Simply WOW... – apeMatrix Review

My favorite music app, I guess that’s all I have to say (and I own... pretty much 80% of the legit music apps out there). Better than AudioBus and AUM for mixing - unfortunately there is only 3 audio channels you can record to (one per matrix). This is probably the only major set back ApeMatrix has as a STAND-ALONE app. Regardless, I tend to use it with AUM or AudioBus anyway, but seeing some improvement on how many tracks can be recorded inside ApeMatrix alone would be amazing. There is a 6 track option which I haven’t tried out yet since the name sounds a bit confusing, it might be good though! ApeMatrix excels where AudioBus and AUM fail miserably, and that is QUICK and powerful routing. Very flexible. Connections from one AUv3 to the other, MIDI or etc are usually better done through ApeMatrix. This why regardless of whether I’m using AUM or AudioBus, I probably will still open ApeMatrix as my router/mixer that I will be actually looking at while working. Although ApeMatrix is sort of equivalent to AUM and AudioBus, I would say it really is better when used in conjunction with any of these tools. what holds it all together IS ApeMatrix! Requests: 1) please more Buses - recording slots (A to D at least). 2) Bluetooth headphones do NOT seem to work within ApeMatrix. Whenever I use them, I hear the sound coming off of my phone regardless of whether I have the headphones connected or not. This last one isn’t a TERRIBLE deal to me as I usually route ApeMatrix through AUM or AudioBus: by doing this you can get ApeMatrix’s audio to play on your Bluetooth headphones. It would still be great to be able to get rid of this issue as sometimes I literally only use AUM or AudioBus precisely because I want ApeMatrix’s feed to be available on Bluetooth headphones/speakers. 3) Mapping knobs can be a little bit weird and usually AUM handles mapping of hardware better than ApeMatrix does; although I still end up doing most of this directly though ApeMatrix, unless for some reason it doesn’t work as expected. It would be nice if we could have some extra features to make the mapping more reliable (I’ve specified a similar problem on my review of your app Mood): invert, cast to “specific values” (for example for Mood’s OSC ranges)... etc. Would be very helpful. Overall: Best music app out there imo, at least for routing and mixing. I open this app 90% of the time whenever I’m doing music, no other app is as necessary to me as ApeMatrix.... a shame, considering I bought AUM and AudioBus AFTER buying ApeMatrix... but hell, I think in iOS we are all used to this phenomenon of buying 3 apps that do the same in different ways just to end up abandoning 2 of them. If the things I brought up were fixed in ApeMatrix, I could probably get away with never using neither AUM nor AudioBus, as they essentially do the same but 10x slower. Besides, the experimental factor of ApeMatrix makes it ideal for inspirational purposes, it works perfectly for this purpose, this being where both AUM and AudioBus fail (connections are very tedious to make and take a few minutes as opposed to seconds in ApeMatrix). Do yourself a favor and get this ? !!!!
Review by Enrique Raphaël Page Pérez on apeMatrix.