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 Store

Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

My FM Essential Story

Today I went to a local (NYC) music store to check out a MIDI controller.
I brought my USB cable and camera connecter in the hopes that they would let me activate FM Essential.

The salesman was very easygoing and encouraged me to go for it.

Once I made the connection and turned on the app, my iPad got all the patches instantly. I was expecting to have to wait a bit. It was pretty obvious that they'd already been downloaded, they just needed to be unlocked.

The only thing you have to do when your device connects is to choose a skin. This is not a big deal, as you can change the skin later in the app settings.

Anyway, the salesman was very impressed when he saw that I had all those sounds. So I invited him to hook up his iPhone using my cable. He got very excited when he saw all those amazing sounds on his phone.

Anyway, he said that because I turned him onto unlocking FM Essential, he was going to give me the "Friend and Family" discount if I bought the keyboard. :D

I really feel like I've got a new audio units synth. Very happy about this because I'm using Garage Band a lot more these days.

Comments

  • That’s cool!
    I inadvertently forgot my cck at guitar center and never saw it again :(
    Good news, I got the cck3 for free at amazon how?
    Credit offer! Signed up and bam! Got blessed. :D

  • Ok - so I strolled down to Guitar Center today and they actually had an MX keyboard! I had checked last week to no avail...

    Anyway, after speaking to the dude at the counter and asking permission (always important) I hooked up my USB to Lightning cable and the keyboard showed an error message "Incompatible USB device". I was bummed and messed with it for a few moments before giving up. So I asked the counter jockey if he had a USB to USB so I could use my CCK. He came back with a USB to USB 2 cable, which ended up working. Plugged it into the keyboard, then into my iPad Pro 12" and fired up the app. Took 10 seconds or so before I got the message that all the presets were unlocked.

    That being said - HOLY HELL! There are a TON of presets in here. This looks to be much deeper than I anticipated. Looks like I'm in for some exploratory FM space noises this evening....

  • @dvlmusic said:

    That being said - HOLY HELL! There are a TON of presets in here. This looks to be much deeper than I anticipated. Looks like I'm in for some exploratory FM space noises this evening....

    FM Essentials for me is the FM synth on iOS :)
    Playing the TX81z presets bring back so much memories for me and it's as close to a real TX81z as it will ever get.
    (+ more since it has two effects units and a filter that was not present on the original).

    The only gotcha is that even though it's an AUv3 the selected preset is shared among all AUv3 instances.
    (Don't know if Yamaha will ever fix this or if it is 'by design' as it is a promo app made to sell the MX-Line).

    It's really nice that Yamaha emulated the originals down the the DAC so all the 'digital noise' from the originals is preserved if needed and it's also possible to change the 'instrument type' to a super clean version :)

  • I'm fired up to dig into this. I still hold out hope that SOMEDAY Yamaha will just give us the DX-7 app we've all been waiting for. Until then, I'm chomping at the bit for the free player and I'll have a mess with this as well.

    Hooray for freebies!

  • does anyone know an NYC gear store that's cool with people doing this?

  • @JonLewis said:
    does anyone know an NYC gear store that's cool with people doing this?

    All store's should be cool with it since the unlock is part of a Yamaha promo campaign!

    One of the stores here In Sweden have an iPad permanently hooked to an MX V2 keyboard so people can play with it :) (It's also running some other music apps for people to mess around with).

  • Like I said - just walked into Guitar Center and no one had a problem as long as I asked. I don't think anyone at a store will care - it's not like you're doing anything wrong or underhanded. And it doesn't affect them negatively at all...

  • I recently unlocked my copy of FM Essential with a Yamaha MX49 that my local music store had as ex demo. Since it was ex demo it was reduced to £350 so I decided to buy it as future proof for FM Essential plus I liked the sounds on the MX49. I tried to get the keyboard reduced further but they couldn't do it because it had been reduced anyway so they gave me free midi and audio cables because I am a loyal customer.

  • edited December 2017
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • edited November 2017

    @Samu said:

    @dvlmusic said:

    That being said - HOLY HELL! There are a TON of presets in here. This looks to be much deeper than I anticipated. Looks like I'm in for some exploratory FM space noises this evening....

    FM Essentials for me is the FM synth on iOS :)
    Playing the TX81z presets bring back so much memories for me and it's as close to a real TX81z as it will ever get.
    (+ more since it has two

    There's some free TX81z presets in the AudioKit FM Player: Classic DX Synths (along with over 40+ original DX7 & DX7II presets). I'm thinking of doing a pro version of FM Player with more TX81z presets. I've already sampled every preset in my TX81z... (Because, who doesn't need a Lately patch?)

    https://audiokitpro.com/fmplayer/

  • @analog_matt I can't wait for your app to drop. I keep checking the app store to no avail - any thoughts on release date?

  • edited November 2017

    @dvlmusic said:
    @analog_matt I can't wait for your app to drop. I keep checking the app store to no avail - any thoughts on release date?

    That is is very kind of you. Thanks! If it doesn't come out this Friday, will probably be after Thanksgiving (as I will be visiting family next week for the holiday). Thanks for your patience,

  • edited November 2017

    @JonLewis said:
    does anyone know an NYC gear store that's cool with people doing this?

    @JonLewis said:
    does anyone know an NYC gear store that's cool with people doing this?

    I did it at Sam Ash on 34th.

  • edited November 2017

    @JonLewis said:
    does anyone know an NYC gear store that's cool with people doing this?

    I did it on Sam Ash on 34th.

    I did it on 34th Street most morning for many years, but never with Sam Ash....

  • @JohnnyGoodyear said:

    @JonLewis said:
    does anyone know an NYC gear store that's cool with people doing this?

    I did it on Sam Ash on 34th.

    I did it on 34th Street most morning for many years, but never with Sam Ash....

    You missed out.

  • I missed it as well since I haven’t got my iPad at the moment. :( Perhaps iPhone version someday?

    @analog_matt said:

    @dvlmusic said:
    @analog_matt I can't wait for your app to drop. I keep checking the app store to no avail - any thoughts on release date?

    That is is very kind of you. Thanks! If it doesn't come out this Friday, will probably be after Thanksgiving (as I will be visiting family next week for the holiday). Thanks for your patience,

  • edited November 2017

    Interesting side note - didn't realize FM Essentials supported full screen AUv3. So great - I'm having a ball playing with this.

  • just unlocked my FM Essentials at Bax music shop , here in Amsterdam.....
    one hell of a happy iOS FM synth user now.......full AUv3 is just great......

  • edited November 2017

    Thanks for the heads up on FM Essentials! I didn't pay attention to it before because i have about 9 FM or PM synth apps. But the morphing feature between presets makes it very usable and fun. And of course it sounds sweet. Unless of course you WANT it to sound sour and twisted! Nice. :smiley:

    BTW, what other iOS synth/music apps can do that "preset morphing" thing? Wish that was a standard feature. Even a cross-fading mixer between presets would be nice, at least. AUM can help mix and layer between synths. For smooth morphing, I can think of PPG Wavemapper. Some do a vector-type oscillator mutation, like iProphet, Nave, and iWavestation. Others?

    (EDIT: i see now that FM Essentials is morphing WITHIN a preset rather than BETWEEN different presets. But the various results are almost like different (but related) presets. Maybe not as wildly different as the XY morph in NI's FM8.)

  • Spent like 2 hours on a Thursday morning playing the MatrixBrute at Guitar Center in Maryland.

    Brand new one just opened this week here in Daytona so I am hoping for some grand opening deals.

    Because I need to spend more time and money looking at synths and related items..............(punches self in face)

  • @analog_matt said:
    I've already sampled every preset in my TX81z... (Because, who doesn't need a Lately patch?)

    Cool! Then you also know the sounds on the TX81z are extremely sensitive to velocity so at some point it's just too many samples to manage :D

  • It really sounds amazing - I finally got to mess around with headphones last night and the bass is so full and thick. I was shocked. I can't believe this is so fully featured...

  • @dvlmusic said:
    It really sounds amazing - I finally got to mess around with headphones last night and the bass is so full and thick. I was shocked. I can't believe this is so fully featured...

    I would still pay IAP to be able to use multiple AUv3 instances of FM Essentials :)
    (Drives me nuts that all the instances share the same patch).

  • No kidding - an IAP to unlock the full app, ability to use a non-Yamaha controller with the stand-alone app and multiple AUv3s.....

    I couldn't believe that there were more than 200+ presets. I can't wait to start programming this beauty. I feel like I cheated the system somehow....

  • Didn’t work for me. Said usb device incompatible. Didn’t try the cck though.

  • You have to do it with CCK. It won't work otherwise

  • One thing to worth noting about the MX line is that if the 'stickers' are removed there is no visible difference between V1 and V2 keyboards. The store I was at had 'both' versions in store so I had to ask which one of them was the V2 :D

  • I noticed a TX81Z in Cash Converters in Ilford today, for 129 quid or something like that. Tempting, but I don’t really want any more hardware, especially full rack gear. What’s the current situation with not having to have a real TX81Z (and I don’t have an unlocked Yamaha FM Essentials app)? Any other apps that do the job?

  • FM4 is a very beefy 4 Op.
    The closest thing to the original Yamaha sound (imho) is NFM, but it's the 6 Op kind.

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