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.
AUv3 Reverse Salient
Posit: The reverse salient for AUv3 is Drums, with totally integrated step sequencer.
I'd bet Elastic Drums gets there first .
Reverse Salient: ~> http://www.roughtype.com/?p=603
Comments
But the whole point of AUv3 is that you use them in a DAW that fits your sequencer preferences. Integrating the sequencer in the AU defeats that purpose. It makes much more sense to integrate a great drum sequencer in a DAW which can then be used with any drum AU out there in a consistent way.
What would in your view be the main advantages of having the sequencer in the (small-ish) AU GUI? Genuinely curious to learn.
I think the main 'Gripe' is caused by the fact that we do not have 'fully featured' DAWs on iOS to drive the AUv3's with. Hence the numerous requests for arpeggiators, step-sequencers and others stuff built-in into AUv3s.
I'm so far (feature wise) deeply impressed by an upcoming app that I'm even considering moving over to it as my main 'hub app' once it's stable enough. It's truly a work of art and feels like real hardware rather than software running on the iPad.
I agree, it is the DAW that should provide the sequencing and those we have at the moment are still lagging on things like transpose based on midi note received (which could work in an AU based Sequencer).
It seems people are looking to AUv3 to enable use of other sequencers inside a DAW which to me is not the right way to do it.
A sequencer like the above would be better suited as a MIDI effect, just like a harmonizer or MIDI Delay would be. You could then use it on ANY MIDI based instrument not just the AUv3 it was written in.
I'm not in the know, but from what I understand this isn;'t the intention of AUv3....
How do things like this work in the Desktop AU world ?
The Reverse Salient for AUv3 is the lack of documentation and working examples and definition of standards for using it.
I hope DrumJam and ThumbJam gets AU. I already use my daws sequencer to program/record and don't see any benefit of using a sequencer inside a sequencer. DrumJam with all the iaps are great for some acoustic madness and ThumbJam for all the other high quality virtual instruments.
There are AU hosts that are not full DAWs, right? I'm thinking of AUM, for instance.
1) for the most part the iOS DAW vendors don't have this type of sequencer, and I'll assert that they'll never have the vision to do so.
2) I would consider it fun and inspiring. The sequencer implementation is a huge part of the identity of a good drum machine. They can innovate here in so many creative ways.
I suppose Reason's Redrum could be a rough example of marrying the sequencer with the instrument
Tease much?
Next beta on Monday...
I think the arppegiator in ReSlice is already there in many respects. You can mix and match sound presets with arp presets and use several instances to make layered polyrhythms. You can feed MIDI into the AU instances so they act as triggers for the arps. When you go to save your project, all of the instances and their settings are saved too. Having a triggerable sequencer in an AU allows for control at the AU host level, in each instance of the AU, and of course at the level of how you've setup the AU instances within the context of how they'll all work together to achieve a particular musical goal.
Essentially you're able to have nested multiple levels of modularization. This can be especially effective with rhythmic or harmonic aspects of the music as you can create setups where a key press can initiate complex polyrhythms or layered synths using the simple AU sequencer. Setting all of that up using AU host app controls would be a lot more work. Plus with this modular AU approach you can setup an instance and then use it in another AU instance with different sounds or slightly modified settings. This is a form of synergy which is especially useful on iOS as the complex setups are easy to create and to recall.
An analogous situation is the use of LFOs in a synth to control various parameters where the AU sequencer corresponds to the LFO, the AU host app can control AU sequencer triggers, and AU instances correspond to oscillators, and the effect apps correspond to filters, and the saving of a project corresponds to a synth preset.
Furthermore it'd be more useful for the AU to be able to pass its sequencer information back out to the AU host app as MIDI which could then be filtered and routed to other apps in the AU host session.
Combined with program/bank level change controls, you could create very rich changes using simple sequencing techniques and have it all be in sync. Add in some range defined random variation or LFO variations, you can create even more options.
For example, the apeSoft apps have LFO and MIDI assignable controls for all sorts of parameters within their apps and having several of them in a setup which can receive sequencer MIDI output from a host app would allow them to be musically connected to AU apps in the setup.
I would also add that the PPG synths have a tremendous number of controls which can be used to craft your presets which can then be accessed in the AU instances of the app. In a similar manner, you can have a full blown version of the sequencer creator in the standalone version of the app and save it as a preset to be used when it operates as an AU.
The other major advantage is that you won't need an AU host DAW which tries to be all things to all people and all apps which leads to using more device resources and complexity which leads to higher development and update costs as well as a higher initial investment on the part of the user to figure out how to use it.
A shared control via AU host triggering and receiving of AU control signals allows people to build their own DAW the way they want with the apps and workflows they want to use. This requires minimal development and update costs, the user only has to focus on which apps and host AUs they want to use, and projects are easily saved and recalled.
^ the main reason for me. Still, I'd prefer to live in the world Bram is describing but...
So it turns out BeatHawk gets there first
As Usual I AGREE with these studs
I think you are exactly right.
Market forces and creativity will make these time more fun then ever
Great time to be a musician
I agree with pretty much most of what has already been posted. My only (minor) gripe about AUs is they don't freeze when I freeze tracks in Auria, and even that wouldn't bother me if I weren't still working on a lowly iPad Air 1 ...