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 Mac synths & samplers do you like the most?
I’ve collected nearly all the great iOS synths and music apps, which I have no regrets & have a lot of fun using every day. Probably will for a long time to come, though I’ve recently started expanding my pallett & capabilities by dipping into desktop (or in my case Macbook Pro laptop) production.
Picked up Logic Pro X via the app store, along with Serum via Splice $10 a month plan, and also the incredibly awesome analog sounding Sylenth1 via their own $10 payment plan. (Sylenth is easily the best digital synth I’ve yet experienced ..to my ears it sounds even more analog than NI’s Monark ..love it...
I’m tempted to pick up Omnisphere, though I’m not sure I need more electric sounds, considering what I already have. My sample-based collection consists of iSymphonic , Sample Tank and what comes with Auria Pro & a few others.. I’d like to get into higher quality MacOS sample engines, looking to either save up for Komolete 11 or go with a more affordable option in the meantime. Would love to hear if anyone has any suggestions? I’m a fish out of water when it comes to the current state of the PC pro music world.
P.s. I’ll probably do most of the mastering & effects work via Auria pro + fabfilters for the time being. Can’t really justify spending all the money to duplicate what I can already do on my ipad pro, unless I ever start working on massive projects that the pro isn’t fit for.
Comments
phonec 2, TAL sampler, VPROM, pulsar 900
Ummm kick on alchemy in lpx...it’s insane...it’s very capable of mangling beyond your imagination
Also purchase izotope iris2 it’s great as well
Best 2 synth ever for me (at least if you like the real analog/vintage sound) Repro from U-he and P900 from PulsarModular (sorry, my opinion, nothing on iOS comes close here).
But there is so much more like Infinite Pro (yes it has more features than the iOS version) and also especially the latest thing from Sugar bytes called Aparillo.
Also you might check out some of the best FX around like the new Breeze 2.0 from 2CAudio (it´s on pre-release price).
But of course Logic already has so much stuff.
If i have to recommend one......i guess it would be Repro. It´s another dimension of modeling plus outstanding FX, GUI, MIDI and microtuning.
If you have not, download all the Logic stuff, about 20GB for Alchemy alone. There are quite some good EXS24 instruments as well. Play with Sculpture. You really might nit need anymore for now. Just take take to explore Logic and then decide what you really need further. Logic alone has so many stuff you won´t find in all your iOS apps.
Pretty hard to beat Omnisphere IMO, there's just SOOOO much range that it covers. Lots of interesting choirs and realistic instruments there too, it's not all synthetic stuff. Add to that the fact you can load your own samples now too.
Though, tbh, with Logic, Serum, and Sylenth, the last thing I think you need is MORE synths or samplers. EXS24 is no slouch as a sampler, and the included Logic synths are amazing. Especially the new Alchemy.
You’re probably right that it’s all I need.. alchemy is a beast...and sylenth ., oh so smooth and natural sounding...I had only messed around with the demo for an hour or two yesterday up until I just now installed the full version a few minutes ago. I probably don’t need any more synths and samplers for now .. Just wanted to make sure to cover all the bases ; I love having near infinite sonic capabilities at my finger tips..
I should have purchased Logic a long time ago — with all the synths it comes with, plus excellent sounding guitar amp modelling/effects, its easily priced in iOS app territory. Hope they bring it to iOS in the coming years, as the hardware matures enough to handle it.
Btw, I just now added a $50 gift card to my amazon account and immediately searched for logic to see about getting a guide , and Logic Pro X itself came up, being sold for $50 ..quite a few 5 star reviews , no negatives ...sounded too good to be true — wondering if its legit or scam. If good, its definitely a steal and shame I spent $150 more than I had to..
Oh I absolutely love what little I’ve heard from U-he so far., I’ve only tried their free TyrellN6 , but have listened to YT videos featuring Diva and a few other of their masterpieces. Some of the best I’ve heard, they’re definitely at the top of my wishlist ...especially the modular one.
First time I’m hearing about a lot of these suggestions, looking forward to checking them out. Love everything Sugar Bytes does so far though, I have all their iOS releases, so I’m excited to check out Aparillo .
I spent all day yesterday backing up an external 2tb to repurpose for logic sounds , my paltry 128gb MBP internal can barely hack it .. just now finished downloading the complete library, looking forward to diving in
Thanks for all the great suggestions!
EXS24 and Alchemy are my go to. Also the Komplete Bundle
Right on.. some great recommendations here. Had a lot of fun checking them out and many are now on my "soon to buy" list. I went ahead and splurged on Reaktor 6 tonight., really wanted a good modular to learn and grow with and that seemed to be the grandaddy beast of them all ....Lot of bang for the buck there, even at the full $200 .. Can't wait to try out Tal Sampler and some of the others in the near future , loved the lo-fi , grimy feel of tal ..
Anything from the NI Komplete collection is worth having, and I’d personally love to have the Sugar Bytes package.
Sampler: NI Kontakt.
Although it's still far from being a perfect sampler (no export to other sample formats, bad quality time stretching, granular stuff sounds like from the 90s, manual sample mapping in the stamp-sized window is a nightmare, high-quality interpolation is cpu-hungry so you'd rather stay with high sample rates), there's hardly an alternative to it - IMHO by far the most high quality libraries are available for Kontakt.
It's a "sampler" tailored for manufacturers, not really for end users, although of course you can do a lot with it, no question. UI and scripting is powerful, and if you don't need the highest quality, the built-in FX offer a wide choice. Being able to use lossless compressed audio (ncw, another proprietary format) transparently is another plus.
For creating my own instruments I would always stick to open formats like SF2, EXS24, SFZ which can later be imported into Kontakt anyway.
Synths: Oh, too many to mention. The ones I return to again and again are GForce Oddity 2 and Minimonsta, Korg Wavestation, PPG Wave 3.V and Logic's Es2.
IL Harmor and Absynth sometimes too.
Roland VS synths are also great.
Keyscape is fantastic if you like electro/mechanical instruments and Omnisphere covers a very large variety of acoustic and electronic sounds although I prefer to build my own library of AU/VSTi synths and Kontakt Instruments to better match my style and find stuff faster.
Spire, Legend and MASSIVE is what I like to play with.
sampler - Kontakt,serato sample
synths- synthmaster, razor, vacuum, padshop pro,
effects- replica, auto filter, cthulhu
oh, I just bought the old version three weeks ago, I definitely would have waited if I knew that there's a new version coming soon, so there's eventually 50 more bucks going down the drain (as seen in the upgrade options)
my next synth purchase will be Rob Papen's Blue 2
Maybe just message them. They are some great guys and often offer you something in such a case.
Worth a try.
done, and am now a happy owner of Breeze 2 with no additional costs (asked if they had a sort of grace period for cases like that, answer was sure we can do that and happy holidays)
thx for the tip