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.
Comments
Still love the song mode...
Only since this thread did I learn that one can record instruments, and automation, live while in sequencer/song mode, it's possible to lay down a track (and endlessly overdub in it) by letting whatever length of blocks you've laid out loop, while you jam on whichever instrument and or knobs. I was amazed to find one could riff over the entire length of a song, or lay down automation.
S'true.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I should say that after playing with KRFT a lot these past few days, I did open up Gadget for the first time in a month (maybe two) and was reminded how damn good it is and how much I have probably taken it for granted. If it landed on our doorstep for the first time today (as is, let alone with the fabled update) we'd be pretty damn blown...
True this, and that's why I feel like such a oddity for never really feeling at home in it.
I know exactly what you mean. The technical side of it is easy, if you're paying attention, but I don't get the one and one makes three feeling until afterwards. Something like BH I don't often know what I'm doing, but I feel it somehow (when it's going well). Gadget is like a very clever kissing book. But it's still a book.
Can you give some examples of it being more fluid than NS? Personally I find it the complete opposite and NS is more fluid than Caustic : -) I'm determined to at least get more familiar with Caustic and it's way of working, but some pointers as to what you find better would actually help.
PS Sorry if this sounds like a my DAW is better than your DAW thread - its not meant to be!
LOL! No problem!
I haven't used Nanostudio in a long while but the first thing that comes to mind is the constant scrolling etc. when programming the Eden synth (a great synth that would make a nice standalone). Also, the whole sequencer section doesn't seem as direct. I did download NS again some time within the past six months and quickly deleted it.
As powerful as it is (and I was a big fan in the early days when NS was one of the "real" music apps available) I just didn't feel a direct fluid connection between the different areas of the app the way I do with Caustic and more recently with FLSM.
As far as pointers - it's hard to come up with them off the top of my head other than to say I often find myself saying "I like the way the dev implemented that particular function. It makes total sense to me". Sorry I can't be more specific. I understand others find certain aspects of Caustic off-putting but as a tool for creating a piece of music, I find I can fly though it and get a lot done in a short period of time. It makes me feel like I'm working with my old hardware set-up vs. a piece of software.
With Caustic I feel like I'm in a room with a bunch of doorways all around me. All I have to do is go through a certain doorway to get a function done and and back to the main room. Rinse and repeat. With others I feel like I'm in the foyer and I have to go to the kitchen at the back for one function, return to the foyer and then head down to the basement for another. And then a trip out to the garage to get some tools (which I can't find) to take up to the upstairs bathroom to work on something else. That's my best way of describing it!
And of course there are many other apps that people rave about that I just don't connect with. Among them Thumbjam, Animoog and BeBop to name a few. But that's just me!
I am constantly amazed by what the dev has accomplished with Caustic
Since the v. 3 update to Gadget, it's been draining battery at a rate i find unacceptable so i've been using Caustic even more. Today i decided to test cpu usage so i took the same midi file and approximated the synths in Gadget and Caustic as best i could and let each play the entire song while checking cpu usage in the Omnistat widget
Gadget used around 60% cpu on my Air 1
Caustic used 18%
There is some serious magic going on behind the scenes in Caustic
Elegant code under the hood, I suppose. Something I appreciate about SunVox as well.
Must be. Imagine if those 2 guys got together to make something
Put J Liljedahl in there too, you'd have a 70s style supergroup
Caustic is crazy good with what you can do in the PCM now. Saw synth is a badass synth as well. Can't deny the facts.
I don't know your workflow but mine is to arrange and master in a DAW (Logic in my case) after creating parts in apps like Caustic and other iOS generators. What I've found with Caustic is that output tends to sound more "flat" than (say) Gadget which to my ears is quite "glossy" and shimmery (advanced technical terms here - and I adore Gadget too). Once said parts are in Logic and receiving their arrange processing (EQ, FX and Mastering) Caustic Really melds wonderfully.
This is helpful. It’s quite possible that the “glossiness” still affects me. In desktop Caustic, what gets in the way is more of the look and feel. But the vocoder can do cool things.
I was about to buy an ipad cause iphone6 probably less processor power for gadget.
I saw some you tube Videos about gadget and they sound very strong.
Today i found this discussion and now i am doubtful cause i like caustic....
BUMP
Are you guys still jamming Caustic circa 2018? I've been a Gadget fanboy up until just a few days ago, when I decided to finally give Caustic a chance. My problem was judging the book by it's cover , thinking it was the poor man's toy sequencer ...boy was I wrong.
Just had an incredibly inspirational session, coming up with earworms all night ..devoted over 8 hours just to flesh out, automate, mix and master a single multi-track 8-bar loop ..exported .wav of stereo master to compare against what I've previously produced in Gadget, Reason and Ableton , and I've gotta say - soundwise it's easily my best work so far -- Though, to be fair, I'm still a beginner/intermediate in Ableton/Reason ...
I'm so stoked about this environment -- wishing I had devoted energy to discover it sooner. The only thing I like better with Gadget is the ability to export Ableton projects and it being less of a hassle to export individual midi stems. But that's all secondary -- the workflow itself, like others pointed out, just flows ..I am not a fan of the gadget scene paradigm, but the Caustic Song/Pattern is perfect for me. Somewhat reminds me of the ableton Arrangement/Session system, though it's even easier to work with.
Trying to get my music up to pro-level polish & get an album together, so I may end up just using Caustic to layout and write the music, using more professional VSTs & perhaps hardware on the final draft on desktop -- though I'm not sure about that yet, some of the caustic tracks sound like they'd sit well in a commercial mix -- I guess I'll deal with that when I get there.
Just figured I'd bump the thread, especially in case someone new might not yet be aware of this amazing tool. It's a gem!
reasons to love Caustic.
the 8 bit synth ( byte beat anyone )
the modular synth
ability to route other tracks through the modular synth audio input
a sampler that automatically loads a zipped file of samples across the keyboard
the audio editor and all its hidden tricks n fx!!
pattern based automation and/OR song based automation ( careful, can get complex )
all the other synths ( including the nice FM & organ ones )
no iap
the vocoder ( you can use this to run audio lengths of over a minute,, sort of makes up for the lack of audiotracks.. which is really its only negative )
easy stem export to audioshare, quickly get the tracks into cubasis to mix using all those audio damage & bram bos plugs that it doesn’t have but it only costs the price of any one of those.
ALL the presets, songs, samples etc accessible on yr ipad via the ftp wifi using readdle Docs.. back it all up easy.. NO computer necessary.
about 300 other reasons you will only ever know if you spend deep time with it
Korg TOTALLY ripped this app off to make Gadget and i still don’t understand why that passed without much comment.
I am not affiliated , i just like to champion the underdog and am happy AnimalHeadSpirit has discovered the joy!
I agree with most everything in Rocky's summary. (First I'm learning about routing audio through Modular though, thanks for that tip
..
I think the best thing is just the quick, intuitive workflow -- I spent maybe 5-10 minutes watching parts of the overview video tutorial and I was up and running in no time. Certainly light-years faster than I got to a competent level with Gadget.
As for the Gadget / Caustic comparison - I think they've both got their strong points and are different enough from each other to be worthwhile to have both. I'll probably be using gadget a LOT less now though, for sure.
If anything, I think Caustic is the closest to a Propellerhead Reason experience on iPad .. I'm in awe of what this one man was able to accomplish by himself -- he's up there with Bram as the devs I respect the most on this platform.
yes, Rej should be killing it on ios, it’s a shame real life has taken him elsewhere,
not knocking ‘the Gadg’ , really love it, but not been using it lately despite the nice little sampler thing that arrived..
for me Caustic seemed directly derived from Orion ( on PC ) r hoffman/ synapse audio.
the synths , samplers with patterns built in and a song timeline, automation etc.. it was my most used prog after sony Acid in my late 90’s 2000’s laptop days.. so i was so pleased to have somethjng with ultra familiar workflow on the ipad.. especially when rej bumped the audio sampling up to stereo in 3.5.
to be honest Cubasis is the place i have been most hunkered down in recently.. but having to do stuff synced to video recently I am giving Auria a new look over.. weirldy finding and reporting obvious bugs which I would have thought people would have alerted them to months ago!! is nobody actually using Auria as an audio editor/ multitrack?
I first tried Caustic on a low budget 7” Android tablet at first and it ran surpisingly okay… cpu level for complex songs was at 85%. Because I liked it that much I bought an iPad for more cpu power and bought the iOS version. Because of the big selection of music apps on iOS I bought other music apps and effects. Gooverider, Beatmaker, Poison202 etc. etc.
But, the app I use the most is Caustic. It’s easy on the cpu, has no bugs, runs super smooth. I like the big and spacious UI, it’s soo quick to operate. I love the way you can select notes (lasso, time select, add more, select all), nudge notes, the deep wav editting with pitch shift en timestretch, modular synth etc. I hope the Rej ads (virtual) midi out capabilities one day but for now it pretty much does everything I want…
The free desktop version makes it easy to edit stuff on my Mac as well..
Agreed... it's sad that Caustic doesn't receive all the deserved praise on iOS. But on Android and PC (Windows AND Linux), it still rocks
There are some artists dropping pro-level polished tracks made only on Caustic
I find Caustic to be impossible to navigate. It's so interesting whoever it was who said the layout was simple; I keep navigating into synths, and then I can't find the piano roll, and then I'm back at the main environment. I guess that's why some people say Yanny and some say Laurel.
I will say that the tutorials put out by the dev are TOP NOTCH. Here are a few, but there is one for every component in the app.
the trick is to double tap on the dotted ‘dexion’ strip at the left side of the app, you can see it has slight indents to define top, middle, bottom..
bottom takes you straight to the song arrange page..middle to the mixer and top always goes back to whichever machine you were working on last.
if you go to the arrange page each track has an icon of the machine associated with it and double tapping that takes you straight to said machine.. when you know it , it’s certainly as simple as gadgets back n forth .. if not better?
Years ago, Sonic Syndicate Orion was my go-to composition environment because the pattern-oriented workflow was exactly my thing. Maybe it's the reason why I still feel at home in Ableton's session view today.
Caustic is a lot of fun when out and about, as is Grooverider, but when a home, I prefer Gadget for one single reason: It supports Midi synchronisation in both directions so it's a good match to hardware synths and sequencers. Just like iSpark for drums.
Using different apps can be a useful source of inspiration too.
But where is the Ableton Link?
That double tap on the left strip is a good one- news to me
Started this thread a minute ago...once again glad I did thanks for the tip
Caustic still makes me happy, Gadget deleted some time ago.
8bit synth, check
Vocoder, check
Modular synth check
Stellar tutorials, check
I’m learning Reason now and the Caustic connection is easy to see. I love Caustic also . And you can learn a lot from those tutorials .
Since reading through this thread I've been trying Caustic again. It's a lot better looking with the Julia skin - thanks for the tip - and with the addition of soundfonts it seems very versatile. I had a bit of a brainfart about turning off quantize in song mode but now it's all fine. Overall it seems an excellent and very capable self-contained solution. Snappy, too.
Caustic is great ,but the iOS version lacks 'modern' features. I'd suggest people who haven't bought it ,to wait for an update (if ever comes)