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Timing analysis
A drum timing analyzer that tells you which way you’re off
Updated 3 August 2026
iQuantize measures every hit you play against the chart and reports not just how far off you were, but which side of the beat you were on.
That direction is the whole point. “Your timing is bad” is not actionable. “The groove is landing late” and “the hands are rushing the feet” are — they point at opposite fixes.
What it measures
Timing is not one number, because it is not one skill. iQuantize reports these separately:
- Timing with the click
- How close each hit sits to where the chart says it should be, while the click is running.
- Timing stability
- How tightly your hits cluster around your own average — deliberately independent of being consistently early or late. You can be 15 ms behind and rock solid.
- Internal pulse
- Your timing through bars where the click drops out. Scored as a separate skill because it is one — why that matters.
- Direction of error
- The signed average of how early or late you were, which is what turns a score into a diagnosis.
- Per-bar quality
- A bar-by-bar map so you can see where it fell apart — usually the bar after a fill.
How the measurement works
Your drum module sends a MIDI message for every hit, carrying which pad was struck and how hard. iQuantize timestamps those from the hardware, matches each one to the note the chart expected, and records the offset.
Hits well inside the tight window score full credit; credit falls away smoothly to the edge of the wider window, beyond which a hit counts as missed rather than late. Extra notes the chart never asked for count against you too — about half as much as a missed note, since an extra is usually less damaging than a hole.
Crucially, the app will not report a skill it could not measure properly. If there is not enough evidence, or the setup made a measurement unreliable, you get an honest blank rather than a confident number derived from noise.
Who it is for
- Drummers who practise alone and have no external check on whether the time is actually improving.
- Players preparing to record or play live, where drifting tempo is the difference between usable and unusable.
- Anyone whose teacher says “watch your timing” without a way to work on it between lessons.
- Returning drummers who want to know what actually degraded.
- Platforms
- iPhone and iPad on iOS/iPadOS 17 or later, and Mac on macOS 14 Sonoma or later
- Input
- USB-MIDI from any class-compliant e-drum module
- Kits
- Automatic mapping for Roland, Yamaha, Alesis, EFNOTE, Simmons and 2box; learn mode for the rest — full matrix
- Monitoring
- Wired only — Bluetooth adds too much delay for timed practice
- Offline
- Yes — no account required to practise
Find out which way you’re off
Play one take. Get the direction, the size, and the bars where it happened.
Requires an electronic drum kit or a MIDI-capable drum module.
Common questions
How accurate is the timing measurement?
Timing comes from the hardware timestamp on each MIDI message rather than from when the app got round to processing it, which removes most of the jitter software would otherwise add. On top of that, the app only makes early/late claims when it is confident the audio path has been measured — otherwise the feedback stays at a level the measurement supports.
Does monitoring latency ruin the results?
It affects your playing more than the measurement. Delay in what you hear will genuinely make you play worse, so fix it — wired monitoring, or the module's own headphone output — before reading much into a take.
What counts as good timing?
It depends on tempo and density, which is why the app compares you against the chart rather than a fixed number. As a rough orientation, hits well inside the tight window score full credit and credit falls away from there.
Can I analyse an acoustic kit?
Only with triggers and a module that outputs MIDI. There is no audio-based onset detection — the app reads MIDI.