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.
What is your favorite synth app?
Like the title says; What is your favorite synth or keys app?
Doesn't matter if it supports Audiobus (yet) or not, just want to see what everyone is using. If you want to say what kind of music you make or have an example of you using your favorite synth app that would be awesome too.
My fav is Alchemy
Comments
Gotta go with Alchemy also.
I have the free version of Alchemy and it sounds amazing - will definitely be going full if it ever supports Audiobus.
My fave synth apps are Animoog, Magellan and Sunrizer.
Fav synth..
SynthTronica - awesome for ambient stuff!
76 Synthesiser - pretty beautiful look it has
Animoog & PPG Wavegenerator - great sound they have imho
TC-11 - what a monster) great tool for sound design and perfomance
Jasuto Pro - though it's abandoned it's still very great modular synth with all things you need (though well, it lacks virtual midi and audiobus, yep, for example). And if Audulus is more "studio work" or "effector" you can play whole tracks or sets live half-improvising in Jasuto - and u could do it since 2009! (Also, hello Nlog Synth - another DADDY of iOS synths)
The Strange Agency's Curtis - pretty weird and not as powerful as Density/Pulsaret, but i like it (and some other Agency's apps)
I was thinking Animoog would be a top answer.. I might have to bite the bullet and get it.. They do two things I hate, Non-universal and in-app-purchases, but it really does seem like it is worth it.
Well, those who wander deep in synthesis may prefer ppg more
but for just "choose preset and play music" animoog is niiiice
@ryan it's hard to imagine being disappointed by Animoog. It's really a wonderful piece of work. While I love Magellan and iMS20 a lot, I find Sunrizer the easiest of the Audiobus synths to program quickly.
@syrupcore Yeah I actually purchased Magellan and iMS-20 last night.. Discounts were running out today. Animoog wasn't on sale and to get it for both iPad and iPhone complete it's going to be about $50. The iphone version doesn't say anything about audiobus and seems to be short on DLC's.. Do you have the iPhone version? What's up with that?
iPolysix, Animoog and Wavegenerator.
I just recently got iPolysix and it's an amazing "bread and butter Synth". Super easy to program and sounds great. I had a Korg Mono/Poly back in the 80's and I'm hoping that Korg will bring this to iOS too.
Did you say Korg Monopoly? Can I be the cannon? Preferably in D. (rimshot) :-)
I bought iPolySix last night as well.. iPolySix, iMS-20, Magellan, and Audulus. I get paid friday and will be picking up animoog then. Going to be a fun week coming up with these great new toys.
BTW is it just me or does Audulus look suspiciously like a Star Trek bridge console? haha. I wonder if @Taylor planned that.
Audulus needs user videos and audios!
Also, i remember that i like Pulse Code's Polywave, which is not available now.
In that little synth you could not only draw wave by your finger, but also envelope and lfo. (and it had lp filter also)
Alexander Zolotov's minisynths don't fully replace it imho
@Qmishery If you had to pick just one of those apps which would you pick?
Yeah Audulus sure does look complicated, but i think being a synth user for 20+ years and with the videos they have it shouldn't be too much of a problem. There are also tons of user presets to dissect as well. Although I am not the best with terminology, taught myself everything, so some of the stuff I see on the forums does look like jibber jabber to me. lol good thing I like math ;-) Are you finding it too complex?
Old school synths FTW! I just have a thing for old school Synth recreations, whether in VST or iOS format. Back in the day it was a huge deal for most musicians to get your hands on a (then very expensive) hardware synth, even if it was just borrowed.
Jumping forward, the iOS platform now reminds me of the early starting days of VST where every new plugin was a big deal.
Fast forward again, it's great to see that a lot of the classic Synth companies out there recognize this new era in music making and are developing for iOS. It is greatly appreciated!
It truly fells great to have experienced this evolution in Synthesizers.
@AH_MediaDesigns I couldn't agree more. I was lucky enough to have a best friend who's dad was a professor of music at Acadia with a synth addiction. haha I got to try out a lot of different hardware synths. I remember a Moog synth he had, had a keyboard like I've never seen before, it was genius. There was a 2cm gap at the top of each key with a sensor of some kind, you could slide notes with it. Never seen it before or since but it was so much fun.
@Ryan
As Jasuto (I m upset that it's forgotten now. It had even granular back in 2010 before all that nowadays. It was ahead of time on ios synth scene) user I obviously can't find it too complex. Though I haven't bought Audulus yet - I don't like character of its sound so I m waiting for more examples. Though soundcloud demo song was good.
But I like how Audulus looks! And that he supports effect slot here
Also, on iPad 3, Audulus won't be godspeed? So I guess I ll get it in the future when I ll be changing device.
Speaking about synth recreations - too bad no Synthi A here
@Ryan
If only one?..
Maybe TC-11 then.
Because it doesn't recreate some classic things, but it is thing that made specially for ipad's interface and control, making it kinda instrument feeling
Though sound of TC-11 a bit thin for me (I don't know how to tell it) and needs time to learn how to make melodic stuff too on it
@Qmishery Yeah, haven't got a chance to try that one. At $30 it wasn't something I was willing to buy on a whim. Interface wise, I like cantor as an iPad synth controller, Cantor is free.
Wooji's Geain Science is my favorite synth app
Animoog and my own timbres loaded in are keepin me fascinated at the moment.
Grain Science sounds amazing and i can sit late at night till the early morning exploring the soundscapes.
It all reminds me of the first VST's in the late 90's but with the iPad's touch screen it's really intuitive and much more hands on and immediate in terms of the sound manipulation.
Exciting times....
iPad 5 here we come....
It reminds me of the VST's in the early 90's only in the way that it's the beginning of a wonderful evolution. Sound wise I'd say the apps are pretty far ahead of the VST's we had in the 90's for the most part. In some cases the apps exceed what I can currently do with VST's. Guitar apps in particular, both JamUp and Ampkit blow away any VST rig I have had on computer and I used to swear by guitar rig and before that Amplitube. It is an exciting time for sure.
I love all the apps mentioned, but I must also give some love to Cassini Synth by IceGear: http://iphone.icegear.net/cassini_ipad/
Now I just wish they would update Argon and Xenon!
My favorite "fun little" app is still TweakyBeat. iKaoss and Figure are great, but TweakyBeat is fun, simple, tweakable (as the name implies), relatively powerful, and actually quite usable (there's the occasional extra-click on the attack of a note which actually give it a more realistic modular-seq sound to me)
not sure if this counts as a synthesizer or not: M3000 HD (mellotron)
@toolshed did they ever add MIDI to M3000?
@ugly Cassini is just great. Definitely in my top 5. I hope they get on the bus. I hope maybe even more that Ice Gear releases the cassini effects engine as a stand alone Filter Slot app. That delay is effing magic. Along the same lines as tweakybeat (so much fun), I always have a good time when I open NanoLoop.
@syrupcore I agree with you about Cassini EFX so completely.
and NANOLOOP! ( http://tiny.cc/9gocqw ) Sadly, with so much happening recently with apps I forgot I had NanoLoop buried inside a "weird/other synths" folder on my ipad. I'm gonna crack that little guy open again when I get home from work.
@uglykidmoe "Now I just wish they would update Argon and Xenon!" I hear that! I tried to request Audiobus for both of those apps but couldn't get ahold of the developer at all.. It appears he abandoned Argon when he made Xenon and Xenon when he made Cassini.. Sometimes I think I should attempt to buy the rights and source code to some of these abandoned projects and finish them.
@ryan I've had similar issues with IceGear about Argon and Xenon. I have come to same abandonware conclusion as you. BUT WHY? I still really like argon as a mono synth. And Xenon, while not without it's numerous limitations, was still a very promising sequencer when it first arrived.
I would totally jump on board with you if the devs ever responded to such a request.
@uglykidmoe Yeah, I doubt the devs would sell either of these for anything i can afford. Argon is on the appstores "band in your hand" page. For sure still making money. But it is painful for those of us who like the apps and just want a little attention payed.
That is the reason why I didn't buy Cassini... I abandoned this dev.
That's a shame. Cassini is pretty great.
You're right but eh, there is sooo much great synths on the AppStore, I just decided to only support the devs commited to their apps and to the community. It's just MHO. ;-)
I wish M3000 would evolve as far as Midi and/or Audiobus but last I looked into it, seems to be abandoned. I know that ThumbJam has some Mellotron sounds but something about the M3000 just sounds great and I haven't heard any other iOS apps get the Mellotron experience close to M3000 yet. Please comment if you have any tips on alternatives or news on M3000 updates.