Comparison

MPEdie vs Ear Engineer Mobile

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

Head to head
About

MPEdie

This app is an expressive MIDI keyboard controller for mobile devices. It allows for detailed per-note expression, enabling unique sound manipulation. It can be used standalone or as an AUv3 plugin with other music applications.

Highlights
  • MPE keyboard controller
  • Per-note MIDI channel control
  • Four playing surfaces (Piano, Isomorphic, Ribbon, Scale Grid)
  • Customizable expression matrix
  • AUv3 plugin support
  • Standalone operation
  • 26 presets
Features
Read full description

MPEdie is an MPE keyboard controller for iPhone and iPad. It makes no sound: it plays whatever instrument you send it to, and it gives every note its own MIDI channel — so every note bends, breathes and changes timbre on its own. On an ordinary keyboard a bend moves the whole chord. Here it moves one note. APP AND AUv3 Run it standalone and send MIDI to other apps on the device, to Bluetooth gear or over Wi-Fi. Or load it as an AUv3 MIDI plugin in your host and route it straight to an MPE instrument. FOUR PLAYING SURFACES • PIANO — the keyboard your hands know. Sliding follows the pitch under the finger, not the width of the key. • ISOMORPHIC — a grid where a chord shape is the same in every key. Rows, columns and row interval are yours to set. • RIBBON — one continuous strip, nothing to land on. You choose how many semitones fit across it. • SCALE GRID — the same grid, with only the notes of the chosen scale. Nothing out of key by accident. Fourteen scales, any root, split the surface in two with its own layout and octave on the right. EVERY FINGER MOVEMENT IS ROUTABLE A matrix of seven destinations — bend, timbre, pressure, strike, lift and two free CCs — and eight sources: sideways glide, absolute or relative position in the key, contact area, force, time held, or a fixed value. Each link has a curve, a gain, an offset and an invert. And an honest answer about pressure: iOS glass does not measure how hard you press. It measures contact area. MPEdie can send that, and it says so instead of pretending — it is one tap away in the matrix, and the factory default is a gesture you can predict. BUILT TO AGREE WITH THE RECEIVER Lower, upper or split zones. Member channel counts. Per-note and master bend ranges. RPN sent to every member channel when your instrument needs it. Channel pressure or poly aftertouch. Any timbre CC. Channel stealing by oldest or quietest, with a cooldown. One button resends the MPE zone setup to an instrument loaded after you. UNDER THE HANDS PANIC that also lifts the pedal. Octave and key count. Four glide modes — continuous, snap, locked, per-note lock. Pitch, modulation and volume strips, with a spring you can switch off. Two assignable XY pads. Sustain, momentary or latching. Latch, with held notes drawn apart so a stuck note never looks like a played one. Bank select and program change, sent when you ask and never behind your back. TWENTY-SIX PRESETS Seven folders: keyboards, grids, ribbons, splits, scales, and a Targets family that answers the same question — what does the receiver actually understand? — five different ways. Save your own; they are plain files you can move and share. A FREE COMPANION FOR MAC AND WINDOWS MPEdie Desktop receives the iPad over the network and republishes it as a virtual MIDI port, so your DAW sees MPEdie in its list of MIDI inputs, exactly like a hardware controller. That is the point: an input gets recorded. Arm a track and the DAW writes down the per-note expression — every note's own bend, pressure and timbre — and plays it back. Nothing is installed on the iPad, and no driver on Windows. Free download from the developer's site. The full manual is inside the app. MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression) is an open standard published by the MIDI Association and AMEI. MPEdie is MPE-compatible. Diego Capoccitti · 34Audiovisuals · www.diegocapoccitti.it

About

Ear Engineer Mobile

Features
Read full description

YOUR EARS ARE THE INSTRUMENT Every plugin, every monitor, every room you will ever work in sits downstream of one thing: your hearing. Ear Engineer trains it. HOW IT WORKS Pink noise plays once, for five seconds. Somewhere inside it a single ISO third-octave band is lifted by 6 dB: the noise fades in, the boost swells and settles back, the noise fades out. Then the room goes quiet and the question appears. Which band was it? One replay per round. Ten rounds per set. Score 8 or better and you move up. FIVE LEVELS, FROM OBVIOUS TO BRUTAL Level 1 offers three options a decade apart, 100 Hz against 1 kHz against 10 kHz. You will get it right, and that is the point. You are calibrating, not guessing. Then the options close in. Two octaves. One octave. Two thirds of an octave. And finally Pro, where all 31 ISO bands sit on screen and the boost could be any one of them. The options are never the same twice. Every round draws a fresh ladder from a random anchor, so level 1 asks 100 Hz / 1 kHz / 10 kHz on one round and 80 / 800 / 8000 on the next. You learn the frequencies, not the layout of the buttons. THE DETAILS ARE THE PRODUCT The filter Q never changes. It is a one-third-octave bell on every level and every round, narrow enough that 1 kHz and 1.25 kHz stay clearly tellable apart. Bandwidth is never part of the test, so you only ever train one variable at a time. The analyser does not cheat. It shows the material breathing across the spectrum, but it is tapped before the equaliser, so it can never draw the bump and hand you the answer. The moment you answer, it draws the real filter curve exactly where the boost was. That is when you see what you just heard. The noise plays once, not on a loop. One pass, one decision, the way it works when a client is sitting behind you. LOW BANDS, ON OR OFF Training on the move without headphones? Switch the low bands off and everything at 100 Hz and below leaves the game, so a phone speaker never costs you a point. Switch them back on with headphones and the full 20 Hz to 20 kHz grid is in play. BUILT FROM YEARS OF TEACHING IT This is not a toy built around a random number generator. It is a training method that has been run with real students for years, put into an app: the same intervals, the same progression, the same insistence that you name the band rather than wave at the general area. PROGRESS YOU CAN SEE Every level remembers your best set, so you can watch the day 250 Hz stops being a coin toss and starts being obvious. Every level is unlocked from the start, so you can drop into Pro whenever you feel like being humbled. FOR MIXERS, LIVE, MASTERING, POST AND BROADCAST Anyone who has swept a parametric hunting for a resonance knows the feeling of finding it by accident. This is how you stop doing that. A few minutes a day and you start reaching for the right band first, on instinct, while everyone else is still sweeping. Your ears are the one piece of gear you cannot upgrade. Maintain them. No ads. No account. No internet connection required.

Screenshots

MPEdie4 screens
Ear Engineer Mobile3 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: MPEdie at Free against Ear Engineer Mobile's $9.99. On update cadence, ads, in-app purchases and device support 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

MPEdie is free to download; Ear Engineer Mobile costs $9.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

MPEdie ships an update every 6 days, Ear Engineer Mobile weekly. The most recent releases landed on September 23, 2026 and September 20, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard1 real difference · 9 level
MPEdie versus Ear Engineer Mobile: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterMPEdieEar Engineer Mobile
PriceFree — better$9.99
Rating4.8 (6 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings6 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 6 days — betterWeekly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFree—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS15.015.0
Further details — not scored
Size10 MB43 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperDiego Capoccittisebastian rivas

In-app purchases

None

MPEdie

No in-app purchases

None

Ear Engineer Mobile

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is MPEdie free?
MPEdie is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Ear Engineer Mobile free?
Ear Engineer Mobile costs $9.99, with no in-app purchases.
Do MPEdie or Ear Engineer Mobile have ads?
Neither MPEdie nor Ear Engineer Mobile shows ads.
Which is updated more often, MPEdie or Ear Engineer Mobile?
MPEdie ships an update every 6 days, and Ear Engineer Mobile weekly. Most recently, MPEdie was updated on September 23, 2026 and Ear Engineer Mobile on September 20, 2026.

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