I am quite sure, he already has a computer with a DAW, so no need to buy a iPad with one
Deluge vs Polyend:
I didn’t tried the Polyend yet. Why I choose the Deluge:
I looked at other stuff and tried a lot of other stuff:
- DAW on Mac (best features, cheaper because available, tons of possibilities. Hate to use mouse/touchpad/screen because thats my dayjob)
- DT/DN - Love the Electron Sequencer and what you can do, but it took me way to long to build sequences. Either scrolling through notes by hand or use an external keyboad and have to reset velocity all the time… No Song-Mode
- Same with Pyramid. It seems to be the perfect MIDI Sequencer, but you have to dial in all the notes by hand or record them, and I am a too bad keyboad player
- AKAI Force - Really big. And way to DAW on a Computer like. Hated all the menu-diving and Touchscreen-Usage. Loved to be able to record, hated that there is no way to record longer tacks than some bars. Missed Song-Mode
- Polyend. Most of the tracks I built in the past had more than 8 tracks.
I bought the Deluge second hand, that made it easy to get access to it, because shipping and customs from NZ raises the price a lot. There are some features in the deluge, that I knew are there, but didn’t pay much attention to in my decision making and love to have right now:
- Internal Sound Engine: Reviews talked quite bad about internal Synths. I think the engine is not bad! Besides normal VA and FM you can load Samples into both OSCs. From Single Cycle to long full Samples and than do whatever the engine is able to to with it. I love it
- Portability: It has a rechargeable battery built in. Together with the internal engine, you can be creative wherever you like. Unplug it, take it with you. with 20x30cm size it fits into every backpack!
- Sampling. I am not really a sampling and sample-chopping guy. I use samples as sounds in the OSCs and as kits from drums, percussions and FX and was happy with it. Until I found out, that I can have Audio-Tracks. I can have tracks that contain one or more samples as long as I want. Now I can record vocals, Guitar and whatever and am not restricted to patterns and sequencer-lengths. Love it! That was the last part that I used the DAW for (or dropped real instruments/vox at all in the past)
I wish the Deluge had a better display, but that is a very minor issue. As more or less every feature is accessed via the 128 pads, menu diving is not needed a lot. Only browsing for samples on your SD card and configuring Programm and Bankswitches for MIDI takes me into reading the display. For that, 4 LED Digits is doable but sucks! Finding the correct sample is a pain if you don’t know exactly what and where you are looking for. As everything is stored on the SD Card, you can help by renaming stuff to find it easily.
A last point: As everything is stored on the SD card, you can backup without having to send hundreds of Sysex Files over MIDI