Vascular vs Gamelan Lab
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Vascular
Create electroacoustic music by visually connecting sound generators and processors on a canvas. Manipulate stereo position, control synthesis and processing, and build complex signal paths. Explore a vast array of synthesis types, effects, and controllers to craft unique sonic textures.
- Canvas-based sound design
- Modular signal path building
- Extensive synthesis families
- 71 built-in processors
- Advanced controller modules
- Sample playback and manipulation
- Microphone input processing
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Vascular is a canvas-based electroacoustic instrument. Create sound generators and processors by touching the canvas, then connect them to build the signal path. Moving a node changes its stereo position, while each node provides its own synthesis, processing, modulation and rhythmic controls. FEATURES - 55 synthesis families, including subtractive, FM, additive, granular, spectral, physical modelling, wavetable, wave-terrain, pulsar and stochastic synthesis. - 3 macrosynths, complete synthesizers in a single node: resurgent (2 scenes, 3 oscillators, 2 filters, effects), bayarea, a West Coast voice, and poundhard, an FM drum voice from kicks to industrial percussion. - A complete DX7 implementation. - Holos, a special node that combines elements and parameters from other nodes to create a new semi-modular synthesizer instantly. - A sample player for loading your own loops, with time-stretching, forward and reverse playback, stuttering, splicing and tape-style manipulation derived from classic electroacoustic techniques. - Sampled acoustic instruments that generate melodic loops in the session's tonal key. - Drum synthesis, a 303, a 16-oscillator supersaw and live granular processing. - Microphone input for processing external sound. - 71 processors, including filters, distortion, delays, combs, phasing, diffusion, reverb, spectral freezing, convolution, pitch tracking, harmony, vocoding, spectral delays, tape loops and broken-media effects. - Host your own AUv3 instruments, effects and MIDI plugins as nodes on the canvas, their settings kept with your sessions (in-app purchase). - 7 controllers that play or move other nodes: a melodic sequencer with a piano-roll editor; an arpeggiator that turns a single arpeggio into a fugue across up to 6 voices; a drum machine with fills and breaks; a shift register; bouncing cars whose collisions are notes; a Game of Life swept by a playhead; and an LFO controller with 3 LFOs on each of up to 6 nodes. - Kick side chains with adjustable depth, and a master bus compressor. - An effects sequencer with 4 lanes of any processor, each with its own length. - A randomizer that creates whole patches, transforms what is on the canvas, expands it or dismantles it, and deals or removes LFOs, gates and motifs. - A padlock on every parameter, keeping it out of reach of the randomizer and every LFO. - Mute and solo: tap a node to mute it, hold it to hear it alone with its chain. - Angiogenesis, which moves nodes, rewires connections, adds processors and changes their parameters automatically. It never removes your voices, cuts a controller's connections or modifies microphone nodes. - Adjustable mutation rate and automatic adaptation to the processing capacity of the device. - A shared session clock with tap tempo and an independent clock division for each rhythmic source. - 27 scales from 4 musical traditions, plus microtonal tunings imported from Scala files. - Guided paths for restricting generators and processors to a selected musical territory. - A searchable palette, in alphabetical order, with favourites. - Rebalance, which spreads the outputs evenly across the whole stereo field. - A multilayer gesture looper. - 32 pattern slots with adjustable morphing between complete instrument states. - Sessions that store the network, settings and tonal key together. - 48 levels of undo and redo. - Recording, playback, renaming and sharing of takes. - A transport that stops active sound sources while allowing effect tails to decay naturally. AUV3 Vascular also runs as an AUv3 instrument in AUM, Loopy Pro, Logic and other compatible hosts, and follows the host's tempo and transport. The interface runs full-screen in landscape orientation and is operated directly with your fingers. The main buttons remain along the top of the display, away from the hand interacting with the canvas.
Gamelan Lab
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Gamelan Lab is a real Indonesian gamelan you can play, learn from, and compose with. Built on 281 real recorded notes from a physical Javanese gamelan (Casa da Música, Porto — licensed for reuse), not synthesized approximations. Every degree you tap is the actual tuning of a real bronze instrument — no two gamelan ensembles in the world share the same tuning, and this app captures one of them faithfully. Play • Pélog (7-tone) and Sléndro (5-tone) scales, switchable anywhere • Saron, Bonang Barung & Panerus, Gender, Gambang, Kenong, Kempul, Gong Ageng, and kendhang drums — all real samples • A circular cycle wheel visualizes the colotomic structure (Gong/Kenong/Kempul/Kethuk) as a living clock, with a continuously sweeping playhead — tap any beat to reshape the cycle • Three traditional forms (Lancaran, Ketawang, Ladrang) as starting points, or design and save your own Learn • Kotekan Lab: build a melodic cell and hear the interlocking technique itself — Nyog Cag, Imbal, Kotekan Telu, and Kotekan Empat, with Polos and Sangsih highlighted note-by-note as they play • A 7-article Theory tab (what gamelan is, Java vs. Bali, Pélog & Sléndro, colotomic structure, Kotekan, the instrument family, cultural context) — three articles you interact with directly, not just read • Two real traditional pieces (Gangsaran, Lancaran Kebo Giro) with their cultural context and sources, loadable straight into the sequencer Compose • Multi-track step sequencer with independent subdivision per track (1x/2x/4x), per-track volume/mute/solo, one-tap randomize (per track or all), and undo • Mute the colotomic base to hear your sequenced pattern in isolation • Save and reload full compositions, plus your own custom colotomic cycle shapes Export & integrate • Bounce your piece to audio (4 loops) or as isolated per-instrument stems, ready for a DAW • Export Standard MIDI — multitrack, one named track per instrument, with Pitch Bend measured from this gamelan's own real tuning (not a flattened equal-tempered guess) • A built-in AUv3 instrument plug-in lets you play these exact samples from GarageBand or any other Audio Unit host on iPad/iPhone — its own panel has a mixer with per-track volume/mute, tap-to-edit step pattern, dice randomizer, a live preview button, and an animated cycle wheel • Turn on "Sync sequence to recording" and the plug-in plays your whole piece from the start the moment the host starts recording — timed to GarageBand's own count-in automatically, so a take lines up without any manual setup Designed for iPhone and iPad — Theory opens as a persistent sidebar, controls and the cycle wheel scale up, and layouts use the extra iPad screen space rather than just stretching the phone UI. Whether you've never heard a gamelan before or you're a practicing musician exploring a different tuning system, Gamelan Lab is built to be understood by ear first.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Gamelan Lab at none against Vascular's 1. Vascular's advantage is price ($3.99 vs $7.99). On ads, device support and iOS requirement 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
Vascular costs $3.99 and Gamelan Lab $7.99 up front. Vascular sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Gamelan Lab asks for nothing beyond the download.
| Parameter | Vascular | Gamelan Lab |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $3.99 — better | $7.99 |
| Rating | 4.9 (8 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 66.7% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 8 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Daily | — |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Paid | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 101 MB | 64 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Absolute Management SIA | Martin Adler |
In-app purchases
Vascular
- AUv3 Support$2.99
Gamelan Lab
No in-app purchases









