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 agree Turnado is tops, but Flux:fx barely seems to work. Lot of issues with the last update and they’ve disappeared just the way they did before. Even their inbox is knocking messages back to sender. Sad. It would be a monster with a little bit of housekeeping.
Boom! Tera AUv3 update is out
That's a nice surprise, thanks Virsyn.
I bought Bark filter and Harmony 8 today and I'm very happy with both of those too.
Best start main Tera app first as I couldn't see the presets if I hadn't done that.
Does someone know how the barkfilter is like? Can it be used in a mastering session?
I do like the 27 compressor-bands, just don’t know if it’ll do the job.. in a proper way..
Well done Virsyn!
Thanks for the info DCJ, seems like I've completely passed on the issues, running an older version on iOS 8.4.
So I better don't change a running system, which seems to be the question more than ever with iOS11?
At least it seems like a good idea to have one iPad for older and one for the latest apps?
I just want things to work and spend my time with music, not waiting for devs fixing issues...
If Flux is super important to you and works great on an old iOS then by all means stay put. It doesn’t even load in Audiobus on iOS 11.
Boom!
I’ve wondered if I should get bark filter as well.
Doug’s video on it is here
Tera AU is great except I really need some new glasses lol
Most if not ALL of the Virsyn apps are on sale at the moment.
https://appsliced.co/apps/dev/virsyn
Voxsyn and harmony eight are really bad, (as in unusable deteriorated sound quality). I’d lost faith in them but bought tap delay on someone’s advice and love it.
ReSlice is interesting but might not be everyone's cup of tea.The thing that is unique to it is the FuguecMachine like multihead arpeggiator. I find it an inspirational way to explore creating new material from rhythmic loops. I find that aspect of it workflow worthwhile by itself. And I can imagine that for some that wouldn't be something compelling.
Here is a video of ReSlice’s arps being used to regroovify a djembe loop from an old project of mine. Until I had ReSlice, I didn’t realize how cool this feature was:
That was really cool, @espiegel123 , thank you!
I picked up ReSlice but it never managed to displace Egoist as a performance slicer — Egoist’s MIDI control when in external control mode is just too good (16 ‘pads’ worth of 16 slices each, which can be instantly switched between, in addition to full MIDI learn).
Unless I’m unaware of it, there’s no way to load more than one sample and switch between them in performance by midi control in ReSlice? (aside from loading loads of instances on different channels)
Nope, plus you can't control slice parameters like pitch,volume with midi CC
(like Egoist and dozen other apps...)
Re slice is deff no samplr replacement but that was a cool video, I dig the arp stuff
>
Reslice is much better on the iPhone than egoist though ;-)
Are there any other similar auv3 apps for iOS that work on the iPhone?
Can anyone offer a brief overview of the main Vir/Syn synths similarities and differences?
I mean Tera, Addictive, Poseidon and Cube I have a pretty good grasp on, though there seems to be some cross over between them... but then there are all the Pro and Micro versions, which I would normally take at face value, except I keep reading things like "Micro Tera should be it's own synth" and "Addictive Pro sounds so bad it's not worth having if you have Addictive", which seems kind of unreasonable since it is an AU and Addictive is not.
Anyway, not trying to get out of doing my own research, I'm currently reading back through forum posts that mention these, just thought there might be some Vir/Syn expert who could break it down.
Thanks
Not sure if had been mentioned, but Samplist is universal.
It’s universal but not auv3. I think reslice might be the only one that’s universal and auv3.
I'll attempt to cut to the core of what each offers. But it's probably good to provide a little history too and describe each synth within that context. All of Tera, Cube, Poseidon and Addictive are the work of one single developer - Harry Gohs, VirSyn itself is a two-person team, Harry and his wife.
Tera was Harry's first release back in the early noughties (2002 if memory serves right), and it was a hugely ambitious release at the time as it's an emulation of an analog modular system, that also featured an additive synthesis module. At the time it required significant processing firepower considering we were still in the age where processor speeds were a fraction of what they are today. It sounded fantastic then and it still sounds fantastic today (having had three major upgrade cycles as a desktop plugin and a complete rethink from a UX perspective on iOS.
One of the most popular modules in Tera was it's additive synthesis engine. And from that Cube was born. To this day Cube is the most powerful and usable additive synthesis engine available. Additive synths existed in hardware form in the 80's and 90's but they either cost super bucks (Fairlight, Synclavier etc) or where near impossible to program (Kawai).
In 2008 VirSyn released Poseidon. This mixes additive, analog and re-synthesis techniques. It sounds very different to Cube and in many ways is the most 'analog' sounding of all VirSyn synths due to two core factors. 1.) It's re-synthesis engine which has access to lots of excellent analog 'wavetables' (they're not strictly wavetables but it's a good metaphor). 2.) It has a unique approach to the majority of its 'analog' filters. These pre-calculate the filter response based on the wavetable rather than model said filters response after the oscillator section. And this in many ways provides a more 'analog' sounding filter response than ZDF (zero delay feedback) filter designs that have become the goto approach for most modern virtual analog designs. Another synth that follows this approach on the desktop is Image Line's Harmor (massively underrated synth alongside Image Lines other beauty Sytrus).
Addictive and Addictive Pro (both exclusive to iOS), have some crossover with Cube, but the central guiding principle of the Addictive synths are for them to be as accessible as possible. Especially to those that don't necessarily have a background in synthesis techniques. The real beauty of Addictive (and Pro) is that it allows you to draw both the partials for the additive oscillators and the shape of the virtual filters.
A really important aspect of all of VirSyn's iOS synths is their onboard multi-fx. These are without a doubt the best on-board FX in any iOS synths. And the standalone VirSyn multi-fx grew out the onboard flavours.
For my money, Harry Goh is one of the most talented DSP engineers in the world computer technology. I'm not saying everything he touches is gold (some of his more consumer-facing apps are a little gimmicky) but Tera, Addictive Pro, Poseidon and Cube are 4 of the best synths available on any platform, never mind iOS. And each has unique sonic capabilities. Whilst they're on sale at $11.99 a-piece, they're an absolute steal.
This is an excellent post, wow I didn't know all, if any of this... Very great man ima have to decide what my first virsyn synth will be... I have so many iOS synths but none of theirs, but I'm looking at audio layer pretty heavy, even tho I just got chameleon... But ya I need to jam on one after this
Awesome track!
BTW, I never mentioned after my post here. But I did end up getting Reslice in one of the previous sales. Although I already have other slicers, I still considered it being a good purchase
@reasOne It's hard to pick one out of the four but I think Poseidon would probably swing it, as it's just so easy to make sound wonderful. And the fact that it has 600 presets helps a fair bit too.
To be honest, I haven't done any of them justice. Tera, for instance, features FM, Phase Modulation and Physical Modelling alongside the other synthesis methodologies I mention. Plus it has even more presets than Poseidon! The only reason it wouldn't be my first pick is that all those different synthesis options can be daunting, especially in the context of modular synthesis where nothings pre-wired.
Great writeup jonmoore. So helpful.
I've been on the fence with Virsyn apps due to some issues with their early effects AUs, but looking at the update history, he seems to have fixed most of the problems. Though I do hear people complaining about a longstanding Midi issue with the synths? What is that?
Poseidon iOS: Can we import wavs and jpegs for resynthesis like the VST? The Synclavier V's recent resynthesis feature is powerful and fun. We used to do the same thing with the old Waldorf Microwave and DOS-based software for resynthesis, additive, and speech/format stuff.
Poseidon and Addictive Pro are my favourites. Virsyn synths do have a very distingtive sound though, which some find a bit harsh.
IMO, the multi-head arpeggiator makes ReSlice worthwhile even if one has other slicers (see video above if you missed it). I was initially disappointed in ReSlice until I explored the arpeggiator with my own samples. I don't think the built-in presets do it justice.