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Auria Pro - Using it to finish a song with Fab Filters
I am getting very tempted to dip my toe into upgrading to Auria Pro and getting a few Fab Filters, just so that I can finish my tracks off in it. I've heard results from others doing this and they sound so much more polished. It will be a while before FF make them as Audio Units, if indeed they do it at all.
I'll continue to build songs in Cubasis then move them over to Auria as it is so easy for me to build songs in Cubasis.
I will be spending money I haven't got (lol), so less than £100 would be ideal but still painful.
A few questions:
1) Is it easy to move all your tracks over to Auria from Cubasis?
2) I really can only afford maybe 3 FFs as well as the upgrade, so which ones are the best for mixing and mastering - EQ, Compression and reverb?
3) The upgrades are listed as $, do I pay the $ equivalent in £ in the U.K.?
4) Are the FFs easy to use? Presets?
5) Do you also master in Auria Pro? Mix down, then master the mix down?
Apologies, as I know a lot of this has been covered, but it's hard to find specifics on the forum without extensive research and I'd like some confirmation - like a boot up the backside to go ahead!
Is it really worth it?
Comments
1) Yes, just export your tracks as stems;
2) I’d say Pro Q2, Pro C2 and Pro L. I also use Saturn as an exciter, but you can do without it;
3) I don’t think so;
4) Yes!
5) Yes. Pro L is really more useful as a mastering tool than a mixing tool.
Worth noting you don’t need to upgrade to Pro if you only intend to use Auria for mixing and mastering. Regular Auria would be more than enough. In fact, even Auria LE can do the trick if you don’t really need to mix more than 24 tracks.
Thanks for your answers
If it helps to make my finished tracks as polished as yours, I'd be happy
On a side note, I thought you HAD to upgrade to Auria Pro to use Fab Filter stuff?,
You don't need Pro to use the plugins, however Pro has more than just MIDI stuff, it also has busses and the FabFilter synths (One and Twin) which are well worth the money. Also in the non-pro you can't route the AUX send to a bus, and the built-in AUX sends have a bug where the latency you set adds a delay, so your reverb ends up having a delay equivalent to your project latency (the bus AUX sends in Pro don't suffer from this)
$ for £ is more or less equivalent these days in the App Store.
And if I had to choose just 3 FabFilters they would be Pro C, Pro R and Timeless, but I would also be wanting to get Pro Q at the next opportunity.
i would suggest timeless and saturn and pro-r and microwarmer. the included compressor and eq are not bad at all and you can upgrade to the ff stuff later, but nothing does what timeless and saturn does very much special sauce. microwarmer is cheaper and super good.
@richardyot and @vpich
Thank you for your suggestions, I think I'm just gonna go and get them.
Life is short and all that.
I don't think the repo man can take apps as assets
@richardyot - would Pro C be enough for mastering or is Pro L invaluable?
Pro L is better at mastering than C, imho. That's really what it's designed to do.
And the other thing you get with Auria Pro is time warping, which is a wonderful little tool, especially for audio tracks, to fix up little things that are off, without having to overdub or redo the track.
Auria Pro also has the advantage of being able to pinch expand .wav files vertically as well as horizontally. Great for making sure everything lines up, and for finding the exact spot when sequencing tracks.
As for FF, the three I use the most are a combo of Pro-MB, Pro-EQ and Pro -L. The middle one a recent addition. The presets available on these are really good. You can either use them straight or play around to get just the sound you want. They offer great complexity, but are easy to get started with, and you will hear the difference. All FF filters have extensive YouTube reviews, so you can see and hear exactly what these things do, and how elegant they are.
The FF effects, if you can stretch to those, are also very, very good. What you need to ask yourself, of course, is how useful each would be to your particular style. For example, Pro-R is a superb reverb effect. But I haven't bought it, 'cause I already have several excellent reverb apps that do what I want to do. But if you make the kind of music that uses reverb a lot more than I, then it may be worth adding.
One thing to be aware of is an annoying FF bug that Auria's maker never gets around to fixing. FF tell me is is up to the AP developer to sort this out. The issue is that you can chose and apply FF presets, which will be retained as you work on your tracks. But when you open the FF plug-in again, the setting will say that it is Default. The only way around this is to save each preset including track name, so you can be sure you've reloaded the right thing in another session.
Thanks again! Also for those top tips @Zen210507
The best thing about Pro-L IMO is that you can set it to use the K system for metering, meaning that you can tailor your output to a specific target loudness. For me personally this has resulted in much better masters because I'm much less likely to over-compress. I set the scale to K12 and adjust so that only the very loudest parts of the track go over 0db, so I end up with a dynamic result which isn't overly compressed.
See this video for an explanation:
I recommend watching all of the FF tutorials, they're super useful:
https://www.fabfilter.com/video/
Of course you can also use Pro L to really crush a track to maximum loudness (which I have done many times in the past), and for that it's pretty good as well.
Also, just to add, I have all of the FF filters in Auria, and don't regret a single one of those purchases. You said you are only looking at 3, but these are the ones I really wouldn't want to do without:
Pro C2, Pro Q2, Pro R, Timeless, and Pro L. That's five in total, but they are the ones I use in pretty much every single mix.
The others see less use, Saturn and Volcano I only use on relatively rare occasions for special effects, Pro MB I tend to use on Stereo drum tracks/loops and acoustic guitar, Pro G and Pro DS I might use on vocals (but you can easily use other tools to get similar results). Micro is kinda redundant since Volcano does the same and more.
@richardyot Cheers my good man! Extensive and exactly what I wanted to know
I can see uses for all those 5 and they are cheaper at the mo.
I bought the Auria FF too (timeless,Pro Mb , volcano) but i didnt buy the L (limiter) cause i have already final touch ,audio Mastering And au limiter (amazing noise,Ddmf) . In the review they said it' s à very transparent plug in ! Oh And i tried Landr but my track was oversaturared after the process. I am really a sucker for mixing And Mastering technics
,it' s not The best and enjoyable part of The job 
Ive previously mastered in Final Touch, but from the results I've heard and recommendations, nothing touches FabFilters on iOS.
I really don't like the look of Landr!
@DefRobot You won't be disappointed brother. When I first got into iOS Music Production a couple years ago I was suspicious of the Auria FabFilter plugs thinking they were gimped in some manner to work on a tablet. I thought "What kind of cuts did they make for a $180 desktop plug-in to work in an app?" The answer was none, as aside from a few adaptations to allow for touch use the FabFilter plugs are code correct, the same as desktop.
The great thing about iOS Production is the ease of using multiple DAW's & apps to create music. An idea germ from a jam in AUM can be put into Cubasis where further work can be done and then that work in progress can be brought into Auria for final polishing, editing & mixing. Since the FF plugs are exclusive to Auria (for now) I suspect alot of us have adopted some form of the workflow... it's just logical.
As long as brand loyalties and mega fandom doesn't cripple your options (sticking to just one app regardless of the progress made by others) there are close to unlimited possibilities... good on you for taking the plunge, enjoy the FF's @DefRobot
@JRSIV Thanks
Yeah, I've been toying with the idea a while and it's cost and using Auria that's held me back. I'm gonna dive into th Auria manuals to get over that daunted feeling.
The cost, as you say, is waaay cheaper than desktop.
I would imagine that iPad production is fast becoming THE way forward for a cheap mobile studio solution. The number of different music based apps is staggering and the fact you can use them all together on the one iPad is amazing.
Of course Audiobus and this forum are a great help too! Be lost without them and the community!
By the way, the built-in compressor, multiband compressor and limiter are both made by PSP and both world class, so you can start with ProQ2 and Pro L, and buy ProC2 when your wallet allows for it (ProC2 has side chain for ducking etc., but since you build the songs in Cubasis, perhaps this is not crucial for your work). Cheers!
@theconnactic I'm gonna break my bank and shake out the pennies while they're all on offer. It's like buy 3 get one free at the moment (approximately).
Thanks
I agree that the built-in channel strip in Auria is really good in terms of sound - what I like about Pro C2 over the built-in channel strip compressor is the visual feedback that the plugin gives - the same goes for Pro Q2 as well. The visuals really help you to understand what is being done to the sound. Of course there is the argument that you should use your ears and not your eyes, and I agree that over-reliance on the visuals can be counter-productive, but I still think that the UI of the FF stuff is really helpful for making mix decisions. Pro L having the ability to use the K system being a great example.
Although I don't think there is an actual multiband compressor in the default channel strip. There are channel compressors and bus compressors (and two different limiters on the Master bus).
You're right, it's not multiband, it's a single band buss compressor
I was soaking up all those recommendations (thanks a bunch for them!), but still I would suggest a reading first:
http://innerportalstudio.com/articles/Mixdowns.pdf
and
http://innerportalstudio.com/articles/Mastering.pdf
(
Those are from our forum member https://forum.audiob.us/profile/Tarekith
@Tarekith
)
You may learn that you can start quite small.
But I do see the benefit of graphical effects!
That said, I tend to buy lots of stuff.... but if you need to calculate, maybe just start with Auria Pro and the builtins. Adding more when you feel comfortable and begin to feel restrictions....
Bear in mind that even the built-ins are better than most iOS mixing FX offerings. Very light on the CPU! The high and low pass filters from the channel strip have a very gentle slope that fits nicely for cleaning up undesirable frequencies with minimum artifacts. I use them in every track, always! The gate/expander is surprisingly good and flexible. The compressor is very good, world class, sounds like PSP’s old timer, in fact, but doesn’t do side-chaining. The buss compressor is a direct port of PSP’s BussPressor, a celebrated Desktop compressor, and it surprises me how little is talked about it. There are indeed two limiters, and you can get a fairly loud mix with the Brickwall limiter and some tweaking, as long as you don’t limit much more of 6 dB and keep a dynamic range of around 9dB and never less than 6 dB. I finished quite a few songs before having any Fab Filters just using the built-in tools. Cheers!
P.S.: One built-in effect I’m not so fond of is the Saturate mode of the channel strips: too gentle, I have a hard time to perceive any difference at all
Glad I'm not the only one who feels like that. I mean I 'll see that it's on, the button and by the center pop up "Saturation On", and the difference is negligible. I've solo'd a few tracks and boosted their level really high & then hit the saturation and the big meter does show a level increase and with my favorite Sony MDR 7506 headphones I can hear a change in if not timbre, maybe EQ profile but it is soooo subtle.
That could've been PSP's goal, cause there are so many saturation/overdrive/distortion/tape emulations that just smear shit on your sound and call it "character"....nah, man, nah.
But to Dmitri's @theconnactic point the PSP stuff within Auria is excellent and if everyone had access to it via AU we'd get many threads putting the compressor, EQ, etc. over as incredible tools, which they are.
Another reason to at least get Auria LE to mix and add PSP, FabFilter magic to your tracks.
And, @DefRobot ... what did you do?
I upgraded to Auria Pro, then started to buy the Fab Filters I chose.
After the 3rd purchase, my bank stopped the payment as it had decided that it was unusual activity
A quick yes to the message query from my bank as to whether these were my purchases and on I went.
I've ended up with Pro C2, Pro Q2, Pro R, Pro L and Timeless 2.
All I need now is spare time, although I have started the rough idea of a new song.
One more question. There's mono and stereo versions of each to choose from. What's that about?
P.s. I have read those articles by Tarekith already. Very informative
If I was new to Auria Pro and was going to get five FabFilter plugs those are the five I'd get. You dun good brother.
The stereo & mono versions of each plug-in is dependent on what type of track you're using the effect on. If you're wanting to put C2 compression on a bass track (mono track), you'd use the mono C2.
If you're putting something on a group bus or stereo track you'd use the stereo version. That's using like tracks with like plugs (mono with mono, etc.). You can use a stereo effect on a mono source as well, it's just like the routing of a hardware effect unit, say a mono guitar going into a stereo delay to get a pingpong delay, etc.
Thanks @JRSIV
That makes sense for the stereo and mono.
I've had very good advice for my choices thanks to the forum
If you have a mono track you can apply either a mono or stereo plugin to it. For example you might want to add a stereo delay on a mono track to get a ping pong effect. Most of the FF plugins can do mid/side processing which is why you might also need stereo versions of EQ or compression.
Stereo tracks only let you add stereo effects though.
@richardyot
I've got a lot of learning to do on the Auria side, so thanks again for your advice.
Lots of you tube tutorials out there, so I'm sure I'll get my head round it!
We definitively need tutorials with the ff stuff ! Landr is not the answer ...