Green Oak has announced that the Crystal Soft Synthesizer is now available for the iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch. Long a favorite synthesizer on the desktop, and updated a few days ago, the synthesis capabilities of Crystal are now available in the palm of your hand.
Browse through the included sounds and use the 1 octave keypad to trigger notes to produce evolving, rhythmic, or melodic sounds. Create your own sounds with a single button press using the breed feature. When using an iPad, you can delve into a tweakers dream by using the extensive editing features to sculpt sounds to your heart's content.
Crystal features both subtractive synthesis and frequency modulation (FM) synthesis. It offers abundant modulation control with over 90 parameters which may be modulated, multi-stage envelopes with graphical editors, extensive tempo sync of envelopes/LFO rates/delay times, built-in effects for chorus/flanging/comb filtering/echoes, and a band splitter for effects processing by frequency band. Not only that, Crystal has wave sequencing and granular synthesis.
Two Different Crystal Mobile Apps
There are two different versions of the mobile Crystal to choose from, Crystal and Crystal XT:
- Crystal, which costs $0.99, is the basic version. With this version you can browse sounds, play notes, and create new sounds, taking advantage of its powerful semi-modular synthesis engine.
- Crystal XT (available soon for a premium price) adds MIDI keyboard input via the iPad's camera adapter and sharing of patches with the desktop version.
With MIDI keyboard input, you can connect a MIDI keyboard to your iPad and play Crystal like a hardware synth.
With patch sharing you can create sounds on your iPad or iPhone while away from the studio, then transfer them to the desktop Crystal when you get back to the studio to use in recording projects. Or, create banks of sounds on the desktop Crystal, then transfer them to the iPad/iPhone Crystal to use in a live performance for a truly portable rig.
Runs on both iPad and iPhone/iPod Touch
The mobile version runs on both the iPad and the iPhone/iPod Touch. Because of the limited screen space on the iPhone however, the editing pages are not available when running on that device. But on the iPhone you can still browse sounds, play notes from the keypad, and create new sounds with the Breed feature.
Differences between desktop and mobile versions of Crystal
The mobile version lacks only the following features compared to the desktop version:
- Utility menu with functions such as layer copying.
- Soundfont import.
- Patch bank browser.
- Effects presets.
- Polyphony.
- Advanced envelope editing features such as move locked.
The mobile version adds the following features compared to the desktop version:
- A keypad for triggering notes.
- An audition button for playing a note while editing.
- Pinch and zoom the envelope displays.
