May 7
There's a growing number of iPhone apps which will take your guitar input into the iPhone and let you add distortion, chorus, delay, amp sims, reverb, and a host of other effects. Generally I call these kinds of apps Guitar Effects or Practice Amps. Of course these apps aren't limited to guitar, you could use any instrument, including your voice. Some let you record the signal, most let you use two or more effects at the same time. I'm going to review the top effects apps and give you some pros and cons for each. Over time these apps will grow into more feature rich tools so please support these developers by leaving reviews, giving useful honest feedback and feature requests.
If you're new to connecting up your guitar or bass to your iPhone, please first hop over to the post called "Connecting Your Guitar to Your iPhone, iPod, or iPad" if you haven't already read it.
Most of the current apps are simply practice amps, that means you can't use them yet to record, they don't have metronomes or simple beats, and they don't let you save presets. They are great however for just plugging in and playing into your headphones.
Digital Effects Apps
Guitar FX Deluxe
Guitar FX was one of the first of the guitar effects apps out there. You get echo, distortion, and chorus. The effects aren't too bad and the latency is pretty low. Guitar FX doesn't let you tweak the parameters of each effect, however each effect comes with 10 presets. You can mix and match these presets and then based on those save up to 4 of your own presets. I find the distortion on this app distant and not very intense but for some players they may love it. I tend to like distortion preset 1 the best.
Even with the volume and gain boosted all the way this app tends to be on the quiet side when you're plugging straight into it from guitar to iPhone. It helps here to have a DI box or preamp between your guitar and phone–personally I'd rather not have to hook up the extra hardware.
This app does have recording, and you can download the recordings to your computer via an internal server. It does not however have a metronome. If you must have recording built in then this is the app to get in my opinion.
App Price: $2.99
App Store: AppExplorer.com
Author Site: http://trialanderrordevteam.de/iPhone/Guitar_FX.html
Author Name: TrialAndErrorDevTeam
Author Email: TrialAndErrorDevTeam@googlemail.com
RiotFX
RiotFX has 9 different effects you can apply and customize including distortion, chorus, reverb, delay, and tone (EQ). It looks good and has a very sophisticated and compact design. I like that there is an overall Gain and Volume setting and then individual Gain and Volume settings on each effect so that you can really overdrive the app if you want and get really good volume. If you like intense metal distortion like I do, this is your app.
Because you can boost your guitar signal so much this is also an app that works well with just a straight cable from the guitar to the iPhone. The latency is pretty low which means as soon as you strike the guitar string the app responds. If you start adding a few effects on top of each other the latency increases but not terribly. Latency seems to be a biggest issue with the pitch shifter, however that's pretty typical for a pitch shifter especially when you're using a guitar to and emulating a bass by shifting an octave lower. RiotFX also has a tempo based delay which is a pretty neat feature. For you bassist there's also an expander which can boost your attack and help you stand out in a recording or live setting–and heck it just sounds good.
Currently RiotFX does not have recording, a metronome, presets, or cut and paste into other apps such as FourTrack. However the developer tells me he's working on these features.
This app is my top pick if you don't need to record. Once recording and a metronome is in the app you'll be able to cut tracks with this then upload them to your DAW or copy and paste them into FourTrack, or another multitrack iPhone app and sync the track with other tracks. That will make this tool phenomenal.
If you really want to record with this you can take the headphone output from your iPhone and plug it straight into your DAW input interface and in essence use this as an effects box in your input chain. You can read more about this approach in a future post.
App Price: $4.99
App Store: AppExplorer.com
Author Site: http://www.riotmode.com/
Author Name: Paul Stidworthy
Author Email: contact@riotmode.com
iShred LIVE
Review coming soon. Just released.
AmpliTube
Review coming soon. Just released.
Peavey AmpKit
Review coming soon. Not yet released.
TaylorEQ
Review coming soon. Not yet released.
Amp Simulator Apps
Amps & Cabs
Amps & Cabs is the cheapest app of the bunch, but also does the least in terms of it's scope and design. Essentially what you get here is the ability to mix and match 3 amp heads with 3 speaker cabinets, giving you a combination of 9 different possible sounds. Once you find a combo you like you can further detail the tone with the low and high pots on the amp. This is a fun app to use and it looks really good with beautifully designed graphics. If you're looking for a distinct sound then you'll find it here.
The app doesn't have any special effects for example, reverb, distortion, delay, etc. You can overdrive the amps a little by maxing out the gain and getting some pretty respectful crunch but don't expect overwhelming distortion. I also noticed that the cabinets have a little ambiance built into their sound, almost like you're listening to the amp close miked or playing in front of it. As with RiotFX you won't find recording or a metronome here either–at least not yet. Still there's nothing else like this on the app store, and this app is worth every penny of $0.99 which is a steal for a well designed and just plain fun app. I'm really looking forward to what Ground Up Audio comes up with next. Please support them.
App Price: $0.99
App Store: AppExplorer.com
Author Site: http://groundupaudio.com
Author Name: Scott Troyer, Lead Designer
Author Email: http://groundupaudio.com/home/feedback/
Worth Mentioning
PRS Jam Amp
The Paul Reed Smtih company was one of the first to market with a "complete" solution for the guitar and iPhone. Needless to say I was excited when I first heard about this one. They sell the PRS Jam Amp for $9.99 and a high priced $30 low quality guitar cable interface to go with it called Guitarbud. It can record, and has some simple effects like distortion and reverb. It also has a tuner (big deal, right).
While this is a high profile app by a big brand company I'm not going to recommend it yet. Unfortunately reviews for this app are very low, and it appears this is an app that works poorly with a straight input from guitar to iPhone. Please note that due to the overall bad reviews I have not yet tested this app, so please take my appraisal with a grain of salt. If you've had a good experience with it let us know how it's worked out for you below in the comments.
App Price: $9.99
App Store: AppExplorer.com
Author Site: http://groundupaudio.com
Author Name: Paul Reed Smith Company
Author Email: http://www.prscables.com/prsjamamp/support.php
In Conclusion
There's already some really great apps out there for giving you some good basic sounds. I expect these kinds of apps to grow and seriously expand. For example, keep your eye out for Ground Up Audio's new guitar tone app "Pedals" coming out soon.
What's Your Experience Been?
Please take a few seconds to share your experience with these apps below by leaving a quick comment–don't worry you don't need to register to comment. If I missed a good one please let me know! I love checking these apps out. Oh, and feel free to ask questions, I'll reply.
Related Articles in This Series:
- Connecting Your Guitar to Your iPhone, iPod, or iPad
- Guitar Effects and Practice Amps for iPhone, iPod, or iPad
- Multitrack Apps for Recording Your Guitar on the iPhone, iPod, or iPad (Coming Soon! Subscribe so you don't miss it.)
- Getting Guitar Recordings from Your iPhone to Your Computer (DAW) (Coming Soon! Subscribe so you don't miss it.)
- Miscellaneous Cool Guitar Apps for the iPhone, iPod, or iPad (Coming Soon! Subscribe so you don't miss it.)
Do any of these iPhone apps allow music to be played in the iPod app without the hassle of having to import them into the amp app? I've already got music on my iPad and iPhone – seems stupid having to import them again. Maybe it's just a limitation of iOS to only have 1 audio source at a time?
Hey Jon, good question. I hadn’t thought of that. I don’t believe any of them do this. Generally once you start the audio and then enter the guitar app the audio from the iPod cuts out. I’ve seen apps where you can trick this process by double tapping home just as the second app is opening, and what happens is the app then loads in the background as your iPod controls pop up, and when the music pauses you un pause it and continue to use the program. Now that multitasking in the iPhone OS is more flexible I’d guess more app developers may decide to do what you’ve suggested.
Hi all, so what do you think of these apps?
Here’s another list of real time processing apps by Johnathan Wolf over at Palm Sounds. Worth a quick look: http://the-palm-sound.blogspot.com/2010/03/jonathan-wolfs-top-ten-iphone-apps-for.html
Fretbase.com also has a list of top guitar apps, though not limited to effects. Some of these apps are pretty cool like PocketTabs: http://www.fretbase.com/blog/iphone-apps-for-guitar-players/