Audio Object vs Gliss

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.

Gliss is a touch instrument that sings. Two lines of light run across the screen. Slide a finger along one and the pitch follows continuously, like a voice or a bow, never stepping from key to key. Press lower on the line and the note swells; lift toward it and it fades to a breath. GRAVITY Each note of the scale is a well. Turn gravity down and the lines are fretless: every pitch in between is yours. Turn it up and your finger is gently pulled into tune: slide freely, land exactly. All the way up, it locks. FLEX The pitch follows your finger on an elastic. Loose, and it lags behind with a slow, singing portamento. Tight, and it snaps. SOUNDS 24 sounds built around a singing core: strings, voices, winds, leads, basses, pads, plucks and a few oddities, like a cello that sings, a choir, a horn in the fog. A slow orbital vibrato settles in once the note has been held, the way a singer's does. Shape any sound with tone, texture, subharmonic mixture, formant, filter and envelope. 28 TUNINGS Western modes, blues, Arabic maqam with true quarter tones, Turkish makam, Persian dastgah, klezmer, Southeast Asian scales, just intonation, 19 and 31 equal temperaments. Neutral intervals can be shaded from Egypt to Syria. MORE THAN TWO FINGERS • Chords: one finger can play a fifth, a triad, a seventh or an octave, always inside the scale • Arpeggiator: up, down, up and back, random, locked to tempo • Looper: record, overdub, loop, clear • Lanes: give each line its own sound, chord and octave • Tilt the device to bend and open the filter • Flick a note and it slides away, bounces and fades. Touch it to catch it IN YOUR HOST (AUv3) Gliss is also an AUv3 instrument for AUM, Loopy Pro, GarageBand, Logic and every host that loads Audio Units. Play its two lines with your fingers inside the host, or from a keyboard, an MPE controller or a MIDI track: every note lands on a line and gravity pulls it into your tuning. Ten parameters to automate, factory presets, and the whole instrument saved with your project. FREE, THEN PRO AND STUDIO Gliss is free to play: the whole gesture, three sounds (VOIX, PLUIE NOIRE, KOTO LUNE) and three tunings (major, minor and maqam Rast), in the app and in your host. Two one-time purchases, each on its own: GLISS PRO for the app unlocks all 24 sounds and their settings, all 28 tunings, chords, the arpeggiator, the looper, lanes, tilt and effects. GLISS STUDIO for your host unlocks every sound and tuning in the AUv3 plugin, with MIDI and MPE in and automation. No subscription. Designed for iPhone, iPad and iPhone Duo: landscape on a phone, any way you hold a large screen, the bars on the flat half and the settings on the raised half when it is folded. Dark, with nothing on screen that is not sound. No account. No ads. No tracking. Gliss collects nothing; your settings stay on your device.