Loopy Pro: Create music, your way.
What is Loopy Pro? — Loopy Pro is a powerful, flexible, and intuitive live looper, sampler, clip launcher and DAW for iPhone and iPad. At its core, it allows you to record and layer sounds in real-time to create complex musical arrangements. But it doesn’t stop there—Loopy Pro offers advanced tools to customize your workflow, build dynamic performance setups, and create a seamless connection between instruments, effects, and external gear.
Use it for live looping, sequencing, arranging, mixing, and much more. Whether you're a live performer, a producer, or just experimenting with sound, Loopy Pro helps you take control of your creative process.
Download on the App StoreLoopy Pro is your all-in-one musical toolkit. Try it for free today.
Comments
My vote is YES. I use it and PlayBeat3 all the time.
For me the most useful aspect of DC is the Kit Generator - once I find a rhythm I like, I found it's great for generating (often) useful variations. Seems to work especially well with the DnB presets, though I haven't tested random variations of most of the presets. Also, the multi-out AUv3 allows for more creative uses of the sounds.
Another nice feature is the ability to record loops of exactly N bars long, rather than record and trim it in another app.
Very well said 👍🏼
I can't believe you are asking us if you should buy the IAP.
You are actually USING the free version so surely you should know if you like it.
Do you want to unlock the AUv3 function?
Yes? Then get the IAP.
No? Don't get it.
Easy.
Next patient.
HA HA, @Simon!
Actually, I’m really glad I asked this question because of the diverse and passionate responses on both sides of the app. I’ve also actually learned a lot about about the positives and negatives of it, and hopefully other forum members have as well. 🤗
Agreed. Non-traditional physics is the hill I want to die on.
Well, DC is my GO-TO drum.. I think if Lumbeat’s Future Drumer was Auv3.. it would be..
Just get it.
It’s also on sale for Christmas.
Yes and no. Lol. It is cpu intensive but is able to generate any type of drum sound, and/blend with any samples you want. You can try it for free. After messing with it just after release I was convinced, waited til a sale awhile back and got it. Plus the sequencer does midi out so you can trigger anything with the lovely sequencer. There are ways to get around cpu heavy apps or at least help with the DSP/CPU (airplane mode, freeze audio) there’s so many great drum choices it’s hard to say. Depends on your device, and a need for a new/different drum synth/sampler/sequencer…
I like it. It can certainly provide inspiration out of the blue. The biggest issue for me is the pattern chaining. It’s very rudimentary and could do with a bit of attention - and it’s tiny. Even if you could draw it in and make it shorter from the left that would help. Crazy bad for an otherwise top notch drum machine.
And we’ll wake up in Valhalla. All non-traditional physics, all singing, all dancing, all day
If Sugarbytes was a country I’d defect there
Or, even better, Marlboro Country. Where the flavor is.
I really like sugarbytes stuff. Not the best sounding effects in the world, but very tweakable for live use.
It doesn't take much for things to sound like a rape whistle tho.
I think it’s worth it yes, but it’s somewhat of it’s own beast.
It loads samples, so you can make absolutely standard drum sounds if you want, it’s only the presets that are so crazy.
Also the kicks usually don’t have enough oomph for my taste, I made a video how to counter that, but you might want to stack Beef or something similar on top.
Yes,i agree and i still prefer classic (up to) 64 steps over pattern chaining any day.Also,the sequencer slider are quite fiddly to use.
Cool! I wasn’t aware of the sample loading abilities. Will definitely have to do more research. Thanks!
Ooh harsh. I like the reverb in Aparillo a lot.
Yea tapping those small keys is not ideal, I haven’t tried but I’m guessing those patterns can be triggered by midi with the respective notes.
Yes sir. The interface has a lot going on, but it’s quite useful. I love how you can turn on and off different parts, you can use it solely as a sampler if you like by turning off the speaker icons on the first two.
Updated…
This 8-minute episode from Tom Cosm's tutorial series explains the patterns and how to map MIDI events to them:
Very cool! Thanks! And thanks @mojozart for that video…
I’m not the biggest fan of the reverb but otherwise I find it to be a world beater. If I fancy just jamming some synthetic drum ideas around and jamming a bit until I hit upon something that might inspire a tune, the sequencer is great. When I have a more specific idea in mind I use it for sounds and a piano roll to sequence those sounds
Its a bery sick electronic machine. But maybe a little too crazy and over the top for some styles. I think its ace, but I like fast IDM and jungle beats that ar5e mad hatter. Its sweet to use for free tho and see you know.
I quite like DC and it makes a LOT of cool sounds if you’re willing to learn the interface. However, I find that Hammerhead is way easier to get started with and, for my use case, it covers a lot of the same ground.
I would never suggest HH is a direct competitor — for instance, I don’t think you can stack samples and drum synths on the same sound, there are WAY fewer control parameters, etc. But it also has a few distinct advantages: the sequencer is less fiddly, it’s lighter on CPU, the interface is scalable and works really well in smaller windows, and IIRC it’s quite a bit cheaper.
I stuck with DC for quite a while because I liked the idea of being able to design such a huge array of sounds, but in practice, I just spent a lot of time doing things I could have done more quickly in a different app. And of course, as I’m typing this I’m second-guessing everything I wrote… it might be time to reinstall DC!
Cheers. I figured as much but never tested. Thanks for sharing.
Holy crap, just learned a couple new things I didn’t realize. You can use the zone to modulate several parameters in the bottom right 4 knob section. Also the pitch mapping, and roll in the zones, how cool is that.
I have no idea why I said Yes & No in that earlier post. This app is so dope. I knew I needed it after 10 minutes of playing with the locked version awhile back, that’s a good sign.
I had a strange user journey with Drum Computer. I started off not being overly impressed by its abilities but over time it really won me over to the extent that it's now my favourite drum synthesis app on iOS.
The great thing with Sugar Bytes apps is that many of them come with a generous amount of presets that allow you to reverse engineer its capabilities and get a handle on how to get the most out of the available options. However, in the case of DC, I found it difficult to hone in on many presets that inspired me and after a week or so, I removed DC from my device. But then I saw some reviews from people who seemed to be having more success so I reinstalled and dug a bit deeper.
The first breakthrough for me was discovering how much the 'Finalizer' was ruining the output of many of the presets. It gave an impression of only being able to squash the living daylights out of everything, leaving flat, lifeless timbres. But through experimentation, I found that you could tweak things so it injected some saturated liveliness without overkill. That adjustment alone meant that all of a sudden the synthesis engine began to make more sense.
Although it must be said that the manner in which the Resonator, Wavetable/Analogue/ and Resynth/Sampler elements interact with each other was very different from any other drum synthesis engine I'd encountered so it took more time than usual to work with DC in a predictable manner. On top of that, the flexibility of the modulation options was largely hidden until I took a deep dive into the (very well written) documentation.
The sequencer is the aspect of DC that I now appreciate the most. The main reason for this appreciation is that it's possible to write a single bar of percussion data that modulates and varies in a very predictable manner so that you get constant timbral changes and subtle fills that come in every e.g, 4, 6, 8, & 12 bars. The key to this ability is the Probability options which isn't true probability but rather an instruction to only play a hit every e.g. 4, 6, 8 etc bars. By setting different PRB settings for each of the 8 parts, you can build a solid breakbeat that's solid and predictable but with those subtle variations that keep things interesting. The sum effect is that you can get away with creating far fewer pattern parts in a song.
It's also worth adding that the Swing and Humanize settings interact really nicely to provide more soul to the swung beats.
With regards to the reverb, whilst I'm not particularly a fan of either of them when taken individually (more often than not I multi-out and use a third party reverb). They also are another aspect of DC that's better judged as the sum of its parts. 9 times in 10, mixing two reverbs ends up with an unusable mush but the DC reverbs allow you to get to interesting places by setting a balance of the pair according to the drum individual parts. By working this way you can create all manner of wet and dry verb characteristics for your drum parts that work well together holistically. You get a sense that everything exists in the same space, even though the tails of individual drum parts can sound wildly different from each other.
The Remix stuff is a tad tricksy/gimmicky for my tastes but I'm sure others will get more mileage.
One last trick that made a world of difference for me was to use the output filter for each of the 8 sound slots as a standard bell filter. That way you get a very usable low, mid, hi EQ on the output of each drum part (which is more of a 'character' eq, than one with the transparent characteristics of e.g. Fabfilter's Pro Q).
I don't like everything Sugar Bytes releases, but the ones that do find a place in my armoury, I really love. And DC is up there with the best of them.
Excellent summary! Thanks for the tip on the output filter.