This pocket-sized instrument turns your iPhone into a portable music creation studio. It features a four-track looper, a three-voice drum machine, and an eight-pad sampler with extensive editing capabilities. Seamlessly integrate with your Mac DAW via USB for professional workflows.
- Four-track looper with bar-quantized recording
- Three-voice drum machine click track
- Eight-pad sampler with EQ and varispeed
- Project save, load, and WAV stem export
- Stereo audio streaming to Mac DAWs via USB
- MIDI clock output over USB
- Records stereo from Core Audio interfaces
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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.
midi
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midi-sink models a tray of water with ink floating on it. Every gesture is an exact, area-preserving transformation of the whole sheet — Aubrey Jaffer's mathematical marbling — so the rings stay crisp after a thousand strokes. Two modes. MARBLE MODE is the tray under your hands: tap for a drop, drag to comb, twist two fingers for a vortex, pinch to fold, draw with the Pencil and a wake follows the tip. Plug in a MIDI instrument and it plays into the same water: an MPE controller's strike, pressure, glide and slide become drop, feed, comb and hue; a wind controller draws a single calligraphic line; any keyboard plays drops on the circle of fifths. PLAY MODE turns the iPad into an MPE instrument. A pitch lattice — chromatic grid, Jankó or piano grid — sits under your fingers; every touch is a joystick (sideways bends in semitones, push to feed ink, pull back to stir). The Apple Pencil plays legato across the keys with real force as velocity, its barrel roll deepens vibrato and the Pencil Pro's squeeze is the sustain pedal. A floating strip carries pitch, mod, two assignable wheels and sustain on the MPE master channel. The stream goes out over a virtual CoreMIDI source (also to a USB-tethered Mac), the MIDI network session and Bluetooth LE MIDI, so any DAW or synth records a standard MPE performance while the water paints it. Made for MPE controllers — ROLI Piano and Seaboard, Expressive E Osmose — the ROLI Airwave's gesture CCs, wind controllers (Roland Aerophone, Odisei Travel Sax) and classic keyboards. midi-sink makes no sound of its own: it is a visualizer and a controller. Free software (AGPL-3.0). Collects nothing.
Screenshots
Verdict
Audio Object and midi 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 | Audio Object | midi |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better | — |
| Number of ratings | 1 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | — |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 16.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 12 MB | 4 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Green Rose Systems, LLC | Vibetuned |
In-app purchases
Audio Object
No in-app purchases
midi
No in-app purchases








