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.
Developers: Why have so many Apps on iOS no decent controls?
On a desktop, you simply can select things:
With a slider, with a button, with a menu, with a context menu or just clicking somewhere or simply entering the value you want.
On iOS and musical Apps, a good share allows for a double tap to reset to default values.
But not even this is widespread!
Some very few apps even allow to enter a value by keyboard, but this is much more rare.
And the rest?
You need to control some slider with your finger or pencil - and risk loosing the target every time you thought to be FINALLY finished and try to remove you finger.
That's massively annoying!
Comments
An example:
Please note, that I took NoLimits just as one of many examples
And no, I was not making this up - it took as long!!!
Yes, with pencil. Finger is more hard.
The solution would be so easy:
You set some sensitivity for your button anyway.
Now just calculate the distance from the first contact and reduce this sensitivity by some value calculated from the distance - and, voila, ready is what you see in procreate!
The more far away, the smaller will be the sensitivity - allowing to control exactly.
I could understand why not every developer has interest to create this by themselve, but such a little bit of code could be used by and and all developers!
Please, develop such a little routine and share it to others
To make your Synths and other Apps MUCH more usable!
Please think about this
Thor has the best solution to controlling knobs. Basically you see a fader and further away you move your finger from the knob, larger the fader turns and you can do easy small adjustments. All apps should do that
And as I try to reach developers:
@brambos
@SevenSystems
@LFS
@VirSyn
@jimpavloff
@AmpifyxNovation
@Michael
@FredAntonCorvest
Uhh. I lost my mind and cannot remember more developer accounts.
Yep!!!
Double tap for defaults should be standard too!
And tapping on the display of the value, should allow to enter a value.
For any and all controls.
That would help so incredible much.
Just watch the video with the disturbing sound
Please, dear developers, work together, just a tiny bit
Develop so little routine that allows varying sensitivity of finger or pencil depending on the distance gone. And then start to use it in your apps.
Other 'things' that drive me nuts are when the finger is actually hiding the value that is being changed or when the value slightly changes when lifting up the finger...
Yep. Just check the video!
With reduced sensitivity when more far away from your knob, you also reduce the danger of changing the value when lifting the finger!
What is up with the forum these days? Man.
@ExAsperis99 This was not meant as a complain, but as a call to the developers to work a little bit together to further the usability of Apps.
If you don't see what I mean, just check the video.
I did, but there's no finger in it
I mostly do editing by ear and don't focus too much on the actual values especially when we're talking ~0.01ms.
But for numerical 'perfectionists' it's a pita, I know...
I tested 8 Limiter Apps and that took me ages as I tried to use the same value for some configuration. Just because of that control problem. Something that is so easy to fix.
And a call to developers because we have so many capable and friendly of them here.
If some of them would create a little "knob control" library, so many apps could benefit.
Yep, I'm from mathematics and computer science.
When I want to enter a lookahead of 2,5 ms, I even take 30 minute to reach that goal.
But it's so hard in many apps - just nerve and time consuming.
That was my first video ever and it was based on iOS screen recording.
I have no idea, if and how I could make touches and movement visible
Yeah, save presets in the apps to save time
It's still not an excuse for poor UI design though...
I was thinking the same thing the other day. With desktop apps it is more consistent where it you hold down a modifier key such as shift or alt and move the mouse for fine control. With touchscreen apps there is still no standard way and each dev implements their own methods.
With the controls jumping values when you release your finger one way this can be got around in code by comparing time on the controls - when a touch up is fired, if it was held at that level for say 1 second it go back to that value.
Thor’s knob system is great. Actually, a lot of early apps were more exploratory as far as getting good control on a touch screen. You’d see things like knobs that blow up to larger size, when you put your finger on them, knobs that display numbers off to the side of your finger, knobs that light up when you are touching them.
Newer apps that follow the norms may have inadvertently settled into some less than stellar UI traditions- bad fine control, the indication of a knobs setting hidden under your finger, no indication of whether your touch was registered (one of the flaky parts of iOS).
@tja fully agree with you. As you’ve officially called for my 2 cents, here they are
In Xequence:
The current code also allows for logarithmic sliders (sensitivity depending on value), which will probably get used more from the next update (for example, in the “Track Delay” slider: Small values have low sensitivity, so you can set exact tiny values easily, and then sensitivity grows towards larger delays because there, the exact value down to the millisecond isn’t as important anymore)
It took me nearly two weeks to adjust a parameter in Gadget, some time ago (five days, then I took the weekend off as I don’t work weekends, then started again on Monday and didn’t get it where it should be until about weds or thurs, I can’t remember which, but it was in the evening).
Great!!!
I checked with your BPS, which is quite smooth indeed, but there are no sub-zero value, which may be more difficult to reach.
Do you have some dependency from the distance for the sensitivity, as procreate?
And to further this topic, do you see any chance to offer your code for such knobs to other developers - or better, start some github / gitlab / bit bucket project that is based on your code?
So other developers could contribute, possibly advance this and of course use it?
Not trying to push you in that direction, as I know that you are quite busy already.
But them, your code would possible best best base to get this up and running fast
I can try to help in any way, but cannot develop myself (you need a Mac for iOS, right?)
@tja there’s no “sensitivity depending on distance”, but it’s an interesting suggestion — kindof like the seek bar in the iOS video player widget (Youtube etc.) - it’s worth considering!
I don’t think it would help a lot to open-source the slider code... it’s really not a very complex thing to do and integrating such a generic slider module into a lot of different codebases and adapting its look would probably be more hassle than just implementing it from scratch.
I think, that a little "standard library" could help others to implement a better user experience.
As you see, otherwise it will not be done - often.
Let the idea tickle down
yes - the hit control, keep dragging straight away (reduces scaling factor), then change direction and use following values for (scaled) control setting isn't rocket science.
The first app that introduced this scheme was iElectribe and it was THE thing that sold me to the iPad's potential as a control surface.
Funny thing was in early Korg demo videos the demonstrator obviously was completely unaware of the feature and fiddled with the tiny dials
Btw TC-Data is a valuable source to study controls...
My personal top of the line control is the reverb setting in SamplR. Dry-wet, intensity and room size all with one finger drag, indicated by a circle's size and color.
Honorable mention: Mitosynth's shift-gear approach, a bit more tricky, but with practize it handles an enormous range on very small space.
I agree with the basic premise. Even otherwise top class apps from the likes of Korg etc suffer in this way. Take Gadget - appalling feel to the virtual knobs and sliders if you ask me.
Some apps really do show great thought in all areas of UI, but it seems to me that the look of UI’s often seem to get more development than ease of use.
The reason I generally just suck it up, is that these apps often cost peanuts and I appreciate that development of some must suffer from lack of finance and resources.
Ehh whatever. Anything but desktop software. At least some of these apps are actually designed to feel musical and instrument like and you can play on the touchscreen without a controller. Can’t say the same for your typical desktop daw, nor do I need all of that functitonality anyways. The only mystery here is why have all the smaller developers learned how to make decent knobs and dials while big KORG can’t design a knob to save their life. There’s apps made by a single person that have knobs WAY better than Gadget. Seriously there’s no excuse.
Yep, the best thing would be Apple providing something ready to use.
But lacking this, developers could help each other.
Korg implemented a gesture from day 1 on iPad 1 in their iELECTRIBE app. A quick flick up/down on a knob, slider etc will change a parameter with 1 (or whatever the lowest value is for any given control). This gesture completely gets rid of the lifting your finger off the screen issue, that every single fucking app is still plagued with (not just music apps). Obviously this gesture also lets you quickly dial in specific values with precision. Korg have this gesture in all their apps, they talked about it years ago and that it was a gesture that would be present in all their iOS apps, on every single control. I’ve noticed a few things here and there not having it, but usually it gets added with updates.
Add this gesture. It’ll save lives, quite possibly even a few iPad screens.:-)
Ha, I forgot @analog_matt (and sure lots of others too) who could be the base for such a control library - and directly use it in Analog Synth X!
Just tested it's sliders and they definitely could use such a type of control!!!
Maybe @SevenSystems and @analog_matt could stick their heads together?
Happy to help, here are some of my open-source knob repos to start if anyone wants to take them further:
Some simple vector knobs
https://github.com/analogcode/CallbackKnob
The Knobs in FM Player are more robust and allow for separate
for each knob.
Here's the code for the FM Player knobs:
https://github.com/AudioKit/ROMPlayer/tree/master/RomPlayer/Controls/Knobs
Super-simple Image based knobs:
https://github.com/analogcode/3D-Knobs
Plus, our PaintCode source files for many AudioKit examples:
https://github.com/AudioKit/AudioKitGraphics/tree/master/PaintCode Documents
And, there's a heck of a lot more control code that will be available to everyone in the upcoming AudioKit Synth One...
Cheers,
LOL
That's so great, @analog_matt
Checking them out tomorrow!
I never have issues with most apps and their gestures. I find generally today, you can move your finger around the entire screen after touching a control and it will move as long as you maintain contact. I think this is fairly common, but in general I’m good. I think the Korg gesture is them just admitting that they suck totally at making knobs and sliders. Don’t get me wrong they’re great at all the music stuff. But damn they need an outside knob consultant