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Silver-ish boxes in my shiny phone

There is yet another 303 Clone out named Digital Bassline DB-303. So I’ll try to give you an overview which 303 App is able to do what.

First in the Round is Finger Bassline which was the first in the App Store. It is the most basic App featuring only the synth itself, but for me has the best sound of the three I’ve tested. It has a nice session management and the developer even started to create a Mac-to-iPhone/iPod sync application. Beside the fact that this is not working properly (at least at my side) I really love the fact that finally someone is taking this approach. I’m desperately looking forward to an open standard syncing Apps from Mac/PC to iPhone, from iPhone to iPhone or even from iPhone to Nintendo DS or whatever! It’s 5.99 Euros in the App Store

The second App I chose to be in this comparison is Randgrid. Actually Randgrid offers way more than just one 303 style synthesizer, it has two of them, plus a full grown drum computer, delay and distortion effects and a song sequencer. It costs the same 5.99 in the App Store like Finger Bassline, but it’s more like a little on-the-go Rebirth (if you still remember this quite historical program) than a synth to mix along your hardware studio. Btw. I left out Randgrid’s detune parameter for the sake of pure 303-like sound comparison. The oscillator detune is really nice sounding!

The third App is the new one I mentioned before. It’s called Digital Bassline DB-303. It features the most original GUI of those Apps, see the screenshot:

Unlike Finger Bassline, it brings distortion and delay which resemble the look of stomp boxes and can be tweaked in real time. It is the cheapest of all this Apps with it’s 3.99 Euro in the App Store. It has 4 pattern groups with 8 patterns each, but no file management like the other both. The Patterns in DB-303 can only be 16 steps long in the moment, Finger Bassline can do any number up to 64 steps and Randgrid can only do 16 steps per pattern too but you can chain them in the song sequencer to any number you want.
I personally found DB-303’s sound to be a bit weaker than Finger Bassline but superior to Randgrid’s synth (as I said I left out its detune here). The filter sounds a bit harsh too me, but judge yourself:

I have to mention that Noise.io is quite capable of 303 sound creation too, but I have not included it in this test because it’s way more than just a single oscillator bassline synth.