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
There’s a post about the Fazioli and Auria that might interest you: http://auriaapp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13656
Thanks... It appears I'd have to buy the Fazioli ESX for more than I'm willing to pay.
So, I went back to investigating the Ivy Labs "Piano from 162" SFZ and Salamander 48Khz 24 bit. The Ivy Labs needs a volume boost so I bought excellent AUv3 Maxima Compressor. It brings it up to the levels of the other pianos in Auria Pro. The Salamander sounds better to my ear so I'd forget the free "Piano from 162" SFZ and the need to buy a compressor just to use it. The Salamander 44Khz 16 bit included in Auria sounds about the same as the larger 24 bit version to my ear so it's also a questionable add-on. You just sepnd more CPU to run it and maybe loose resources for other tracks.
If you're sold on Cubasis just use RC 275 as an AU and it's more than good enough. No need to add Auria Pro just for Salamander. There's a Salamander SF2 "nice" version at SoundFonts4u that can be added to BS-16i and loaded that way into Cubasis. Not sure about latency... need to test that approach to add a Salamander Piano in Cubasis.
Very interesting read, @McDtracy
Also the discussion on the Auria forum, @theconnactic
But that stopped in 2015, so not sure if the issues Auria had, are solved now.
@McDtracy. A terrific post requiring multiple readings and digestion. I hope you will post this on the thread (I hope)@tja will post as a summation for more people to take advantage of.
It is ironic that the winning piano seems one of the most difficult to access. 2 gbs and streaming and still a problem in Au... If you factor that in, it is not the best all around piano. Then Beahawk's grand comes in second. So interesting that UVI makes it as it surpassed their own, much touted RC275. I imagine the Beathawk grand presents no problems for recording or live playing?
So, McD, do you think the studio Logic is the est keyboard controller overall for piano apps? I favor the Kawai MP11 and VPC1, but they are not true controllers as they are not set up its parameter control knobs,
As to your overly kind words re my playing, I am blushing but I take it! This is not a piano playing forum so, indeed, I may be up there with some, but if you knew the limitations I deal with in terms of real talent you would be surprised. I can only say that it was the method I was taught by the greats, Lennie Tristano and Connie Crothers, that allowed me to play from a different place that was not so dependent on natural gifts. My recordings do not reflect the many, many failures I have had in accessing this special "zone". I only picked the successes to publish. I am not trying to be humble, but to point out that there is truly a way to find your original self playing a musical instrument and it involves getting the ego into its appropriate place and clearing the judgemental way for the transmission, thru the player, of something greater than him/ herself.
What’s exactly are you expecting here?
I wanted to post some more statistics to compare how the Apps went through the Polls.
What else?
@tja, I think I am seeing a couple of paragraphs on what to look for in a good iOS piano, I.e. Velocity settings and EQing, Au vs. midi, velocity layers and whatever parameters I am missing. The qualities of Salamander and the downloading info and usability.
I think @McDtracy and I could could up with something pretty quickly and then the listings and stats as you propose. That's
Pretty much it. I assume A. Holm is unavailable for comment,
How does that sound?
@LinearLineman Sounds good.
I tried to reach Alexander Holm by mail.
Let's wait a bit
I think it's the best "value" meaning good action (Fatar keybed) and the cheapest. I've never actually played one. I have owned Korg's RH3 (good keys with a poor piano sample set) and now the Casio PX-560 which has great key action and good samples for $1100 or converted to a better metric here: costs less than "12 App Months".
I thought you stopped judging yourself... just kidding. This phase comes with the failure to reach enlightenment before death. Sad case, kids.
I'm OK with wrapping this Piano Poll up. There's only a dozen of so that played the game.
Let's let @TJA get back to researching new Apps to buy or documenting why the ones he bought are worth owning. Fitting in here.
There are 2 types of people in the room when music is made: players and audience. This was an audience poll. It makes sense the players would be interested in using Pianos the audience prefers... but there's not a lot of folks here creating Grieg Piano concertos.
It would be fun to do quick polls with some solo instruments. It requires people that own the app running a source MIDI file to create a wave (could we accept SoundClouds and make the work less complex for the moderator).
We make a MIDI source available.
People run the file producing a SoundCloud result and post the link in the thread.
Someone produces a poll for the links sent when they reach some target number of players.
We pick the best "Tenor Sax" sound. "Jazz Trumpet Solo". "Violin", etc.
Could be a fun series of polls. I know @LinearLineMan is seeking the right "Trumpet" but there's Miles and there's Maurice Andre. What type of tone do you seek Skywalker?
I moved all statistics to:
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/27341/piano-world-cup-the-statistics
And for the final resume and results, as more easy recommendation:
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/27342/piano-world-cup-resume
FINISH
FINISH
FINISH
I disagree. IMO, some are quite poor, and easily beaten by numerous older keyboards. But maybe this depends on how you define "affordable" and maybe "a few" years, and even "ROMpler" (does a dedicated slab piano count?).
So anyway, what was with #19? So many bad notes, from the same MIDI file? Something went awry somewhere. It's like it was trying to move all the notes into the same scale, altering notes that it thought were dissonant. I cut that out of my eval just based on that, though it sounded like it had potential to be decent.
BTW, although I listened to all 41, I did not listen to all of them all the way through. Sometimes I could tell part way through that I was not going to like it, so I moved on.
Anyway, here was the result of my eval, and I'd like to know what these pianos are, as I have not found a complete key.
BEST: #9 and #41. Slight edge to #9. Can anyone tell me what these two are?
Close behind: #28, which the stats page tells me is the iSymphonic Grand. It's a bit bright, and doesn't seem to come down sufficiently in the less forceful passages. But not bad at all. (I think #19, Beathawk Acoustic Grand may have ended up about here in my rankings, if had spent more time with it. It was just hard for me to really A/B with all the wrong notes.)
Then: #11. Nice, but sometimes sounds like it has a blanket over it. Again, I have no idea which this is, it I didn't see it in the stats page. Interestingly, of all the ones that made my final cut, it's the only one that actually played the last (high) note, properly held, instead of some kind of little blip. (At least I assume it's not supposed to be a blip!)
Finally: #26 and #23. These sound not quite as realistic as the ones above, but not too far off. Again, I don't know what these are.
There are some others that I still found pleasantly musical, but didn't sound so much like a real piano, so I crossed them off on that basis, even though they still may be nice sounds to work with. But if I'm trying to do "piano," I'd stick with the ones I listed above (subject to seeing how they respond when playing them in real time, as opposed to the MIDI file playback).
I was surprised to see that #22 on the stats page was the Ravenscroft, and it was one I ruled out. I have the Ravenscroft and I really like playing it! I don't have access to my rig right now, but I suspect Classic (the one chosen for the poll) is not one of the ones I liked when I went through its variations myself. I wonder if any of the ones I ending up liking in the poll were actually the alternate Ravenscroft sounds I preferred.
@anotherscott2 Uhm. There was no #41 in the World Cup.
It seems you heared the original flat list?
We changed that into running a world cup, with 4 groups of 4 pianos each.
So, only 16 pianos.
Total results are here:
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/27341/piano-world-cup-the-statistics
But yes, i also have the names of all 41, where #41 was iGrand free:
And about problematic notes, i think we should have enforced just one single DAW to render everything.
@anotherscott2 The Piano Poll was so much fun when it was going on for the few here that cared to listen to all those recordings of the Grieg.
It almost died and then @tja executed the "Piano Madness" method with the 4 Brackets and the semi-finals, finals and final winner. ALL BLIND TESTS.
But what's the soft section in the Grieg? Piano with crisp treble playbacks did well but how can you judge the tone of the recording?
Doing it all over again with 3 short pieces or even segments of something like the flash-y Grieg would be a lot of fun to play and an incredible amount of work by someone dedicated like @tja was to conduct the Poll.
The best poll is asking people that can play like you would like to play what they would use. If you can find one that would actually use IOS.
Our weather vane is the @LinearLineman. He goes into the PianoWorld Forum and tells them IOS is a better piano in many respects. All hell breaks out and he keeps seeking to convert.
It's like going door to door teaching the Talmud... It just isn't done.
I was able to find a lot of the data @tja shared in the results posts (except for the nice table of Group
.
Thanks for posting the list of all 41, tja, very enlightening!
To anyone else who comes across this survey, I'd recommend taking the time to listen to the full 41 if possible. I'm glad I did, especially since, as it turned out, of the 6 I liked best, 5 weren't even in the pared down set!
So it turned out that my #1 was the Sampletank Grand Piano Warm. What I can't figure out is why #20 (Ravenscroft Concert) didn't make my list. I really like playing that one (much better than their Classic, IMO), and listening to the file again, the basic sound (not counting ambience) doesn't sound so far from that Sampletank selection, to my ears (which is a compliment to Sampletank, considering the relative price and reputation).
{ETA: I did see that #20 was in my second group, the next best half dozen or so, that all had something I liked about them, but for some reason they didn't seem quite as much like an actual acoustic, which was the "official" goal. Maybe I was too quick to shuttle them off of the A list, and I should have spent some more time with those too.}
I'm also surprised that I rated #41 (iGrand Free... I'm assuming it's their Grand Piano 1) almost as highly, since when actually playing it, I don't think it's nearly as good as that Sampletank or Ravenscroft. (Though it's surprisingly good for free!) I think this shows a limitation of evaluating files like this, as something can "feel" different to play than how it "sounds." A test like this then might be better at ruling out stuff you really don't like, than it is at telling you what you really will , since you won't know that until you feel it under your fingers. (At least if your goal is to actually play the piano sound, as opposed to using it for sequenced composition.)
One other nice thing I learned is that I am happy enough with the SampleTank and Ravenscroft that I own, and I am no longer tempted to buy Ivory or Colossus. ;-)
BTW, tja, do you have the key for for which 6 pianos were evaluated in the original 6-piano poll at
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/20334/the-piano-poll/p1 ? I'm curious about what I initially selected there, too.
'> @McDtracy said:
I'm not sure exactly what's being asked here, but If they were all from the same MIDI file, you can tell (from the samples that exhibited more dynamic range) where the softer and louder parts were (even if the difference were not as extreme as they might have been). That is, if example A gets somewhat gentler at 20 seconds in, then it must be responding to a lesser MIDI velocity, and if example B then gets no gentler at 20 seconds in, then it is exhibiting less adjustment than A to that same reduction of velocity, does that answer your question?
I'd be curious to see that. Any link to a relevant thread there?
Yes, I did see other threads with statistics and such. just wasn't able to find the complete list of the 41 I listened to, though tja has kindly posted it now in this thread.
>
Just send a Private Message to @LinearLineMan asking for a link to his Piano World threads. He's an excellent correspondent and carries on side conversations with many of us here.
You might be like minds in yours is not too rigid.
@anotherscott2 I have no information about the original 6 pianos.
Whoops, I meant to say 8, not 6. Just checking that we're talkng about the same thing... I"m talking about the example P1-P8 that you posted in Septmeber 2017 at https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/20334/the-piano-poll/p1 - if you no longer know which is which, c'est la vie, I just wanted to be sure you knew what I meant.