Comparison

Sound With Bones vs Scouter Synth

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

Head to head
About

Sound With Bones

Create unique musical instruments by drawing physical structures. Hear your creations sing, then manipulate their mass and stiffness to shape the sound. Record and edit performances, or export your creations as audio files.

Highlights
  • Draw physical instruments
  • Shape sound by adjusting mass and stiffness
  • Record and edit performances
  • Export audio and editable workshops
  • Two-handed play with damping and pinning
  • Learn physics through sound experiments
  • AUv3 instrument for music apps
Features
Read full description

Draw a structure you can play. Hear it sing, then record how you change it while it rings. Sound With Bones is a physical modeling instrument built from your drawings. A sketch becomes connected joints whose mass and stiffness shape the sound. Pluck a joint, cut a ringing connection, then repair it and hear the structure change. HEAR YOUR DRAWING SING Tap Listen and your drawing plays a whole song, tuned from its own resonances. Change the shape and the same song sounds new. Soft Geometry, an original, and Twinkle, Twinkle are free. SHAPE SOUND BY LISTENING Choose a brighter or less bright sound. The Workshop proposes small changes to a joint's mass or a connection's stiffness. Compare each edit with the same strike, reference pitch, duration and listening level. Keep a version or return to your original. CHANGE THE INSTRUMENT AS IT PLAYS In Workshop > Perform, record the strikes, cuts and repairs you play. Keep the take as editable actions on a beat timeline. Move an action, adjust the tempo and replay it from the drawing captured at the start. A cut changes the sound already ringing. You can also arrange actions by hand. With Plus, export the performance as WAV with its editable workshop. MAKE A FAMILY OF RELATED SOUNDS Create soft, firm, edge and broken variations from one drawing. Edit the strike location, force, softness and connection cut, and hear each one. With Plus, export named 24-bit stereo WAV files at 48 kHz together with the workshop, drawing and recipes. PLAY WITH TWO HANDS Hold one joint while another finger plucks the shape. Damp removes energy where that joint moves. Pin constrains the held joint and changes its resonances. Release it to hear the original structure again. LEARN BY LISTENING Predict what lighter joints will do, hear the natural resonance change, then try an unfamiliar drawing. Isolate one vibration mode or listen to local damping. Save your prediction, measured result and both sounds. Reopen the exact comparison even after changing your current drawing. These experiments use the same physical model as your instrument. BRING YOUR DRAWINGS INTO A MUSIC APP The included AUv3 instrument responds to MIDI notes, velocity and sustain in compatible hosts. Open an exported drawing or workshop in the plug-in. Its drawing is saved with the host project. KEEP YOUR WORK Save instruments, recordings and workshop versions locally. Share editable drawings and workshops through Files. Export recordings as M4A, or import supported audio into your library. Imported recordings remain audio clips; they do not become physical instruments. SOUND WITH BONES PLUS Drawing, playing, cutting, recording, saving, sharing, Workshop comparisons, performances, learning and the AUv3 instrument are free. Plus adds: • 8 more songs, including Für Elise, Canon in D, Bach's Prelude in C and Gymnopédie No. 1 • 8 sculpted shapes: Ribcage, Wishbone, Shell, Bell, Harp, Kalimba, Star and Web • Recordings up to 10 minutes (free recordings stop at 1 minute) • 24-bit WAV export of sound families and Workshop performances • New songs and shapes as they are added Plus is available as a yearly subscription with a 7-day free trial, a monthly subscription, or a one-time lifetime purchase. Payment is charged to your Apple Account when you confirm, or when the free trial ends. Subscriptions renew automatically unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Manage or cancel anytime in your Apple Account settings. No account or microphone access is required. Synthesis and recording run on your device. Synthesized sounds come from the drawing's physical model. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://sound-with-bones.netlify.app/privacy

About

Scouter Synth

Create music with a retro handheld console interface. Compose melodies, add synth sounds or samples, and mix tracks with effects. Perform live with a touch-sensitive pad and punch-in effects.

Highlights
  • Eight-track music composition
  • Multiple synth voices and sample playback
  • On-board effects and mixing console
  • Performance pad for live parameter control
  • MIDI and Bluetooth controller support
  • Import and record audio samples
Features
Read full description

ScouterSynth is a music tracker built like a handheld console. Eight tracks, a D-pad, two buttons, and no menus — every operation is a chord you can play with your thumbs. WRITE Phrases of sixteen rows, chains of phrases, and a song made of chains. Write a bassline once and place it four times with different transposes; change it later and every one of those places changes with it. Phrases can be shorter than sixteen rows, so six-eight is as easy as four-four. SOUND A synth voice per track — saw, pulse with PWM, triangle and sine, through a resonant filter and an envelope — or a sample, played whole or sliced. Wavetables for the sounds a plain oscillator cannot make. Per-tick tables for automation that runs faster than a row. SAMPLE Import from anywhere on your phone, or record straight into a slot from the microphone. MP3, AAC, M4A, AIFF and WAV are all converted on the way in. Whatever you choose is copied into your project, so a saved song carries its audio with it. MIX Ten lanes on one screen — eight tracks and two send buses — with level, pan, mute and solo, and three effect slots on each: filter, bitcrush and a tempo-synced delay. Watch the desk as a set of numbers or as ten live traces. PLAY A performance pad wires any two parameters to an X and a Y axis and moves every track at once. A grid of twelve pads holds six punch-in effects — an octave down, tape slow, a stutter, a bitcrush, a high pass and a low pass — held rather than latched, so nothing can be left on by accident, and six one-shot samples to fire over the top. SEE A radar sweep that reads the mix by frequency, a scope on the output, and six palettes to put it all in. INTEGRATE MIDI in and out with clock. A Bluetooth game controller, mapped button by button to whatever pad you own. Export the whole arrangement to a WAV. Songs, samples and exports all sit in the Files app where you can reach them. No accounts. No subscriptions. No network. The manual is inside the app — press SELECT and B on any screen.

Screenshots

Sound With Bones4 screens
Scouter Synth4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is monetization model: Scouter Synth at free against Sound With Bones's free with in-app purchases. On price, rating, ratings volume and ads 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

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Sound With Bones against 5.0 for Scouter Synth. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 2 and 1 respectively.

Scorecard1 real difference · 9 level
Sound With Bones versus Scouter Synth: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSound With BonesScouter Synth
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (2 ratings)5.0 (1 ratings)
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings2 — better1
Update frequencyEvery 3 days—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree — better
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS18.017.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size5 MB7 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperNo Worries! Lifestyle, LLCAndrew Scott

Customer experience

Sound With Bones

All ratings2 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Scouter Synth

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

None

Sound With Bones

No in-app purchases

None

Scouter Synth

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Sound With Bones free?
Sound With Bones is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Scouter Synth free?
Scouter Synth is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Sound With Bones or Scouter Synth?
Sound With Bones and Scouter Synth are both rated 5.0 out of 5 on the App Store, from 2 and 1 ratings respectively.
Do Sound With Bones or Scouter Synth have ads?
Neither Sound With Bones nor Scouter Synth shows ads.

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