CAIRN-7 for iPadCAIRN-7 for iPad

Seven engines

Four layers, one map

The stack map plots key across and velocity up, with all four layers drawn on it as rectangles
Drag an edge to change a range, drag the middle to move the whole zone — no numeric entry anywhere, because you're not doing arithmetic
The zones are enforced in the audio engine, not just drawn on screen: a note outside a layer's range never reaches that layer's voices
Each layer holds its own voice limit, from one to sixteen, so you can spend your polyphony where the music needs it
Every engine prints its own signal chain in the rack, so you can see what you're loading before you load it

Playing it

The keybed is native multitouch — a chord lands as a chord, not as four notes racing each other
Slide a finger sideways and it plays a glissando, releasing each note as it takes the next; lift a finger mid-slide and only that note stops
How far down the key your finger sits sets the note's depth, and a rail beside the keyboard shows every held note as a bar with its name
Eight macro knobs and two XY pads sit above it, with bend, mod and ribbon strips down the side
Prefer your own keyboard? External MIDI takes exactly the same path into the engine as the on-screen keys, and the keybed collapses to give the space back

Everything on one screen

Open any engine and its whole panel is in front of you, laid out left to right along the signal path: oscillators, filter, envelopes, amplifier, modulation, output
Nothing scrolls — not in the editor, not anywhere in the app. Every board is checked at six different iPad sizes to confirm it fits
Drag a control up or down to change it, sideways at the same time for fine adjustment at five times the resolution, double-tap to reset
Whatever you're touching prints large in the top bar and stays there after you let go, so you can see what you did
The filter displays and envelope curves are drawn from the live values, not stock artwork — move a control and the picture moves

Twenty-one effect slots

Four on every layer, five on the master bus, plus two shared send processors — a delay and a reverb — that any layer can feed
Eight effect types: drive, chorus, phaser, flanger, delay, reverb, EQ and a compressor, every parameter editable
Bypassing a slot keeps its settings so you can A/B without losing your work
Reordering the master chain genuinely reorders the audio, not just the list
The signal path is printed across the top of the effects page, and it's what the engine actually does

Arpeggiator

Eighteen preset patterns, sixteen steps each, and any step can be switched off — which is what turns a scale into a rhythm
Rates from 1/4 down to 1/32, including triplets, with an octave span of one to four
Gate closes each note before the next one starts; swing lengthens the first of each pair into a real shuffle rather than a nudge
Latch holds the chord after you take your hands off
It runs inside the audio engine rather than on a UI timer, so the timing is sample-accurate and doesn't drift when the interface is busy

448 factory patches

Sixty-four for every engine — bass, lead, keys, pad and sound effects
Filter the browser by engine or by character, and audition without leaving the list
Every patch carries its own parameters, its own switch positions and its own effects chain

Plugin and app, one engine

Cairn-7 ships as an AUv3 instrument as well as a standalone app
Load it in your host alongside everything else and it plays from the host's MIDI — notes, pitch bend, mod wheel, pressure
It's the same C++ core in both, rebuilt at whatever sample rate and buffer size the host asks for — not a reduced version, the same instrument