InkyTune vs 88 Synthwave
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
InkyTune
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You don’t need music theory to finish a song. InkyTune is a digital music sketchbook you can actually play. Draw a line with your finger or Apple Pencil, and your stroke becomes a rhythm- and scale-aware melody. InkyTune then builds matching chords, bass, drums, and atmosphere around it. Finish drawing, tap Play, and hear your idea become a complete arrangement. DRAW YOUR MELODY • Horizontal movement controls time • Vertical movement controls pitch • Even a short tap can create a note • Timing and pitch are shaped into a musical result • The rise, fall, and movement of your original line are preserved • Draw with your finger or Apple Pencil FIND YOUR VIBE Choose from Lo-Fi, Pop, House, Chiptune, Ambient, Jazz, and Synthwave. These are more than visual themes. Every style has its own tempo, groove, drum pattern, chord language, bass movement, sound character, and energy curve. SHAPE THE MUSIC, NOT THE THEORY • Energy: calm to intense • Mood: dark to bright • Complexity: simple to rich These three approachable controls make audible changes to tempo, dynamics, harmony, rhythm density, and arrangement detail—without exposing a complicated mixer or piano roll. KEEP WHAT YOU LOVE Mute, lock, or regenerate individual chord, bass, drum, and atmosphere layers. Lock the parts you like, then try another random seed to explore a new variation. Your drawn melody remains yours. PLAY, SAVE, AND SHARE • Play, pause, stop, and loop • Automatically save and restore your latest project • Create and manage multiple musical sketches • Export real WAV, AIFF, or M4A audio files • Share your finished track with the system share sheet • Designed for both iPhone and iPad Core creation and music generation run directly on your device. No account, cloud service, or internet connection is required. Want to go further? InkyTune includes Doodle Synth and Doodle FX extensions for compatible AUv3 music apps. Save a song’s style, controls, and random seed to the AUv3 Shared Library, then recall its matching sound preset inside either extension. One purchase. No subscription. No in-app purchases. Draw a melody. Make a song.
88 Synthwave
This application automatically generates complete synthwave tracks with intros, verses, choruses, and outros. It utilizes chaotic mathematical models for melody and rhythm generation, offering a variety of styles and customizable soundscapes. Users can also play along with the generated music.
- Automatic track generation
- Chaos-driven melody and rhythm
- 11 distinct synthwave styles
- Customizable sound design
- Playable interface
- MIDI export
- Radio mode for continuous playback
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88 Synthwave writes complete synthwave tracks and plays them on its own synths. Press write and you get the whole track: an intro, verses, builds with a riser and a snare roll, choruses with the hook lifted over a pumping mix, a breakdown, solo or bridge in the middle, a final chorus an octave up, and an ending. That can be the arp left running, a fade, or one hit and silence. Everything is synthesized, so there is nothing to download. An analog-style polysynth with up to five detuned oscillators per voice, where no two notes are quite in tune, plays the pads, saw leads, arps and basses. A four-operator FM engine plays the bells, electric piano, brass and sax. Four classic drum machines sit behind a gated-room reverb and a sidechain pump. The tracks come from chaos maths. A Lorenz attractor draws the melody and the hook's rhythm, and a logistic map picks which steps the arpeggiator plays and where the ghost notes fall. Chaos on its own is noise, so a small model filters it: it is rewarded for consonant intervals and learns as it writes. The CHAOS / TASTE slider decides how much say each one gets. There are eleven styles, and each one sets its own scale, drum machine, rack and effects: Outrun, Night Drive, Darksynth, Dreamwave, Disco, Synthpop, Cyberpunk, Horror Synth, Space Disco, Miami Nights and Vaporwave. Tick STYLE LOADS RACK and each style brings its own sound. The sound is half the record. There are four channels (bass, pads and stabs, arp and keys, lead), each with a preamp or amp, a tone stack and a speaker: a studio monitor, a guitar cabinet, a bass cabinet or a car door. Eight one-click racks set a whole sound at once. The effects are the production: sidechain pump, gated room, chorus, tape, bit crush, phaser, width and tape hiss, with a plate, a hall, a spring and a tempo-synced delay on the master. Every track is built from its seed. Write the seed down and you can have that exact track again, note for note. A seed from the browser version rebuilds the same track here. You can play over it, too. The pads are the notes of the track's key rather than a piano keyboard, so nothing you touch is wrong. The sixteen-step lane stays in key when the writer picks a new track, and it follows your host. Both play any of 22 voices through that voice's own channel and out on its MIDI channel. Turn on RADIO and it keeps playing, picking a new style, key, scale and tempo for every track. You also get: • 11 styles, 21 scales, 12 keys, tempo and density • 22 voices: pads, leads, brass, FM bells and keys, arps and basses • 4 drum machines, 14 channel voicings, 6 speakers, 8 racks and 8 effects • Seven-part mixer with a meter on every part • MIDI in, so your keyboard plays whichever voice you have selected • Export a MIDI file, a WAV mix, or stems, one WAV per part (in the app; in a host you record the audio there) • A note and a MIDI channel for every drum and every riser and impact • UI scale, so the panel is not tiny on a big iPad • Live spectrum and waveform, and the chaos engine drawn as it runs There are two Audio Units, an instrument and a MIDI processor. Each part sends on its own MIDI channel and every drum has its own note and channel, so one instance can drive a whole rack of synths. The MIDI version passes your keyboard through. Both follow your host's tempo and transport, and one install registers both. The app is free and nothing in it is held back. Using the Audio Units inside other apps is a one-time purchase, and each AUv3 session plays for two minutes first so you can try them properly. No account, no ads, no subscription. Works offline.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: 88 Synthwave at Free against InkyTune's $1.99. 88 Synthwave also leads on iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). InkyTune's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1) and update cadence (every 3 days vs every 3 weeks). On ads 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
88 Synthwave is free to download; InkyTune costs $1.99 up front. 88 Synthwave sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. InkyTune asks for nothing beyond the download.
InkyTune ships an update every 3 days, 88 Synthwave every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 26, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | InkyTune | 88 Synthwave |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | — | 5.0 (4 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | — | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | — | 4 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 3 days — better | Every 3 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | — | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 6 MB | 17 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | 宁 徐 | Soft Brew Mobile |
In-app purchases
InkyTune
No in-app purchases
88 Synthwave
- AUv3 Unlock$2.99







