Secret Base Design has released a new software synthesizer for iOS, Nice To Be Your Friend Synth, that’s designed for jamming with friends.
Nice To Be Your Friend is Universal, and offers more than a hundred sounds, using a SoundFont engine. The app is polyphonic and multi-timbral and supports MIDI In/Out.
The developer notes:
The app has an integrated Apollo MIDI over Bluetooth “A” endpoint, letting you send MIDI wirelessly between a pair of iOS devices, or between iOS and a Mac. This will require the Apollo app running on the other device — the Mac version of Apollo is free, so it’s easy to try out.
Once you’ve experienced the low latency of MIDI over Bluetooth, you’ll never want to use WiFi MIDI again. Bluetooth LE is available only on the iPad mini, iPad 3 and newer, and the iPhone 4S and newer; this feature is not available on the iPad 1 or 2, and on earlier iPhones.
With full support for both MIDI input and output, you can use NTBYF to control other iOS synthesizers, or use a sequencer to trigger sounds from the app. It also offers Audiobus support.
Nice To Be Your Friend Synth is currently free. The developer notes:
This app is free during the launch! We’ve gotten some reports of lag in the user interface on older devices (particularly with the iPad3 and iOS 7) — we’ve tracked the bug down, and an update has been submitted. We’ll keep the app free until the update comes out. If you’ve got an older device, and are experiencing lag, hang tight — a fix is on the way. If you’ve got a newer device, and everything is working well — ok, then, enjoy!
If you’ve used Nice To Be Your Friend Synth, let us know what you think of it!
Very nice built in sounds. I can see some of these making there way onto my OP-1. Very straight forward and basic interface which let’s you get straight to playing and not twiddling. Have not tried the MIDI bits but will give it a try. And of the course the price is right.
Woot! Thanks for the coverage, and I hope folks enjoy the app. The internal sounds are from S. Christian Collins’ public set, which is pretty darned nice. The update after this coming one (which fixes the lag on older devices) will support adding your own SoundFonts.
Good App, the only app ever to be based on an internet meme !
Oh excellent! adding your own Sound Fonts will be major – thank you!!!
The update that should fix up the laggy keyboard has just been approved, and is heading to the Apple servers now. I’ll keep it free for a little while longer, but if this is the sort of thing you might want, there’s no time like the present to go and grab it.
So…’universal’ must mean something else when this is an iOS only release. Meh.
dude…