Comparison

Ample Juice vs STEM

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Ample Juice

This app simulates a guitar amplifier, cabinet, and microphone setup, allowing musicians to shape their tone with intuitive controls. It offers a range of sounds from clean to heavy distortion and includes a built-in tuner and preset saving.

Highlights
  • Simulated amp, cabinet, and microphone
  • Adjustable gain, EQ, and mic positioning
  • Pulp and boost effects
  • Built-in chromatic, guitar, and bass tuner
  • 25 factory presets
  • AUv3 effect and standalone app
  • MIDI and automation support
Read full description

Plug in. Tune up. Play a chord. If it needs more bite, turn it up. If the low strings need to hit harder, add Pulp. If the top end is getting in the way, move the microphone. Ample Juice works like the rig you already understand, because playing guitar should not feel like programming one. ONE SCREEN, LIKE AN AMP The whole signal path is in front of you: gate, boost, drive, amp, 4x12 and microphone. No pages to remember and no puzzle of hidden settings. Start with the controls you know, turn them until the guitar sits right, and leave the rest alone. FROM CLEAN ENOUGH TO LEAD READY Juice covers the ground between edge-of-breakup rhythm and a full lead voice. The first part of the dial adds body and sheen. The middle is where crunch lives. The last stretch opens quickly for sustain and saturation. Even when the gain is up, chords keep their notes instead of folding into one fizzy block. Pulp sits before the amp, where your boost pedal would. It trims low end before the clipping starts and leans into the midrange, so palm mutes land firmly and down-tuned riffs do not spread across the floor. Throw the Clean lever and the drive section steps aside; throw it back and every dirty setting is waiting where you left it. POSITION THE MIC BY TOUCH OR MOUSE No need to translate what you hear into studio jargon. Put a finger on the mic and move it, or grab it with a mouse. Position it toward the cone centre for cut, toward the edge for warmth, farther back for space, or off-axis to soften a sharp pick attack. The cabinet picture is the control—move what you see and listen as the tone follows. READY WHEN THE RIFF ARRIVES Use it as an AUv3 effect in your host or open the standalone app and choose your interface input. It adds no latency, so the note stays under your fingers. The tuner is already at the front of the rig, presets can save without stopping playback, and every control can follow MIDI or automation. 25 factory presets give you useful starting points for clean, crunch, metal, lead and more. Save the sounds that belong to your songs and take them across your devices. SPECIFICATIONS - Audio Unit v3 effect and standalone app - iPad, Mac, iPhone and Apple Vision Pro - Mono or stereo, zero added latency, no tail - 44.1 / 48 / 96 kHz as a plug-in and in the Mac app; 44.1 / 48 kHz in the iPhone and iPad app - All 22 controls automate and assign to MIDI - 25 factory presets across eight categories - Built-in chromatic, guitar and bass tuner - True bypass, click-free and safe to automate - Built-in user manual

About

STEM

Features
Read full description

Plug in your audio interface, start the record, and the vocal is on its own fader. STEM splits what is playing — or what is coming in from your mixer — into vocals, drums, bass and everything else, live, on your iPad or iPhone. Each stem lands on its own pair of hardware outputs, so your desk does the mixing. No upload. No render queue. No waiting for a track to be analysed before you can play it. LIVE IN, STEMS OUT Feed STEM from your interface — a turntable through your mixer, a booth output, an instrument — and it separates what is coming in, with the engine aimed at a live source instead of a file. The mix you did not make, taken apart. EVERY STEM ITS OWN OUTPUTS Each stem takes its own pair of hardware channels — vocals to 3-4, drums to 5-6 — up to 16 channels, assigned in a routing matrix that remembers each interface. Outputs start muted until you confirm the routing, because a misrouted stem into a PA is the mistake worth preventing. On a device alone the four stems fold down to stereo, and the console says so. TWO DECKS, ONE CROSSFADER One setting runs a second deck: its own separation engine, its own four stems, its own routing. A crossfader between them, constant-power or cut. HANDS ON THE HARDWARE Map any MIDI CC by tapping a control and moving the knob. Soft takeover means a hardware fader never makes the mix jump, and positions are sent back, so motorised faders and LED rings follow the console. A CONSOLE, NOT A DIALOG Long-throw faders with a 0 dB detent, mute and solo per stem, LED metering, a master strip with BS.1770 loudness. Per-stem three-band EQ and a resonant filter — ladder or state-variable, your choice. Cue any stem to a headphone pair before you bring it up. Save the whole desk as a scene and recall it. SENDS, INSIDE OR OUT Up to four stereo sends, each per stem and post-fader. Send one to a hardware pair for your outboard, or to the built-in tempo-synced delay or plate reverb. STEMS WHILE IT PLAYS Load a track and it comes apart as it plays. Seek anywhere and the stems follow, because the separation is happening now rather than being read from a file somebody prepared earlier. TAKE THE STEMS WITH YOU Write a loaded track back out as four 24-bit WAV files, latency-compensated so they sit at zero in a DAW, rendered by the larger offline model. MEASURED, NOT QUOTED Latency, load and real-time margin are read from the running session and shown while you work. The app never displays a number it has not measured. iPad, iPhone AND Mac Use the console in portrait or landscape on iPad and iPhone. The same app also runs on Apple-silicon Macs. Real-time performance depends on your device and session settings. PRIVACY No accounts, no analytics, no network. Your music never leaves the device. AUV3 PLUG-IN — Load STEM as an effect in AUM: audio in, the remix on the first bus and each stem on its own bus. In a host with one output, such as GarageBand, the first bus plays the remix. PREVIEW AUDIO “Rooted In Peace” by Admiral Bob (ccMixter), with “In Peace” by snowflake. CC BY 3.0. Excerpted and processed by STEM. ccmixter.org/files/admiralbob77/33646 · creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Screenshots

Ample Juice4 screens
STEM4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Ample Juice at $7.99 against STEM's $14.99. Ample Juice also leads on device support (4 vs 2) and iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.0). On ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Ample Juice costs $7.99 and STEM $14.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Ample Juice versus STEM: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterAmple JuiceSTEM
Price$7.99 — better$14.99
Rating4.0 (2 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews50.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings2 — better—
Update frequency—Monthly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationPaid—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Mac, Vision Pro — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS17.0 — better26.0
Further details — not scored
Size16 MB283 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperChristian ThompsonMichael Ivertowski

In-app purchases

None

Ample Juice

No in-app purchases

None

STEM

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Ample Juice free?
Ample Juice costs $7.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is STEM free?
STEM costs $14.99, with no in-app purchases.
Do Ample Juice or STEM have ads?
Neither Ample Juice nor STEM shows ads.

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