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.
Comments
I won't comment on what should or should not be on that list... but I had absolutely no reservations about voting for SynthScaper.
Also, I haven't seen any banner ads for SynthScaper on that site. It's on the list because someone there evidently felt Synthscaper is an innovative new way to craft custom sound, that's in a brilliant class by itself.
I concur.
Magnet is meh.
In meh opinion.
My favourite kit is the hang drum, in combination with that sequencer you can get 8 great sounding hypnotic loops in no time. I record improvising these locked (magnet) loops with the faders, I don't even want midi on this app anymore, not often I say those words!
Multiple touches and super fast and responsive workflow is what Snap excels at. There is room for extra features and I'm sure there are some I have yet to find
Yah I am nutters for the BM3. There are of course other iOS tools and I do still use them. Even in the daw zone, still had a use for Cubasis this weekend that was easier than BM3 (video recording related).
In a nutshell though BM3 is the closest to the non mobile workflow that I fell in love with years ago on the Amiga then moving on to Samplitude on the PC with a Yamaha A3000 sampler etc. Anyway, I tried to do it with Auria Pro, Modstep, Blocs Wave/Egoist/Elastic Drums/Cubasis etc and while I got a lot out of it could just never crack the iOS nut in a satisfying way until BM3. But yah it just fits like a nice warm fuzzy sweater for me. Very very familiar workflow plus it is mobile too, whoot!
I also voted for Synthscaper, love my scaper collection. Soundscaper gets the most use here still.
Are you familiar with Drum Jam? Or Oval? I think you'd really like those.
@BlueGreenSpiral Awesome. Thanks for sharing the details. Seems like you have dug into this one fairly deep and are liking it. That is definitely making me pay close attention to this one and most likely I will get it.
@ExAsperis99 I value your input as well. I had a similar reaction to Rotor from this same dev. I thought it was a pain to do anything in it and I would run out of modules so fast that I couldn't achieve things that I was thinking up. But some people clicked with it and had high praise for it. Snap caught my attention when the first post about appeared a while back, but with all of the cool new sequencing-focused apps that have come out (or are about to (ODESSA)) it may not look so interesting anymore. I'll wait and see.
MusicRadar has some very good free samples available.
That's true! I've downloaded some of them...
One of my favourite of the bunch
http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/sampleradar-475-free-crate-diggers-samples-627136
I wasn't offended!
I really am a sucker for beautiful apps, and Snap definitely is lovely. I just don't see what it can do that any number of other apps do. The magnet trick is coolish, but for me it's just one trick. I am very happy to be proved wrong.
Snap is pretty basic and the drum kits are blah. Never got far enough into it to see if you can import samples.
Best of the year are Zeeon, mood, and bram bos (either Ripplemaker or the Odessa when it hits). Honorable mentions to a couple of the Audio Damage effects (namely Dubstation and Phosphor). And shit, I forgot Quantum. But pretty sure that about does it for me. Solid year for quality over quantity.
Can you get Oval to respond to Midi? I can't seem to get it to do that and gave up thinking it only responds to the really expensive Oval hardware. I would love to be proved wrong here.
DrumJam is one of my most beloved apps. I find it so fun to jam on, and the loops are amazing for accompaniment. Keep meaning to explore the Midi connectivity with it but always seem to get lost jamming away and run out of time.
The pitch bending with the GB touch keyboard works nicely with Noise. Since I play most of my stuff on the virtual keyboard, this was a plus for me. Poison-202 doesn't support this, for example. ISymphonic doesn't. And iSEM doesn't.
Moog Model 15 does it, though.
I just bring up the mod and pitch-wheel in GarageBand
(I use on-screen keyboards most of the time as well).
I get my pitchbending nicely done with the touch keyboard pitch control. I get a better job done with that. But maybe that's just me :-)
Thanks for the link!
Haha yeah why Wavestation and Monopoly but not IOdessey. The hype for Odessey was huge.
How do you guys play chords on touchscreen keyboards? I find it very difficult to chord accurately. SIngle-note runs are awesome on the touchscreen though, obviously.
I try to keep the onscreen keys as big as possible. If I make some errors I can correct them in the piano-roll.
(Sometimes I'm just lazy and draw in the chords or use GarageBands 'chord strips' which are highly customisable).
In Cubasis I usually enter the more difficult chords I need to use into the 'chord buttons' but most easier chords I have no problems using the onscreen keys, got quite slim fingers
AUM deserves app of the year every single year.
Well, I basically don't play chords on the touchscreen :-)
Well, sometimes I use the chord strips in GB, they are pretty cool, just as GB is very cool all together.
Wish Steinberg would do a touch playing interface as GB has. Just soooo cool.
Logic Remote has these interfaces as well, love to use it there, too. Brought the iPad feeling to my desktop :-)
Triads are not bad in GB, they got the spacing right. Most of the other keyboards are horrific imo
SynthScaper and iWavestation both amazing, imagine how different you guys would feel if those were AUv3. Weird poll though.
Wasn't iOdyssei last year?
Yup. November 2016.
Simple triads are about all I can pull off on a touchscreen, and even then I clam a lot. I still have my old DX7 from the 80s up in the attic. I am going to have to break down and get a box and a cable to plug it in to the ol Ipad it looks like.
Its actually helped me quite a bit. On full keyboard I have a propensity to play too many cluster chords, major 9ths and what not. iPad keyboards are teaching me the beauty of simplicity
The thing that makes the touchscreen KBs hard for me to use compared to real stuff is I have to rely too much on my eyes to play stuff. The lack of tactile feedback is a barrier for me regarding playing with feeling and such. But I found that I could get better at using the touchscreen KBs after practicing a bit.
Does anyone know the author? Not to bash em but to school em.... Or at least ask WTH is this list about? It's horrendously off beat.
Korg emulations of their existing decades-old hardware... yeah, innovative.
As many mentioned before, they should have listed BM3, AudioDamage wonderful ports of their FX, or any other... ANY OTHER OF THE BRILLIANT SYNTHS THAT DROPPED THIS YEAR.