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.
PPG WaveGenerator
Should I get it? I've got it on my wishlist but am undecided. I thought it might be cool for getting '80s sounds alongside FM4 for FM stuff. The vids on youtube haven't done a lot for me though...
Comments
I wish I had just gotten PPG wavemapper instead personally. I never use wavegenerator.
How do you find Wavemapper to be better? Is it the sounds, or ease of use?
For me, not being very "technical", I find that Wavemapper is way easier to get very interesting results and is more immediate. Wavegenerator requires a different way of thinking almost and seems to make you "plan" out your sounds. more structural. Well, at least this is my feeling about it and I gave up kinda early with Wavegenerator so could be I'm missing something.
PPG WaveGenerator has the ability to import photos to use as wave tables for presets. This makes it relatively painless to use existing presets to create new ones using photos.
If you are only getting one, consider wavemapper. Nothing wrong with wavegenerator, just wavemapper really impressed me. It might be have the best sound quality of the wavetable synths. I'm getting better sounds out of it, than iwavestation (except for the sequenced sounds, which are amazing, and unique).
Thanks. Good to know.
Both PPG synths feature the same soundengine (imho) and are in fact outstanding in qualitity.
Wavemapper (as mentioned) got a much easier approach, which is based on a very simple 'character mapping' approach as W. Palm first introduced in his Plex VST synth.
You get along without any technical details and it's kind of entertaining by the surprise factor that often shows up.
Wavegenerator is a bit demanding regarding the wavetable control details, but once you get the mechanism it's cool to handle.
It's important to distinguish between wavetable synthesis and wave data playback (as in samplers/soundfonts) - these are 2 completely(!) different items.
Wolfgang Palm's videos on YT may be a bit long, but worth watching (or rather required) if you want to understand what's behind wavetable synthesis.
Get both. They complement each other.
WaveGenerator (WG) gives you more control over a single Wave Table (WT)and it's three Oscillators (OSCs) use variations of that single WT.
You can make your own WTs in WG and send them to WaveMapper.
WaveMapper does not give you the same control over WTs as WG does, but you can use a different Wavetable for each of its three OSCs.
Making sounds in WaveMapper is similar to how I make sounds in DX or similar synths by using a different sound in each of its OSCs to create part of the sound desired. WaveMapper also makes some of the sound creation process easier by using the simplified mapping to put certain aspects of a sound in certain categories. Using random categories, also brings up sounds by presenting ideas you may not initially think of.
Do people with Wavegenerator + Wavemapper + Nave have an easy decision which one to use, or do they all seem to fulfil the same requirement?
Because Nave has more FX and ways of putting drive into areas of the sound, I find I use it for different sounds from the PPG apps. The design of Naves interface also seems to make me go in differing directions from the PPG apps too.
Lots of similarities in what they all can achieve? Yes, certainty. Different enough to warrant having Nave and the PPG app (which I sort of use as one app really), INHO most certainly. Your mileage may vary. Any person that just does not enjoy the journey of programming sounds on different synths, may not find as much pleasure as I do from having all the apps you mention.
Cheers. I'm still leaning towards the 'more control' app, but I'll look at the demos again.
The main advantage over Nave is these are AU.
Yes, AU brings another level to sound design for synth sounds. If you look at say, the Roland Jupiter 80, many of it's sounds are made up of many segments of sounds. Many digital hardware synths take this approach. AU lets us take the same approach by careful blending of different sounds from different AU synths to make one more complex sound whole.
For example, making key on and off sounds to complement an otherwise dull electric piano sound. Adding different body sounds by delayed onset of a sound. Creating complex evolving pads with multiple sound sources. Making complex velocity switching layers.
A low cost tryout would be MiniMapper. I run it on my IPad and it sounds fantastic. There are also LOTS of free tweakable presets out there by our own fruitbat, Alba Ecstasy, etc...
Cheers. I looked it up however it seems to be abandoned ... no update since 2014.
True, but it is still running beautifully.
@pichi Have you tried the iOS PPG free? It gives you an idea of what wavegnerator is like. Also on their website he has free 7 day demo trials of the desktop versions of his vsts (Mac and PC) so you might want to try those out to get an idea of what the apps are like.
WaveGenerator is open, very deep and is required for more complex exploration of WaveMapper and Phonem. When in doubt choose Wolfgang Palm's PPG products. Wolfgang is after all the father of wavetable synthesis.
Cheers. I'll look into it.
OK. I bought it. But it's a damn criptic app. It took me 30 minutes to figue out how to save a preset to a new bank. It truely is like stepping back into the 80s.
Maybe that's why I like it, as I love the 80's
Can't say a bad thing about the app.
Unfortunately, I never really found a reason to use it enough to praise it.
Well, I got used to it a bit now and made some patches ... an unwieldy, but interesting app. Unique.
Have you done any automation of the map pages at all via a 3rd party app?
No. Haven't got that far yet.
I love the sounds of both mapper and generator but i do wish there were more extensive tutorials
Most of the time i have no idea what i'm going in mapper and good sounds are happy accidents. I'd like to be able to open it looking for a particular sound and then work my way to it without fumbling too much
Damn it. I just started a long help piece with pictures and lost it all while the kitchen fitters were here. When I get over the shock I may try again lol.
Well worth persevering, as it really is quite easy and fun when you get the hang of it. Once you get the hang of the routing possibilities, they really are not as alien as they first may seem.
PLEASE! I would love to see your insight on this. Damn those kitchen fitters!
Oh yes, please do. I'd love to see your tutorial on it!
Yes, a tutorial would be welcome.
Even for those who haven’t bought the app. It’d be interesting to finally understand how these things work.