Yes, the SWAM modeled software has been ported to the iPad! And considerably cheaper at that…

There are some trade offs, naturally. You get a more stripped down feature set, some of the fine control available to the computer versions is missing from the iPad version, but to be honest, the only one I’m missing so far is the ability to introduce a bit of random pitch variation, which I can work around by riding the bender or pitch strip.

I am amazed at how low I can get the latency out of my iPad’s audio jack without a stutter ever… 1.5ms! Admittedly, I get that by running just the standalone version, I have yet to see whether running it in a VST/AU shell program (like Camelot Pro) dictates upping the buffer a bit. But even winding it up to 6ms gives a very playable feel. So if I need the shell for hosting better effects (it lacks an echo, and the reverb is pretty barebones) it won’t ruin the experience. And I have a fairly old iPad, a 6th Gen regular iPad (so you don’t need a Pro to run it). That’s amazing!

I bought the Black Friday bundles, which get the cost down to well under $20US for each instrument in a bundle of four. Right now at full price, the four instrument bundles are about $90US. That’s still a no brainer in my book!

I’m not as impressed by the brass and double reeds, but in fairness, most decent arrangers have pretty good brass. But the sax and strings are totally next gen compared to any arrangers built in sounds. Play them idiomatically, they are hard to spot as a keyboard sound. Add a breath controller, even harder!

If the price of them has been holding you back, wait no longer..! Even the $250US for the computer version bundles is worth every penny. But if you have to go laptop version, and only can get one, I’d say the tenor sax is probably the most useful. And the cello and violin is a tossup, depends on what you would use the most.