Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
How good is Cubasis as a "bind-it-all-together" solution?
I have an Ipad 2 at the moment, and when I bought it I had alot of joy discovering the musical apps, especially making 16-step melodies with Thor. I started using Loopy to try to make arrangements, which kind of worked. Though some things where frustrating, such as aligning things in rythm, and then exporting all the tracks individually and discover that the realignments made where not exported. (The exported material would sound out of rythm)
Here comes Cubasis that allows to both sequence synthesizers, send midi clock and record the audio. For me it seems like the glue that could hold it all together.
Since I never tried this software, I want to ask some questions about how complete this solution really is.
What I want to do is to:
Record midi from the midi generator apps such as Thesys or Yamaha Synth & Drum Pad.
Sequence and record synths such as Thor & Sunrizer, as well as syncing Thors internal step sequencer with MIDI clock and record the result into Cubasis.
Record drum apps such as Patterning. Process the sound with AUDIOBUS effects.
Can cubasis do this without lag? Will it be perfectly recorded in time? How stable is Cubasis? Will it degrade the sound in the recording process? I heard someone say that Auria sounds better, but that I guess they mean the EQ or effects. For me it is not important since I want to take the recorded material to another DAW like Logic Pro anyway. The main thing is that the recorded sound is tight and as I heard it originally.
Since the Ipad2 is to old now, I will look for a cheap Ipad Air to have the extra CPU to make this happen. But if Cubasis is not really such a great working solution, I might as well stick to the Ipad 2 and just use the programs individually.
Please let me know what is your experience.
(Btw, is there any IOS program on the way that resembles Live / Bitwig as a Cubasis alternative?)
Comments
From your description I would say Cubasis should be fine - there is the odd bug but generally for MIDI sequencing of external synths it works pretty well. It also has an excellent built-in synth (Micrologue).
The main gripe I have with it is that the piano-roll editing is a bit cumbersome.
What about sending midi clock to Thor running it's own 16-step sequence and recording audio into Cubase. Will there be a delay compared to sending midi notes from Cubase?
@Aiopod, good questions. I use Cubasis on an Air 1 fairly regularly and have mostly found it rock solid. There are issues, freezing tracks springs to mind but on the whole I find it a pleasant environment. I did post a SoundCloud clip of running a Patterning track alongside a track of the Cubasis internal drums and it stayed in sync all the way.
But really the best demonstration I have seen is Doug Wood's video of how he uses Cubasis. Go to The Sound test Room and search for it. That video really spelled it out for me.
Well, then it sounds like Ipad Air is the way to go. Another question to Jocphone, what is the quality of the internal microphone on Ipad Air like? I think the Ipad 2 microphone is not to shabby for recording mono. Is the Air similar or better/worse? For recording things like small drums, percussion.
Is the piano roll editing just as bad as FL Mobile, where you have to hit 'draw' and then confirm for every single note? Cuz that's the only reason I was considering getting Cubasis but everyone here seems to be down on the piano roll stuff.
@rhcball - I actually like a good piano roll editor, ala Gadget. Not everyone on here is a keyboard player
I have it on pretty good authority that Nanostudio has an excellent piano roll, too. I worked pretty extensively with Genome's piano roll a version or so back, and it was also quite easy to use.
I composed a piece in MusicStudio (which FL Mobile is based on, I think) last year and thought, "hey, not bad," then experienced Gadget, then went back to MusicStudio a few months later and thought, "insufferable." Gadget's piano roll had spoiled me.
Don't own Cubasis, so can't comment there. I just hope Auria Pro's been taking notes from the good ones.
Not sure I can answer that in an objective way. In my opinion it's ok but I wouldn't base a buying decision on it. The Air has been and is a fantastic iPad (I upgraded to if the iPad 1) if the mic is major necessity they can be had seperately for a small amount of money (compared to an iPad)
@Aiopod
I use cubasis with thesys to record thor, magellan, animoog etc and have found it works quite well on my ipad air. I also record patterning and that has been very very solid. For me I found processing things with audiobus into cubasis works well too but each app can have its own issues when connecting and performance of some fx can of course grind the device down a lot. there are hickups and glitches with inter app audio apps in general which may or may not be cubasis' fault. With some apps you sometimes have to load them before adding them to cubasis and with others you need to launch them within cubasis. i have found editing midi notes in cubasis to be a real pain and often buggy. If i undo too many times editing midi in cubasis i hit the danger zone and it can corrupt an entire project. thus i use inter app audio sequencers like thesys or the midi output of the egoist bass synth for sequencing or just play by hand in TC-11, my new love.
The most stable and best performance i had running and recording multiple apps in cubasis is when i plugged in an external sequencer via core midi hardware. This is where it shined in terms of sheer impressive performance. if you run a sequencer on a seperate ipad and hook it up with a physical connection you can get a lot going on at once... I was stunned. Avoiding virtual midi frees up so much bandwidth for sheer audio processing. After a while of this though it hurt my brain and filled my storage so these days i mostly just do overdubs, a track or two at a time, being more selective than jammy.
i have had tons of fun with cubasis. That being said Auria Pro is in beta testing now and the timestetching and pitchshifting it promises (as well as midi support) have made me quite anxious as i am a DAW audio collage / sound file chopper at heart and found Auria's editing and scene navigation to be smooth and amazing compared to cubasis which is very clunky to me. just zooming and slicing clips in cubasis can be agony where Auria felt quick like a classic PC DAW. auria was even worse for me though in regards to potential project corruption or complete permanent audio drop out so i had to go with cubasis in the end.
Anyway, for my first two weeks of cubasis I grumbled thinking I was glad I bought it on sale and thought I would feel ripped off if I paid full price but giving it time and figuring out what I liked to do with it (certainly not midi editing) I am very glad I got it but will be happy to move on for sure. overall a very mixed relationship. 8)
Oh and I always have to bring my tracks into a PC DAW like samplitude or reaper for significant mixing and editing. trying to finish a track in cubasis for me would be way too time consuming (of course depends on the style of music / person / workflow). I am hoping Auria Pro will have a different ratio of ipad to PC DAW for me.
For me cubasis has been more about 'collect it all together' than 'bind it all together'.
I actually dig Cubasis for what people use Gadget for, a self contained deal that exports stems. I finally got a feel for the piano roll and control surface, and patches for Micrologue, import samples for pads, make a pretty great self contained app- with some very nice connectivity.
The way that I'm playing with now, AB, separate midi sequencer, drum box, synths, live clip launch, stutter and loop stuff, (which is a tied together type iOS traffic jam of apps) doesn't fly as well with Cubasis in the flow as I would like.
AB implementation, and IAA too, is pretty killer in Cubasis but midi is weird for my particular use case
Beware of One Thing that "binds them all together." Remember the sheer hell Frodo and Co. had to go through?