The Synclavier is a digital synthesizer from the early 1980s. Synclavier Go! is an iPad app that mimics the classic synth. But this post isn’t about those. It’s about the Synclavier Knob, an accessory for the app.

The Synclavier Knob is a single knob on a mounting plate the size of an iPad mini. That’s it. Oh, and it costs $399.

If you’re an iOS-using musician, then AUM is an utterly essential app. It’s an audio mixer, but that description hides its power. AUM does let you mix the audio from various apps, but it also hosts audio units (like plugins), routes audio between them, records those channels, and more.

This week, AUM got a huge update, adding a whole bunch of great new features.

A new music app release from Klevgrand is always something to get excited about. And a new guitar amp simulation app? Almost as rare as an in-the-wild sighting of an AirPower mat. Combine both, at an introductory price of just $10, and you have a pretty special day. The app is called Stark, and it’s also the first Audio Unit amp sim for iOS.

This week we mangle music with Enso, the amazing new audio looper for iPad, and chop up images with Hyperspektiv 2.0. Plus we showcase a new music player app and a big update to our favorite writing app.

Thanks to digital technology, creativity is not bound by one medium. Music, video, visualizations and other elements are all fair creative game. It’s even possible to create in the moment with these materials, if you’ve got the right tools.

The Mixvibes DJ Software Bundle includes three powerful tools for creating music and visual performances in real time — and you can get all of them at a massive 75 percent discount.

Enso looper is a big, big deal for iOS musicians. In principle, it works like any other looper app or hardware looper: You play music into it, and then that music is looped over and over, forming a backing track for more playing.

But Enso is hot, hot, hot for two reasons. One is the amount of control you have over the looping. The other is that it is an Audio Unit, which means that it can be used inside other apps, like GarageBand and AudioBus.

If you ever wanted to do any of the following …

• Chop up music.
• Remove the start or end of an audio track.
• Extract the audio from a video.
• Convert an MP3 (or any other music file) to some other music file format.
• Pretty much anything else.

… then you should grab TwistedWave this second. It’s an essential app for working with audio on the iPhone and iPad. And it’s also really, really quick and easy to use.

This week we check out music app alternative Soor, share audio with Riffr, discover new podcasts with Castro, and lots more.

Riffr is yet another social network, this one based around audio snippets. And maybe it’ll actually take off, despite its awful design. It’s as if the makers took the confusion that is late-stage Instagram as a starting point, and then made things worse from there.

That said, Riffr could be quite useful.

Pensato is a universal app for exploring chords and scales in music. And it has a unique purpose. Instead of just helping you with creating chord progressions, it helps you come up with interesting scale progressions. What?