Wait until you hear about SDL. I have two music apps on my Android phone that also work the same on the three desktop platforms. And one of them, Sunvox, also existed twenty years ago on Palm and WinCE. The UI's reaction to my actions in both apps is so snappy it's unsettling after using other apps.

The downside is that all the dialogs and controls are drawn by the apps and SDL, with their peculiar interaction. Though there's some leeway to that, like calling the system's file picker.

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Sunvox is a masterpiece. Perfect for small size audio. It's strange that it isn't more widely used in game development or even webpages. Not just because of small sizes, but because it's also possible to interact with the music, while it's being generated. I have no idea of how to classify this as a piece of software but it's mind boggling powerfull and it still runs perfectly on any potato.

It would be nice to have better recording options than using the sampler, but I guess that defies the purpose of it.

[–] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

how to classify this as a piece of software

It's a tracker combined with a modular synth in the style of Max/MSP, but also with a sequencer. Modular stuff in this vein is generally fit for live fiddling, like Reactable for example.

Unfortunately, I have a better experience with trackers in Renoise, which has dozens of decent samples out of the box, through which I can click and listen; and its effects like distortion are also much more pronounced. Sunvox seems more tailored to ‘beep boop’ synth sounds, and I'm not good with those.

would be nice to have better recording options than using the sampler

Ironically the other SDL music app, Caustic 3, has functionality for recording sounds and even a built-in audio editor. It's a very neat mobile DAW, but alas it's not being developed anymore — and its longstanding problem of only having two effects per instrument won't be fixed.