Sample it. Generate it. Randomate it. Play it.

A sample-based groovestation for iPhone, iPad and Mac - a sampler, 16-track rhythm sequencer and 16-strip mixer, with a 48-genre Generator and the Randomator. Every sound starts as a sample: record or import it, chop and repitch it, sequence it across 16 tracks, mix it and arrange it into songs. One purchase covers iPhone, iPad and Mac, the full instrument also loads as an AUv3 in Logic Pro and other hosts, it syncs over Ableton Link and MIDI clock, and it exports WAV stems, DAWproject and MIDI.

Every bundled sample is a recording, not a synthesized sound. Eleven sound banks ship with the app: five drum-machine kits - Drums 78, 606, 707, 808 and 909 - sampled from the hardware through an analog chain, and six hand-percussion kits - AH Afro 1-3 and AH Latin 1-3 - performed by Audun Humberset and recorded in a studio. Every sample is 48 kHz / 24-bit. A new project starts with AH Afro 1, Drums 909, Drums 78 and Drums 606 in its four banks, and you can load any bank, record your own or import samples from Files.

Yes. Pulsark on iPhone is its own compact, portrait interface - the full product with the same engine and the same projects: Sample kit, Record, Generator, Sequencer, Randomator, Song and Mixer, with Loop Refix in the pad screen. The Generator is the same 48-genre Generator as on iPad and Mac - families, switches, preview and templates - laid out in one column. The phone mixer is upright channel strips scrolled sideways like a console, and the sample editor is the same one, with pinch zoom and two-finger panning. Only the iPad and Mac exclusives stay behind: Tracker, the Orbit and Euclid sequencer sub-modes, velocity editing, the per-pad modulation controls, the fill randomize row, MIDI learn and the shortcut catalogue. A kit modulated on iPad sounds the same on the phone - the engine renders the modulation, the phone just draws no controls for it. Nothing they hold is lost by opening a project on a phone - the settings travel with it, and a pattern written in Orbit, Euclid or Tracker plays like any other and edits as Sequencer cells. One purchase covers iPhone, iPad and Mac.

An engine that randomizes sound, mixer and trig parameters across all 16 tracks - twenty-four of them, from pitch, cutoff, decay and hold to velocity, micro timing, gate length, the slice a chopped pad plays, pan, the two aux sends and bit depth - each with a per-channel amount, a lock and a scope. Nothing is lost on the way: every roll is measured from the sound the track had before it was randomized, the amount column runs from that sound to the full variation and back, and the original is stored in the project, so Full reset still restores it after saving and reopening. A knob you move by hand after a roll becomes the reference for that one control and leaves the others’ recovery in place. Rhythm is the Generator’s job; the two hand off to each other.

A genre-weighted pattern generator that fills the whole kit at once, on iPhone, iPad and Mac. Pick one of 48 genres in nine families - search by name, family or tempo, star your favourites - and it writes all 16 tracks with probability maps tuned to that style, at 16 to 64 steps and your chosen density, with velocity accents, ghost notes, micro timing, swing and fills. Fourteen Musical feel switches turn each part of that feel on or off - rolls, layering, keep resolutions and bar variation among them, and Set BPM and Swing, which take the tempo and swing from the genre - and six Mix switches let Generate set the faders, pan, sends, channel compressors and bus compressor from the genre, only for the tracks it writes. The preview shows the pattern before it is written. A Write to tile per channel picks what is written, locked tracks are left alone, you can write into any pattern, and one Undo puts back the pattern, the tempo, the swing and the mixer. Save a setup as a template and load it in any project, or press and hold a channel name in the Sequencer and choose "Generate this channel" to write just that one from the Generator’s genre and feel.

Yes. Switch the grid from Drum to Chromatic and all sixteen pads play one sample instead of sixteen sounds - the cell decides the pitch. The lowest note sits bottom left and climbs to the right and upward, every cell labelled with its note and shaded from blue to teal as the pitch rises. Set the root, the scale and the octave and every cell plays a note of that scale, and when the source pad is sliced the cells address its slices instead of pitches. Recording works exactly as it does in Drum mode: each cell writes a step at the pitch you played. Set a loop region in the sample and LOOP and HOLD in the pad footer make the note sustain for as long as you hold it - the sustain is a loop inside your own recording, not a synthesizer - with one tap in the editor to find a stable loop and snap it to zero crossings. Set the pad to POLY and every held note is its own voice reading the same sample, so chords work; in MONO, Glide slides the pitch from the previous note. It is on iPhone, iPad and Mac.

Yes. Standalone, Pulsark opens every MIDI port it finds, so a keyboard or pad controller is connected the moment it appears; as a plug-in the host delivers MIDI instead. Incoming notes play the sixteen pads of the current bank, and how hard you play decides how loud the pad sounds - and what an armed take writes into the step. Pitch bend and aftertouch follow the notes you hold, with a bend range you set; 14-bit CC, RPN and NRPN are understood; and every message type has its own channel setting with channel learn - play a note and the channel is set. Notes in arrive on channel 10 by default, with Omni and any single channel available. Nothing is tuned to one brand: Settings lists every connected device with its ports, any port can be switched off, and a port that repeats what another already sent can be set to notes off so its knobs and buttons still arrive. Bluetooth controllers pair straight from Settings, and, standalone, incoming MIDI clock sets the tempo and places the steps on the master’s grid, over USB, Bluetooth and network alike - in a host, the host owns the transport. In a host, MIDI 2.0 high-resolution velocity is kept all the way to the sound. Pads and keys can run on separate channels at once - the keys play the selected pad across pitches, and, standalone, record into the pattern when recording is armed. On iPad and Mac, MIDI learn maps a knob or fader to 38 destinations - cutoff, resonance, the three LFOs’ depth, rate and fade, the filter envelope, the hard gate, the lo-fi controls, sends, faders, pattern select, swing, and the micro timing, velocity, pan and pitch locks of the step dialog that is open, or of the track defaults when that dialog is the one on screen - plus ten transport and edit actions. Endless encoders are understood, each mapping remembers whether its control is absolute or one of three relative encodings, and an absolute knob can pick a parameter up rather than jump it - Ease, the default, and Catch both wait for it. Standalone, transport buttons that send MIDI Machine Control drive play, pause, stop and record arm without being mapped.

Yes. Each of the 16 tracks can send its notes on its own MIDI channel while still playing its own sample, and swing, micro-timing, retrigs and trig conditions ride along, because the notes leave the audio engine itself rather than a separate timer. Standalone, everything goes out through a single "Pulsark" port - notes, clock, transport and song position - with a switch per destination in Settings, a clock-and-transport port choice for a device with several outputs so it is not clocked twice, and clock starts on the first musical step rather than during the count-in. In a host, MIDI out reaches modern hosts such as Logic Pro, so the sequencer can be recorded as MIDI in the DAW.

Yes, over Ableton Link. Standalone, Pulsark joins any Link session on the same network and shares tempo, beat position and start/stop with it in both directions. Playback starts on the session’s bar phase and holds that phase while it plays, and the metronome keeps the same time as the pattern. The Link button in the transport bar shows the session state at a glance, and the Link panel shows the session tempo and the number of peers, with a sync offset that moves Pulsark up to half a second earlier or later to make up for output latency Link cannot see. In a host, the host owns the clock instead.

Yes. Bounce WAV stems at up to 32-bit / 96 kHz, or export DAWproject 1.0 and MIDI - with the samples - so it opens in Bitwig, Studio One, Cubase and Cubasis. Swing, groove, micro-timing, retrig and trig conditions are baked into the timeline, and a loop you recorded in Pulsark carries its tempo and bar count in the WAV file, so the DAW can place it at the right tempo.

Yes. Pulsark ships as a full AUv3 instrument - the complete engine, not a reduced view - so it loads inside GarageBand, Logic Pro for iPad, AUM, Cubasis, Loopy Pro and Drambo on iPad, and inside Logic Pro, Ableton Live and Reaper on Mac, host-synced with automatable parameters. Look for "VAAG Fabrikat: Pulsark" in your host’s instrument list. It exposes seventeen stereo outputs - the main mix plus one per mixer strip - so any pad can be routed to its own channel in the host and recorded as an isolated stem.

An iPhone or iPad running iOS or iPadOS 18 or later - landscape on iPad, portrait on iPhone. Pulsark is optimised for iPad Pro but runs across the modern iPhone and iPad range. On Mac, the native app needs macOS 15 or later.

Yes. Pulsark is a native Mac app, built with Mac Catalyst for macOS 15 or later - the full groovestation, same engine, same projects, in its own resizable window. The AUv3 plug-in works on Mac too: Pulsark loads as an instrument in Logic Pro, Ableton Live and Reaper with the same full UI as the standalone app. It has pointer tooltips across the UI, and hardware keyboard shortcuts with a built-in reference. It ships on the Mac App Store as a universal purchase with the iPhone and iPad app - one purchase covers all three. The Mac version was part of the public beta, and the Mac App Store release arrives at launch.

No - the public TestFlight beta is closed. Next up is the App Store release for iPhone, iPad and Mac. Leave your email on the front page and confirm it from the link we send, and you hear first when it lands. Final pricing is announced before the public App Store release.