Yep, I got FRMS on launch day! I’m a big fan of Imaginando. They have wonderful sound design videos for this app and DRC on their YouTube channel.
The first release was pretty sluggish, but they’ve really improved performance since then – to the point where I can’t make it choke even if I try. I’m on a new iPad Pro, but a friend of mine has an older model and can chord with live input over a few channels no sweat.
I’ve spent a bunch of time in the app and feel like I know it pretty well. General feeling is that it’s fun and powerful, and definitely worth the $. But here are some things you might want to know before deciding:
- Depending on the sample, it can be pretty hard to get a nice melodic sound out of the granular engine alone. I can’t quite put my finger on why this is, but tuning is more finicky than other granular synths I’ve tried. The FM layering option is key in this regard, because once you get something close enough you can guide it the rest of the way through layering.
- There isn’t any time-stretching, and each note starts with a single grain. In practice, this means that even with two configurable envelopes, low notes can have a much slower attack than high notes. Some of the nice rhythmic effects you can get from the modulation matrix are similarly affected by pitch.
Oh and a weird bonus is that they include an Omnichord-style chording / ribbon keyboard, which I’ve never used but someone may!
If you want to try it out first, there’s a desktop version with a free trial. And of course there’s a huge discussion over at the audiobus forums if you’re looking for more opinions.
