On The Road To Greatness, an Audiokit D1 Synth Review

As someone who is into #iPad music making #apps for almost seven years now, and also works with beta testing apps. I have not often written a review, or endorsed an app i have not beta’d. But for the suburb #Audiokit #D1, i’ll will make an exception and do both.

First i want to take my hat of to the audiokit team, because they have delivered some amazing ‘secret’ studio tools on the #iPad platform in 2018. And it’s not only their sound, but also their compression tech, because somehow they managed, without any loss of quality or function, to compress a full 1GB sound library into a 150MB synth. Which is very impressive.

The D1 is a recreation/ imagination of some the famous digital synths of the 80’s and 90’s. With the recent #Analog hype, you could buy these #digital synths for about 5 bucks in garage sales, for years nobody would want them, they were difficult to program with a steep learning curve, but apps like this D1, will probably create a hype. Because this synth has an easy #workflow and just sounds so damn good.

D1 #Sequencing options are great, (as always with audiokit synths), automation options are easy peasy, and everything you need is midi controllable. The audiokit synths give me more pleasure then more expensive iPad synth from much more ‘known’ brands. You really get a bang for your buck here.

The D1 is not a copy of a particular synth, like the famous D50 (which was used as an inspiration) but it is a whole new beast. A beast with 64 voices. It includes ‘known’ but also new ‘found’ sounds. There’s a whole range of sounds with all the usual bass and lead sounds, but the D1 is a great synth for soundscapes and pads. And you can find a lot of them in the 300+ included presets.

These presets are created by some of the most familiar names (electronisounds, SoundOfIzrael, RedSkyLullaby, Haq Attaq & Brice Beasley) in the iPad music scene (yes there is one) and in between these presets are also some true little gems.

I want to give a special mention to Brice Beasley, as always he has created a set of amazing preset sounds, and he is, imho one of the best sound designers out there.

He is really on par with the big guys like #BigTone, Luftrum, #JXL, only his sounds are much, much more interesting to play around with.

Some of his sounds are inspired by movies, movie genre’s or artists like Sigur Ross, #NiN Nine Inch Nails, #JMJ’s #Blade #Runner #soundtrack, #Hans #Zimmer, #Survive, and many many others.

All in all, the Audiokit D1 is a must have, a secret studio tool that gives you great sounds, with a minimal investment.

It is a must have, and especially with this garage sale intro price, because this little synth is worth so much more.