Groovebox - Beat Synth Studio

I have been a user of Groovebox for a long time now. The apps has inspired so many amazing projects that I have created. However, there are some serious bugs affecting the general enjoyment of the app. First off, The synthesizer windows bug out, showing black if you scroll to much in any direction. 2 things fix this and it is restarting the app or tilt your phone so your phone or IPad screen will project it right. Another issue is audio cut out. When multiple voices or melodies are played within a single channel, it will mute melodies based on start. This also happens to the drums. When you played the tracks, if the kick is at the very beginning of the grid or track, the first kick never sounds but it sounds normally after that. Another issue is bugs with volume automation. Within the editing grid, there tends to be a bug where when you try to change the volume automation, the notes don’t change color value, like going dark or lighter and the notes don’t lower and raise in volume. A fix is to restart the app or even delete and recreate a track. All of these issues are serious issues to me as a serious music developer and it ruins the quality of your music and makes it annoying to listen to or deal with. I will be filling a bug report status to Focusright in regard to this. If you don’t experience this, disregard my statement, however, if you do, report the bugs to the developers or look for another app. Thanks

This app is a great idea generator, it can generate starter loops for you to work off of. I’ve been having tons of fun playing around with. Time can just disappear when I’m using it! Sounds really top-notch and the add-on purchases are inexpensive and worthwhile. I’ve tried tons of music apps and this one really stands out. Update: another thing about this app: it’s one of the best-sounding soft synths I’ve worked with, and I’ve tried most all the big ones, on mobile and desktop. Falcon, HALion, Reaktor, Diva, V Collection, Animoog, the IceWorks synths, BLEASS, are among some I own and use regularly and this little app can hang with them. I don’t know why it sounds so good, it just does. A lot of soft synths only sound good with good monitors or headphones, but this one sounds good on a phone speaker. It lets me sketch whenever, wherever, with great, “final mix” quality sounds. It doesn’t do everything and there are a few features I really wish it had (song mode, ie chaining section being the major one) but I’ll tell you a secret: it’s very very difficult to make desktop music software work well with tons of features, and it’s pretty much impossible to make a mobile music app with a ton of different features and use cases. Especially for mobile, music apps really have to focus on doing a handful of things well, and not try to do everything. As much as I love Logic Pro, it tries to do everything on mobile and comes close to succeeding but it’s pretty unwieldy for use as a beatmaker/groovebox/sketchpad. This app advertises itself as a groovebox/beatmaker, not a DAW, so in fairness I have to keep that in mind.

The synths sound great, the drums sound great, I’m getting awesome, warm and punchy mixes with this right in the app. The only things I’d ask for at this point is a dedicated export to Launchpad for easily transitioning into a performance space so as to perform the sections into a song and add the wonderful Launchpad effects. And more machines please! Also, and this should be very simple and helpful, it would be great if mutes were active/inactive PER section rather than globally. I always get confused duplicating a section and then wanting to mute a track just for that section only to realize that I can’t and have to then mute/unmute just to decide which pattern(s) to delete for that section. Then of course if I change my mind, the pattern is gone, so now I have to go to another section and copy/paste the original back in. It makes the arrangement process far more tedious than need be. Mutes per section would solve all of this. Thanks for the great app and I hope to see another machine soon! Maybe something dedicated to big, textured sounds for pads and morphing leads.