FabFilter Twin 3

Twin 3 sounds great, and I’m quite sure it’s a wonderful synth for a desktop DAW, but there are at least a couple of issues on iPadOS. – Some UI elements are borderline unusable with touch input. For example, modulation depth on a filter, or sustain level on an envelope. One must spend a lot of time pixel hunting to activate the desired UI control. Apple Pencil does help, but I shouldn’t be forced to use it. – I couldn’t setup the sidechain input neither in Logic Pro nor in AUM. That renders several important Twin 3 features completely useless.

Great but the little “x” is too small to tap on…

This synth has one *incredibly unique* feature that I don’t see many people talking about - the ability to sidechain audio to it and then use that audio to modulate anything. Are you kidding me? That is REALLY REALLY cool and opens up a lot of possibilities (and ultimately the reason I bought this). Unfortunately at the moment this feature doesn’t seem to be available on iOS (I’ve tried in both AUM and Cubasis and there doesn’t seem to be a way to route audio to it). Other than that, it’s fantastic synth. Crossing my fingers that this will be added soon!

FabFilter is just top of the line in every way. This synth makes you want to play it. It’s professional but still just so much fun. The interface is super clean and very easy to use, and the sounds and ways you can shape them are PHENOMENAL. BUY IT

As long as it's a FabFilter plugin, you can definitely go ahead without thinking twice, including Twin 3.

We have about 6 iOS devices in our studio - and the Mini 2 is the oldest in the bunch, with 2GB of RAM (Less than a base spec iPhone 6s we have). Apple products become more worthwhile to owners as they age, because Apple actually has done pretty well with the depreciative value of their devices over the years. Especially with the integrative modular workflow these devices have - there’s really no reason not to have a ton of them to play around with in-studio. So with that introduction, Twin 3 works amazingly well on our older devices - and that’s the kind of backward-compatability investment Fabfilter has. Many old iOS apps aren’t aging that well or get stuck in “desperate need of update\eternal Inter-App Audio” mode, a la NAVE, which is an incredibly sophisticated wavetable synth that still operates quite well with no updates for a long time. Some of its brethren are not so lucky. For sure, there is framerate fluctuation on older devices, but the functionality is all there, and that makes Twin 3 a great multi-instance app - truly lightweight and timeless design. Fabfilter is aware of their customers and the types of setups they have. would recommend this synth to anyone.

This is a this is an amazing synthesizer. The depth of modulation and unlimited potential for sound design make this a must have. With that said, I find that there is one glaring omission - headphone output. In spite of the fact that the app is installed on my lesson 30 day old, iPad Air and connected to my AirPods Max the app does not route audio to the headphones. Yes, audio streams from the iPad to the AirPods on other applications. Please fix this so I can give you the fit star.

Very basic arp, no sequencer. Modulation doesn’t work so smoothly either. I touch an LFO to connect to something and it takes multiple tries before I get the line to connect. Sometimes I just give up, yes it’s that bad. I’ve never had this issue with other fabfilter products. I was hoping this would be like Pigments 4 on iPad, but it’s far from it.

Surpassed all my expectations. very thankful for this synth on iPadOS

The description in the AppStore describes the interface as being greatly simplified. I’m terrified to see what Twin 2 must’ve be like. I have a hard time complaining (but I get over it) because iOS users are getting Twin 3 at an 80% discount over the $130 VST price. The biggest problem I see is that Twin 3 was clearly made as a mouse and keyboard GUI. They simply made everything ‘touchable’ which doesn’t always translate well. There are a lot of floating menus that even on a 12.9” iPad Pro are very tiny. If you have fat fingers then you might want to invest in an Apple Pencil - to be sure, there are many excellent apps that suffer this same problem (ahem… SynthMaster series). The help website does not discuss the iOS version at all. Literally all the documentation is for the VST version and it can be a bit frustrating when you read the constant references to left/right mouse clicks and pressing the right arrow or Enter on the keyboard. The biggest flaw is there’s no main menu. No settings, engine, midi, nada. My Bluetooth headphones wouldn’t connect and there was no way to address the problem. That’s a big problem. Small problem, there is absolutely no way to edit the on screen keyboard. You can’t push it up or down an octave! Never mind, scales and other niceties. Within AUM and Cubasis it’s not a big deal but not every one will always be working in that mode. It’s a failing for an iOS App as iPad users often think of their mobile device as being… um, mobile. We’re not always dragging a keyboard along. Another truly crazy bug (I hope it’s a bug and not designed) is if you open a preset, make a change and you don’t like it, you better only hit the undo once. If you hit undo again, it will rip you out of the current preset, open the previous preset and undo the last thing done on that preset. This app will get better. Their gonna fix the manual, address many shortcomings and make the keyboard more useful. When they do this will be a five star review. Why? Because it does sound good. You can program deep, action-filled presets with a lot of modulation although you may need the Pencil to do it easier.