Adrian Belew’s FLUX:FX App Is Now Available

flux-fxNOIISE has released FLUX:FX – a professional multi-effect audio processor app for the iPad that lets you ‘play’ your effects.

”FLUX:FX makes sounds that I have never heard before from any other piece of equipment,” says co-creator Adrian Belew (King Crimson, Eno, Talking Heads, Nine Inch Nails). “It can truly mangle any signal you put into it… in a good way!”

“The touch controls means that I can actually PLAY the effects,” adds Belew. “Say I’m playing a guitar solo, I’ll lean over and noodle with it and create some wacky guitar sounds. This app is just so creatively inspiring and fun to use.”

Here are the official intro videos:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLL3xwGQ6wxyadOwBB4uuTkQBn6DUJnJ7M

Highlights:

  • FLUX:FX offers over 30 effects to choose from, and you can chain 5 together for maximum aural impact.
  • POWERFUL SEQUENCER: A touch-based automation sequencer for your effects that adds a completely new fluid dimension to your sound design.
  • DEEP EDITING: Every parameter of every effect is editable, assignable and with the fine tuner dial, precise.
  • TRANSPARENT INTERFACE DESIGN: FLUX:FX has a minimalist interface combining easy-to-use controls with a liquid polygon audio visualizer.
  • PLAYS WITH EVERYTHING – Audiobus compatibility (including saved states), Inter-App Audio compatibility, MIDI, virtually all the audio interfaces..
  • COMPLEX SOUND, EASY TO USE – chopping, shaping, crushing and looping – FLUX:FX can take you from subtle modulating echoes through to wrecking-ball destruction, all with a swipe of a finger.
  • LOWEST POSSIBLE LATENCY – FLUX:FX features low-latency settings for professional performance capabilities.

Available audio building blocks:

• OVERDRIVE
• DISTORTION
• FUZZ
• BITCRUSH
• DESTROY
• DECIMATE
• STUTTER LOOP
• REVERSE LOOP
• LOOP SLICE
• SEGMENT
• SAMPLE SCRATCH
• COMPRESS
• PUMP
• ULTRA EQ
• KILL EQ
• LOWPASS FILTER
• HIGHPASS FILTER
• BANDPASS FILTER
• CHORUS
• FLANGE
• PHASE
• RESONANT DRONE
• PITCH DELAY
• OCTAVE SHIFT
• RING MODULATE
• AUTO PAN
• DIGITAL DELAY
• BINAURAL DELAY
• TAPE ECHO
• SCATTER VERB
• DELAY/REVERB

Plus a master LIMITER to keep all the sonic chaos in check.

FLUX:FX is available now for US $19.99 in the App Store.

If you’ve used FLUX:FX, leave a comment and let us know what you think of it!

39 thoughts on “Adrian Belew’s FLUX:FX App Is Now Available”

    1. Adam

      There’s 6 videos in the player above. Check them out, it goes very deep into what you can do with this!

      I am excited to give this a try but I’m at work for four more hours. 🙁

      1. thanks i just watched them 🙂 but they also don’t really show what’s possible soundwise… all i can say after watching evrything is that the gui is really really nice

        1. Adam,
          You’re right, the tutorials don’t have much in the way of sound examples. Check out our Youtube channel, as there are samples up now, with more (vocal processing, etc) coming in the next few days. The app has great sounding individual effects that can create a solid basic chain (comp, eq, chorus, etc), but there are several apps that can do that. Combining this traditional functionality with “out-of-the-box”, more creative possibilities is we really are going for. A few small changes to a preset (turning fx on/or, reordering, changing input gain) can make a huge difference between a preset, and your own unique sound. We hope people with experiment. 🙂 I’ve put up some of the more “interesting” examples on our NOIISE Youtube channel.
          http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLL3xwGQ6wxyadOwBB4uuTkQBn6DUJnJ7M

          [email protected]

  4. You should call your website iSynthopia because just Synthopia is misleading. I don’t know anyone who uses iPad for music. Only hardware synths and VSTis. Sorry, but that’s true. You bring some great news, but the site is crowded with iPad news. Can I filter it somehow?

    1. No they should call the site modulartopia, because EVERY SINGLE POST is about modulars, and I don’t have one and no one uses them to make music anyway.

      I’m also mad about the stories about plugins that run on OSX, cause I don’t use that which makes this site TOTALLY USELESS.

    2. The iPad has become a major new platform for electronic music, along with traditional computers and gear. Whether or not you’re into the new platform, it’s hard to imagine why you’d want to choose to be ignorant of what’s going on.

      How can you hope to make intelligent decisions about your music-making purchases if you bury your head in the sand and ignore things?

      The only reason I can think of for wanting to ignore an entire segment of synth news is if you’ve got a religious anti-Apple fervor, and you don’t want to buy anything related to Apple – no matter what it can do.

      If that’s where you’re coming from, fine, but do you really expect a news site to cater to everybody’s irrational obsessions?

    5. Dave

      Sorry if you think the site name is misleading. We’ve been covering synths of all types for over 10 years and we hope to do it for another 10, so we think we’ll stick with ‘Synthtopia’.

      Your suggestion for a personalized home page view, where users could filter what shows up in their news stream, is one that we’ve considered in the past.

      The problem with that sort of personalization is that every reader could have a unique, personalized page view – which means that none of our pages could be cached by web servers. Also, you’d have to able to log into the site, in order to have your personalized preferences be saved so you’d get a consistent view across multiple devices. That would also take additional server resources. With a heavily-used site, these could significantly increase the server resources needed for hosting the site, and it’s not clear to us how we could justify that sort of investment.

      As always, if there’s any significant synth news that you think we have missed, you can use the Feedback link to suggest a news item. The Feedback link is at the top of every page of the site.

    7. The iPad is one of the best synths on the market today. If you’re not using Animoog, Nave, Thor, Thumbjam and all the others, you’re missing out on some of the best tools for sound design on the planet.

      1. The iPad isn’t a synth, it is simply a platform. While it does have applications that are good tools for sound design and even more that act as good interfaces to creating music, hardware that designed specifically for that task often beats it.

        The iPad has some big limitations. First would be its size. Not everyone likes to work in such a small space. Only so much information can be presented and interface in this area. Second, the touch interface is not ideal for all interaction. Finally, the iPad is limited to the digital realm. Digital can create some very good imitations of analog but never replace the real thing.

        I don’t hate Apple (well maybe iTunes software) and may actually add one to the arsenal at one point but time and time again I’ve chosen other hardware and software over going the iPad route because of the limitations above. To call it one of the best synths is more than a bit of a stretch.

  6. shit guys, don’t look at the site if it doesn’t have the stuff you want to read. I use both a modular and an iPad to make music almost exclusively with a bit of ableton. This has been a long awaited app, keen to try it but a bit wary as am still using an iPad 2 anyone tried it with that yet, any point? Look s really cool but would like to hear some of the possibilities before I make the leap.

      1. The app is cpu intensive. I’m on a 4, with no issues. The app was tested on a 3 by the devs, who didn’t report any problems, but that would be the last gen I would probably use. Having said that, Belew was running it on a first gen iPad Mini for quite a while with no issues. The big thing is to turn off the visualizer (Settings>Video), though this should automatically shut off if you are on an older device.

  9. Of course on the iPad you filter by just flicking upwards …..

    And the idiot poster / modular bleepster / singersongwriter… just scrolls out of your life

  11. I purchased one. You will not regreat the Flux:Fx. I like it so much. $20 bucks is cheap. Don,t save that little budget, I spent thousand us dollars on Ipad music app, I think if you trust what I said, You will play Fulx:Fx happily, Happy Holiday guys.

  12. This app looks pretty good, but the demo doesn’t do a good job of selling it. I don’t mean that as in an insult, but rather coming from someone who is genuinely interested in an app like this. I had to skip around the video to finally find some sound demo, but the small amount i found was completely uninteresting (crunchy and distorted). Please do a sound demo that showcases some really sick uses of this app, in creative and musical ways. We don’t care how to use the interface, until we’re convinced that we should buy it! Just my two cents.

    To the bloke who wants to filter out iPad news. Dude, I can understand how lame it seems to make music on the iPad. I used to feel that way too (although I was never so hardline about it as you seem to be) until I actually bought an iPad and started playing around with some audio apps on it. Now, I’m in love with it, and totally enjoy seeing all the super cool music apps that you can buy – for only a few dollars! And with the newest iPad being as powerful as it is, things are about to get very interesting for musicians who embrace this wonderful new technology.

    There are amazing things happening in the world right now. You can either have an open mind and stay curious, or you can stay locked up in your tiny little world, filtering out everything you disagree with, and become more out of touch, and totally irrelevant. Adapt or die – that is the law of nature!

    1. Mahhhk,
      The demos are more about how to use that app, than what it sounds like. Though I wish I’d thrown more examples in there, honestly! I put this in an earlier comment, but there are some “out of the box” examples on our Youtube channel, with more coming in the next week (vocal processing, etc). The app can do all the basic fx great (chorus, compressor, eq, phasing, etc, etc). But it is the combining of those with the modulation possibilities (and the envelope followers) that really allow you craft some cool/crazy sounds.
      http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLL3xwGQ6wxyadOwBB4uuTkQBn6DUJnJ7M
      Thanks,
      [email protected]

    1. No PC version yet, and Android probably never unless they totally fix their latency issues. To get the display at eye level you could mount the iPad on a gooseneck stand like 12south or similar and then control it via MIDI.

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