Native mobile app · Music tech
Metro X: a metronome you can see, and a beat everyone shares
Metro X is a free native iOS and Android metronome and tuner built in-house by Nabee Studio. It turns rhythm into something you can see with the patented Visual Rhythm Orb, and lets an entire room share one click through patented SYNC. Nabee owned the whole arc — strategy, brand, design, native engineering, and App Store launch.
The problem
A traditional metronome asks you to count a click in your head and translate it into motion. That works alone, but it breaks down the moment more than one player is involved: everyone hears the same tick slightly differently, and ensembles drift.
The goal was a metronome that makes timing instinctive rather than something you count, and that keeps a whole rehearsal room — students, teachers, and performing ensembles — locked to a single beat instead of several.
What we built
Metro X is a full native product, not a wrapper: two patented technologies, a real-time audio engine, and a tuner, shipped free to iPhone, iPad, and Android.
- Visual Rhythm (patented) — the Orb renders the beat as motion you read at a glance, so timing becomes instinct instead of counting.
- SYNC (patented) — one shared click across every device in the room, so ensembles, studios, and classrooms stay locked together.
- A real-time audio engine spanning 50–600 BPM with subdivisions and complex meters, plus Bluetooth latency compensation so sight and sound land together.
- A tuner with real-time pitch detection accurate to ±1 cent, built for piano, strings, winds, and orchestral instruments.
- Sheet music and setlists on one screen — scores and the metronome together, with setlists carrying tempo and time signature between tracks.
- A full-width landscape mode readable from across a rehearsal room, sized for a music stand.
How was it built?
One team at Nabee owned the whole arc — from idea and strategy through brand, design, build, and ship — with no account managers or middle layers.
Idea & strategy
The insight was that rhythm is easier to feel when you can see it, and that the hardest timing problem is a group, not a soloist. That framed two product bets: a visual beat and a shared beat.
Brand & design
The interface was designed around the Orb as the hero — a single readable pulse that works on a phone in your hand and on a stand across the room, with a landscape layout that fills the stage.
Build
Nabee engineered the native apps for iOS and Android, the real-time audio engine, the tuner DSP, and the two patented technologies — Visual Rhythm and SYNC — including Bluetooth latency compensation so the visual and the audio stay aligned.
Ship & maintain
The apps launched free on the App Store and Google Play and are supported and iterated after launch, as part of the same team that built them.
Where it stands
Metro X is live and free on iPhone, iPad, and Android, and is used by 2,500+ musicians — from students to performing ensembles.
Both core technologies, Visual Rhythm and SYNC, are patented. The full BPM range in the shipped app runs 50–600, and the tuner is accurate to ±1 cent.
See the full visual case study →
Related reading
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Start a projectCommon questions
- What makes Metro X different from a normal metronome?
- Two patented technologies: Visual Rhythm, which shows the beat as motion you can read at a glance, and SYNC, which lets every device in a room share one click so ensembles do not drift.
- Is Metro X free?
- Yes. Metro X is free on iPhone, iPad, and Android.
- Did Nabee build the whole thing?
- Yes. One team at Nabee owned the arc — product strategy, brand, UI/UX design, native iOS and Android engineering, the audio engine, the patented technology, App Store launch, and maintenance.
- Can I see the full visual case study?
- Yes — the visual case study lives at /work/metro-x.