Ambiance App Reviews

Love this app! Have used it for a long time in IOS form. The desktop version brings easier search and great display and organizztional capability, but you cant sync to the IOS devices. This alone prevents me from giving it 5 stars.

I am writing a book about stress reduction and stumbled upon this app when researching relaxation tools. Its really great. Love, love, love it! Thats all. Lisa Lockworth

Ambience is a very disappointing App. The potential is there, but there is something definetly wrong with the App. It has problems that are frustrating, I have the Mac book Pro App and the App for my IPhone and IPad and regardless of which version I use I have the same problems. It crashes for no apparent reason. I can not get past the first 25 sounds regardless of the category that is chosen. it is not user friendly no matter what the version, and it does drain the battery on my IPhone and IPhone, especially when I go their "LIbrary". I thought it would be a great App and when I first used it it did what I expected it to do, however as of now, the App is stuck in some sort of state that is very frustrating which makes it an App that is no longer "fun" to use. Instead of the quality improving, it has gotten worse. With all things considered, its not worth the aggravation and I find myself no longer using it. It simply has too many bugs!

I use this app for meditation purposes and to tune out the rest of the world when I need to focus. The sounds are beautiful. For a one time purchase of ten bucks I think it is highly worth it, I know Ill be using this for a long time.

This app has transformed the way I write and focus. It is has so many diverse sounds and environments to choose from. I absolutely love it.

The quality and variety of sounds is nothing short of amazing. No matter the mood or feel I’m hoping to find, I’ve never been disappointed. If anything, the variety of choices can be a little overwhelming. Using MBP 15 Retina and 10.9.2

I have been using Ambiance on my iPhone for years and finally decided to get it for Mac. I use this anytime I’m studying or reading etexts for school.. I’m one of those people who if I’m listening to music, even instrumental, I just want to listen to it and/or sing along so it’s very distracting when trying to work. This app, however, is perfect. My personal favorite is Happy Hour, I turn it up just loud enough to tune everyone else out and have no problem focusing. Now for updates… lets revamp the UI a little, it’s pretty outdated looking. I’d also really like to have a way to sync my sounds between devices. If there’s a way now, it’s not obvious enough for me to have found yet, and I’m pretty tech savvy. That being said, I still love this app and will continue using it unless something better comes out.

I download this so I can listen to thunderstorms while I study for exams. Functionally it’s great, although not as intuitive as the iPhone version. Ambiance on Mac is in desparate need of an upgrade though. On a retina display, it looks like realplayer in 1997. Not acceptable for a $10.00 white noise app. Bring the design into the modern age for my 5 stars

I have this for the iPhone for quite a few years it got me through tough times with newborns. I’d give this version the full-stars treatment but I’d like a bit more info with the audio files, like how long each one is. I really, really wish it allowed me to add my own sounds to my own personal app, at least. I know there are issues in tweaking audio files to make them work well, but still. I have not experienced any problems with it crashing, but I’m also not layering more that 5 or 6 sounds at one time. I cannot speak to the issues with Voiceover, but I can’t imagine why that would ever work. I’d liken it to going to a rock concert and finding it difficult to concentrate on the novel you’re reading. I know we all have our particulars needs and some things just won’t go together.

I have had this on my phone for a while. I find it great for relaxing with noise canceling headphones on. Block out the world and neighbor noise with something pleasant. Great for the many times we need to block the world out. The large collection of nature sounds is very nice. Price seems a bit steep but will be worth it if I can get a good library of sounds to comfort.

Could use an update and some bug fixes but I adore this app. Before this app you could pay $70 for some Brookstone "sound machine" to hiss at you while you fell asleep. Now I can choose from hundreds of real sounds. And I like their alarm clock. Its one of the few apps I use every day.

I’ve had both the iOS app and the Mac app for a long time and use them pretty frequently. In fact, I was an early beta tester of the Mac app before it hit the App Store or was available for public release. I enjoy using both in a wide variety of settings, mostly to drown out noise when I’m studying and doing work. The app functions basically fine, more or less - it performs the simple task of playing sound effects just fine. However, the fact that it hasn’t been updated since 2012 (nearly 2 1/2 years since this writing, a long time for software development) is concerning, and in the interim it’s fallen very far behind. It’s not Retina compatible at all, and there is still no way to sync custom sounds between the iOS version and the OS X version (something that should be fairly simplified now that iCloud Drive is available). There’s also no way to use the Mac’s keyboard controls (or connected headphone controls) to play/pause the sounds, as you can on the iOS version, which is annoying when you’re used to hitting the headphone remote to pause the sound on one device and the same action does nothing on the other device. In short, this app gives you no real benefits that you wouldn’t already have playing a track on repeat in iTunes or an .mp4 file via Finder. Ambiance has a lot of potential (and had a lot more potential when the app was still being updated several years ago), and comes with an extensive and useful library of white noise sounds which can be a real benefit for lots of people, but the fact that the developers seemingly haven’t touched this app in years has greatly reduced the confidence I once had in this software. If we go much longer without any updates at all, I’ll likely be looking for an alternative.

this app is great and i loved it but the way they designed it for mac is awful, it stops working EVERY SINGLE time I use it. No matter on what computer or what audio file i listen to. It always stops. I have to restart the applciation every 1 hour.

The MAC OS app is awesome - one of the best apps I’ve ever bought. Only one complaint - the curve of the volume control in the app is useless. It goes from full volume to maybe 60%, and that’s it. So you can’t set the volume really low compared to other apps, so that you can have higher volume from other apps when you need it, but have Ambience very quietly in the background. To turn the volume lower, I have to turn down the Mac volume, which affects all apps of course. This seems like a simple fix, but an important one. Other than that, love this app.

Love it. Huge variety of long-playing sounds in the “Store,” all of which can be downloaded freely. What more could we want?

I love Ambiance, but the app UI for both OS X and iOS is getting seriously long in the tooth. I’m going to have start dropping my stars one by one if the developers and artists are getting this lax.

I have been using Ambiance ever since its release and I absolutelly love it. I wish there is an option for being able to add your own recordings on the desktop version and not just on your iOS devices, and of course having in sync all of my downloaded sounds and recordings across my Apple eco-system would be nice. And yes, the UI looks a bit dated, but as long as it works I have no issues. Just love it !!! If you looking for the best loopable background sfx player or simply white noise player to help you sleep, just go for Ambiance. Simple, great sleep options and with the best looping abilities for new sounds. No brainer. If this will not be supported in the future it would be real real shame. But even its a bit outdated, developer does reply on possible question so looking forward for some future updates. Mike

This is my favorite sounds program (I use the computer version on my laptop). The sound library is fantastic. However there are constant beta like flaws in the programs interface which make it feel very prototype (unfinished) and amateur. First, every time I go to the library if a mix or sound is playing, the sounds all stop, stutter, and start playing again. Very rough. Then when the Library loads (and this takes several seconds so you’re left waiting for a while) none of the sounds are sorted, even if one of the tabs such as “category” or “date” are selected. The program just ignores the sorting, and has them listed randomly. To make the Library sort itself according to the tabs you have to click a different tab, then click back to the one you had it on. You have to do this EVERY TIME you return to the library from a mix, so going back and forth editing a mix or finding a new sound is a real unpleasant and clumsy chore. Also, and this is a design gap rather than bad programming, you can’t play a sound while a mix is playing — for instance to see if a new sound will blend with the mix you already made. So you have to drag the new sound into the mix and play the whole mix to see if it works, then delete it from within the mix if it sounds bad. It’s a very clunky method of editing the mix. Third bug; when you start playing a mix, only the first sound will be shown in the right hand window. You can’t see all of the sounds that are in it, they are hidden by a bug. To make it show all of the sounds that are in the mix, you have to pause the mix by clicking on the one visible sound, and then play it again. At that point the sounds will grudgingly appear. And finally, sometimes the program just bombs and quits for no reason. Buggy buggy buggy. And there are about a dozen other lesser annoyances which all come from a lack of polishing out the programming. Basically this thing is just rough, rough, rough and not nearly enough time has been spent ironing it out or improving the interface. Like eveyrone else, I keep hoping for an update to this very beta attempt so that we can have a fully finished product that is able to synch between computer and iPhone, among other things. So I hope they keep working on it, although sadly at this point the program seems to be an abandoned project.

Many great alternatives to white noise, even though white noise has its place. I use it as a background when I write, read, and sleep. Waterfalls, storms, and downpours are especially nice. Can’t and don’t want to be without it.

What a treat to have various sounds that are comforting to the soul. I listen to sounds that correspond with Magic Window. I can set the mood for the way I feel with great wallpaper and sounds. Thanks for a great product.