XPad1.2.1 - App Store

XPad is a professional sound module app and Audio Unit v3 plugin with focus on modern pad sounds for iPad. Goal was to get the warm and vibrant sound of analogue synths onto the convenient platform of an iPad and combining those sounds with the benefits of state of the art digital features while still preserving that analogue tone and feeling.

Glissando

XPad introduces a new way that we were developing for our apps to achieve realistic large interval Glissando. You can glide a tone continuously e.g. from the lowest octave up to the highest octave and vice versa, in any desirable speed and without causing an artificial impression to the listener. We were also thinking about how to improve the usability aspects for playing Glissando in a much more intuitive & convenient way for a keyboard player, while still preserving the player's full control. Foremost this app allows you to mix Glissando with regular polyphonic notes (e.g. chords) simultaneously or switch between these playing styles quickly at any time without leaving your hands off the keyboard. For instance you might be playing and holding a chord with your right hand while playing a Glissando slide with your left hand and punching through the right hand's chord from an octave lower than the chord, up to some octave higher than the chord.

Tone Width

Replicating some analogue boutique pad synthesizers is nice, but what about having a huge stack of them? That's where "Tone Width" control comes into play.

Especially the important pad sounds of this app allow you to morph the sound with the "Tone Width" knob in real-time steplessly between a very thin and clean sound up to a huge and fat tonal sound as if an army of pad synths was working under your finger tips.

Sensible Control

Controls for the individual sound aspects is good. But it should be in a sensible way. Nothing is hard wired here. Every sound of this app presents controls that make sense for the individual sound. All controls presented are always fine tuned to the individual elements of that sound.

You can alter all controls remotely by MIDI e.g. with sliders at your keyboard. The most important controls for each sound are mapped to things that you are most likely using anyway at your keyboard. For instance all sounds use the Aftertouch information of your keyboard to bring more dynamic behaviour into the sound even while just holding some notes. And just grab your modulation wheel at your keyboard to bring in some more variance.

Never Lost

XPad offers up to 462 sounds, but don't worry, it never lets you down and always assists you finding just the sound you need in a glimpse. You can quickly search for sounds with any combination of several criteria like sound characteristics, articulations, controls and more.

Connectivity

Like all our apps, XPad is very easy to use and start with. Just connect your keyboard with your iPad and you are ready to go.

And of course if needed, you can simply tweak the setup, e.g. use a Bluetooth MIDI wireless connection to your keyboard instead of a cabled one, restrict MIDI input to certain devices or apps, connect to other apps with Inter-App Audio or use the sounds of this app as Audio Unit v3 plugin directly in the DAW app of your choice.

Recorder

The app comes with a built-in MIDI recorder that allows you to quickly record your musical ideas. You can share them as audio files with other people or transfer them as MIDI files for further work e.g. on your Mac.

Sound Sets

XPad is divided into 14 optional sound sets of different sound categories and provide up to 462 sounds in total. Even though the app is focused on pad sounds, this is not all this app has to offer sound-wise. The "Atmo" pack for instance contains atmospheric sounds for generating very emotional sound bases and backgrounds e.g. for film and entertainment. The "Perc" sound set contains drums and percussive sounds. The "Silicon" sound set covers synthesizers also offside the pad field, and much more.

Version History • Minor corrections. 1.2.1 Jan 19 • Fixes noise that could happen under certain conditions when switching sounds.
• Improved download of sound sets.
• Audio Unit: added audio rendering time statistics.
• Audio Unit: detects audio dropouts and shows a warning in this case. 1.2 07/07/2025 Fixes a regression of previous update which caused a crash on some older devices. 1.1.5 05/12/2025 Fixes a crash with iOS 18. 1.1.4 05/08/2025 This update provides an important fix for App Store communication with iOS 18.2, and provides support for new iPad models. 1.1.3 01/22/2025 This update provides a workaround for a misconfiguration on Apple iTunes servers that made all In-App Purchases of this app inaccessible with an error message "Cannot connect to App Store" (FB11711942). 1.1.2 11/18/2022 This update fixes the following software issue introduced by recent feature update:

• Fixed a potential crash when switching to a different sound. 1.1.1 03/15/2022 This update provides numerous improvements for the Audio Unit (AU) plugin version of XPad:

• AU: Full-screen sound selection with search criteria filter options.
• AU: Added Reverb and Phaser effects.
• AU: All sound parameters can now be controlled from the Audio Unit user interface (as well as via MIDI of course).
• AU: Aftertouch level is shown on Audio Unit user interface.
• AU: Automatically save and restore all sound settings with Audio Unit session (e.g. when saving/loading a song in an Audio Unit host app)
• AU: Fixed potential crash on AU session restore.

Additionally this update provides the following software correction on XPad stand-alone app side:

• Fixed potential concurrency issue when processing MIDI Control Change (CC) commands. 1.1 02/19/2022 • Adds support for iOS 15.
• Adds support for new iPhone 13 models.
• Adds support for new iPad 9 and iPad mini 6 models. 1.0.9 09/27/2021 This update provides the following software corrections:

• Fixes last row on sound selection screen from being hardly accessible due to a scroll space issue which was triggered with certain sound search filter rules.
• Voice Over: Various corrections and improvements to provide more meaningful speech output.
• Fixes stuck keys on the virtual piano keyboard which happened when holding virtual keys with one hand and trying to select another sound preset with another hand.
• MIDI: An external "All Notes Off" MIDI message now also releases potentially stuck keys on the virtual piano keyboard on screen. 1.0.8 08/16/2021 This update is about deflation and corrections [regression update¹]:

• Reduces the overall installation size by more than 30% (without reducing sound quality or features); after updating the app select "Optional Sound Sets" -> "Update/Restore All" to download the size reduced new versions of the sound sets.
• Fixes a crash which could sometimes happen when switching a sound from one sound set to another sound set (affected both, stand-alone app and Audio Unit plugin).
• Visual improvements on "Optional Sound Sets" screen.
• Lowers the default "Mix Volume" setting.

¹ Additionally this regression update fixes the following issue:

• Audio Unit: Fixes an issue where some sounds could not be selected on AU plugin side if a specific combination of sound sets were installed. 1.0.7 07/29/2021 This update is about deflation and corrections:

• Reduces the overall installation size by more than 30% (without reducing sound quality or features); after updating the app select "Optional Sound Sets" -> "Update/Restore All" to download the size reduced new versions of the sound sets.
• Fixes a crash which could sometimes happen when switching a sound from one sound set to another sound set (affected both, stand-alone app and Audio Unit plugin).
• Visual improvements on "Optional Sound Sets" screen.
• Lowers the default "Mix Volume" setting. 1.0.6 07/25/2021 This update provides the following software improvements:

• Improved instrument load time.
• Audio Unit: Allows now a high amount of AU instances.
• Audio Unit: Use the new RAM bar on the AU user interface as indicator for how many AU instances you can still deploy.
• Audio Unit: Fixes several issues in conjunction with various AU host apps (e.g. with AUM, GarageBand). 1.0.5 07/01/2021 This update provides the following software improvement:

• Support for new iPad Pro (2021) models. 1.0.4 05/26/2021 This update provides the following software corrections:

• Fixes a crash that happened after a certain IAP transmission issue.
• Fixes an issue that required to reinstall the app after the app being in a low SSD space situation before. 1.0.3 05/20/2021 This update provides several improvements and corrections, mostly concerning sound set downloads. This update is recommended for people having encountered IAP download issues before.

• Fixes several sound set download issues triggered under certain conditions (especially under unreliable Internet connection conditions).
• The individual download status messages are now displayed in more detail on the "Optional Sound Sets" screen.
• For active sound set downloads a progress bar and an estimated download time are now shown on the "Optional Sound Sets" popup to let you know how long the respective download will approximately take to complete according to the current download speed.
• There is now an "Update/Restore All" button on the "Optional Sound Sets" popup which allows you to restore your previously purchased sound sets more quickly than before.
• On indication that free SSD storage space might not be sufficient to complete downloading a sound set, the download is now started nevertheless while showing you a message box about this circumstance. This way you are able to check and if needed free some SSD storage space while the download is already running, therefore reducing the overall waiting time for the sound set to complete.
• Fixes some minor graphical glitches. 1.0.2 05/06/2021 First official release of this app. 1.0.1 05/01/2021 1.0 04/21/2021