Swoopster - Fuzz Flanger Effects Processor

As with all the Holderness apps, Swoopster gets regular updates and was already solid. I've gotten my money's worth and then some with EchoPad, StereoDesigner, and this app. ...'nuff said.

alike his other Apps, this one is very easily set up and with nice experimental abilities, great developer!

This and all of Holderness Media's apps are excellent. They sound great, are easy to use, play well with other apps, are highly configurable, and are designed from the ground up for touch devices. At the low prices they're offered for, why would you not have these in your toolkit?

This app is a guitar FX pedal for the rest of us. Another great app from a developer who just keeps hitting 'em out of the park. Get the whole set. Be the first one on your block. Share the music with your friends.

I'm going to give Swoopster by Holderness Media a 4-star rating even though it pains me to do so. I think this is an excellent developer and I would encourage everyone right now to check out Echo Pad, Stereo Designer, and (the new) Crystalline Shimmer, all of which look terrific (and I will very likely own). I didn't buy Swoopster because I thought it was the "best" of those, I bought it because it seemed the most different from a few of the FX apps I already have (including from the equally excellent AUFX series). I bought it because I thought I could use it with guitar (Apogee JAM interface) as well as synths and drums. First, the good stuff: I have a iPad2 which is starting to show its age with some of the newer music apps. It's often the case that loading AudioBus with a guitar app, DAW, AND and effects app in the middle slot will bring the device to its knees and cause all types of stuttering glitches. I saw NONE of that with Swoopster. It's a small file size, all the buttons and controls were very responsive, and it seemed to be very light on the CPU, particularly for what it does. The flanger effects and control pad interfaces are great. You get both an X-Y pad and a "Tweak" screen with more traditional slider bar settings. These can be staggered by left/right channel, or linked to work in unison. There's a "mix" slider that ranges from 0 (bypass) to 100 (full effects added). On the performance screen, there's also a press-activated "Bypass" and "Mute" button, which are almost like effects in themselves. The Mute button cuts out sound altogether, so you can do glitch/stutter effects (and is even pretty easy to work while holding a guitar and sustaining a note). My complaints/concerns about the app are really limited to two things: latency and volume control as it pertains to fuzz use. The app itself does not seem to add significant latency, and I ran at 256 frames through AudioBus, which is the default setting. Like I said, there was no stuttering and it doesn't use a lot of CPU. But for whatever reason, adding more flanger/delay effect to the mix also seemed to add latency to the signal while playing on guitar. If I bypassed the effects (or turned them down), the latency was gone, so it did not seem to be a CPU issue. But there was definitiely a noticeable lag added by the effects being turned up in excess of the perceivable threshold of 15ms, or whatever. (It's possible my older device contributed, but it's worth mentioning). Also, I really think the app needs some type of output control along with a display to show if you are at risk of clipping. The AUFX effects have this and it is helpful. It's arguably more necessary in Swoopster because adding certain effects (ESPECIALLY) fuzz dramatically increases the signal volume. There actually is a pretty useable (if a little bright) fuzz effect up to "20" on that slider, but once you get above that, there is no way to turn the master volume down as the fuzz goes up. This made an otherwise cool effect difficult to use and less practical to record. If these minor gripes could be even minorly improved, I'd change my review to 5-stars in a heartbeat. Still an excellent overall product, and it has me interested in their other effects!