DrumPerfect Pro

I opened up your app again today because I have always wanted to take advantage of what it offers. I’ve owned it for years, but the frustration it caused always defeated my efforts to sort it out. However, I have an exciting project that really needs a human feel and a realistic acoustic sound, so I was determined to finally understand how to use your app. And, with hours of effort, I finally started to piece together enough information from the manual and quick guide to begin to feel like it’s going to eventually all make sense. Not enough to actually do what I want yet, but enough to feel confident that I’ll get there. That’s when I decided I’m never going to recommend your app, and I’m going to try to find an alternative as soon as I finish this review. Because once I started to see how it works, I realized that you could have just explained and demonstrated it it to your users in a few thoughtfully constructed tutorials. Or you could have introduced improvements to the interface. Or—given the number of years since the app was originally released—you could have done both. So, congratulations. DrumPerfect Pro isn’t the only music app that I found challenging to learn, but it is the only one that made me feel contempt for its creator. Your app is an insult to musicians whose time should be spent making music, not untangling some mad developer’s brain (while paying for the privilege). You should be embarrassed and ashamed.

Yes, it does take a bit to learn and there isn’t a whole lot of demo videos on this app, but once you get the hang of the layout, it is not that complicated and it is quite fun programming new patterns and songs, just spend a couple hours with it. I do feel Drum Perfect Pro is underrated but could use a few things to really make this app shine. Some features are kind of hidden like live view drum kit and the effects section isn’t the most clear. The drums are decent with multi samples and velocity layers for getting a real drummer sound but not great. I feel like some of the Tom sounds fall short and that the developer can do better with included kits and with making more kits available to choose from. I must say that I do like some of the crashes a lot and hi-hats though. But as far as kicks and snares I would like to see more along with better sounding toms. It’s not very straightforward if you want to import your own midi drum loops, I’ve tried several things and when I finally was able to get a couple into the app, they didn’t play anything. Maybe the mapping is different but there should be the option to change mappings as seen in other apps. The included loops are alright but there isn’t a whole lot without in app purchases. There’s definitely room for improvement but the developer seems to be interested in keeping this app going based on the version history so I look forward to new features and hope they come soon. It’s always exciting to me to look under updates in the App Store and see an app I like with new features.

I just discovered DPP and decided to pick it up, thinking OK, my expectations aren't very high, because most drum apps on iOS don't really cut it for professional productions, unless you're into electronic music. Boy was I wrong! DPP is so deep, it easily rivals the best VST plugins on desktop machines. Be ready however for a learning curve. This is not one of those apps you just pick up and get going with in five minutes (although it's actually very straight forward once you get the hang of how things are laid out and handled). The sounds are very decent, but I prefer to use my own Samples, giving me a good cross-platform compatibility with my desktop DAWs. Overall, DPP is an amazing drum app, not only for real drums, but also percussion (available as iAP) or electronic drums, making it a great all-round Drum app. Great work!