Longplayer vs Surface Builder
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Longplayer
Experience a unique, ever-evolving musical composition designed to last 1000 years. This app provides real-time, high-quality playback without needing a data connection, allowing you to listen in the background while using other applications. It offers a real-time score display and detailed information about the composition's history and conceptual background.
- Real-time high-quality playback
- Offline playback
- Plays in the background
- Real-time score display
- Detailed information section
- Up-to-date news
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Longplayer: a thousand years of music in your pocket! Longplayer is a musical composition that has been playing since the beginning of the year 2000, and will play on, never repeating, until it reaches the point at which it first started, exactly 1000 years later. Longplayer is in effect an everlasting piece of music; its score mirrors a planetary system, six musical events whose orbits come into phase once a millennium. Until now, Longplayer has only been accessible by visiting a handful of "listening posts" or via an online stream. This app is the first standalone version of Longplayer, creating the music in real time based on the composition's thousand-year-long score. It requires no data connection and automatically synchronises itself with every other copy of the app across the globe. With this app, you become part of a community of listeners distributed through space and time, across many lifetimes. - real time high-quality playback of Longplayer, with no need for a data connection - plays in the background: listen to Longplayer while you continue to use other apps, and while your phone is locked. - real time score display - graphic and textual information explaining how it works - detailed information section about Longplayer's history, development, composition, conceptual background and much more - up-to-date news from the Longplayer website (data connection required) Recommended for headphones or external speakers. Watch a short video explaining Longplayer: http://vimeo.com/94166447 Longplayer was composed by Jem Finer and commissioned by Artangel in 1995. It is now in the care of the Longplayer Trust.
Surface Builder
Create custom MIDI control surfaces for audio applications. Design interfaces with buttons, knobs, and faders to send and receive MIDI data, control audio clips, and customize appearance. Supports AUv3 plugins and standalone use.
- Customizable MIDI control surfaces
- AUv3 plugin and standalone modes
- Send/receive MIDI data (notes, controllers, pitch bend)
- Audio clip playback control
- Multi-scene interface design
- Drag and drop interface customization
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Surface Builder is a tool for creating control surfaces that send MIDI data to one or more audio components in order to simplify remote control tasks. You start by creating a surface of a given size, adding buttons, knobs, faders, etc. to the surface and configuring them to generate the required MIDI output. Surface Builder allows you to send note on/off, controller change and program change values as well as being able to emulate modulation wheel and pitch bend data. Buttons can also be configured to send bulk MIDI data using a single key press. You can build surfaces that span multiple scenes and link between them for large complex interfaces. Incoming MIDI data can also be used to control or trigger elements of the interface, giving a bi-directional stream of MIDI data. Surface Builder can be added as a pure MIDI plugin which allows processing of MIDI only, or as an instrument plugin, allowing you to process audio passing through it. You can even load it as an intrument and configure a surface to start and stop audio clips either manually or remotely. Surface Builder was designed to be used as an AUv3 plugin within your favourite DAW, but it can also be used in standalone to send MIDI directly to MIDI hardware using direct access to their MIDI ports. Many different object types are supported including buttons, switches, lights, rotary knobs, faders, sliders, XY-Pad, keyboards, as well as text, image and box objects. Each object has many different styles and colours, so no two surfaces look the same. Drag and drop an audio file onto a button and that button becomes a clip player. Attach rotary knobs to control the clips volume and pan. Throw on top of that a LP/HP filter knob and you are cooking on gas. Drop PNG transparent image icons on buttons to customise the look and feel. A button can record and playback bulk MIDI commands, on both button press and release. So pressing a button could send the notes of a chord when pressed, and appropriate note offs on release. A surface can consist of up to 6 scenes for really complex designs. Buttons and switches can be used to switch scenes and also to show and hide other objects to make better use of screen space. Once your surface is complete switch to presentation mode to hide all the toolbars. Each surface can be saved with compressed audio and images all in a single surface file. Features ○ AUv3 and standalone modes. ○ Bluetooth MIDI support. ○ Drag and Drop interface. ○ Send and Receive Note On/Off. ○ Supports all Control Change parameters. ○ Supports Program Change commands with bank support. ○ Multiple Audio Clip playback. ○ Record and playback bulk midi data. ○ Multi-Scene. ○ Multi-level undo/redo. ○ MIDI Monitor ○ Presentation Mode. ○ iPhone and iPad compatible.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Longplayer at $3.99 against Surface Builder's $14.99. Surface Builder's advantage is update cadence (every 3 weeks vs every 136 months) and iOS requirement (13 vs 15.6). On rating, review sentiment, 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
Longplayer costs $3.99 and Surface Builder $14.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.6 for Longplayer against 4.7 for Surface Builder. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 11 and 15 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 83% of Longplayer's written reviews are positive against 80% of Surface Builder's.
Longplayer ships an update every 136 months, Surface Builder every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 20, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Longplayer | Surface Builder |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $3.99 — better | $14.99 |
| Rating | 4.6 (11 ratings) | 4.7 (15 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 83.3% of reviews — better | 80.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 11 | 15 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 136 months | Every 3 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.6 | 13 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 102 MB | 32 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | The Longplayer Trust | 4Pockets.com |
Customer experience
Longplayer
Surface Builder
In-app purchases
Longplayer
No in-app purchases
Surface Builder
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Longplayer free?
Is Surface Builder free?
Which has better reviews, Longplayer or Surface Builder?
Do Longplayer or Surface Builder have ads?
Which is updated more often, Longplayer or Surface Builder?
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