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.
Is PPG Infinte different than Wavegenerator?
Soundwise. What do you think? I have Wavegenerator and thinking of getting one more PPG...
I watched the demos but can’t decide...
Comments
It's different! All Wolfgang's apps work 'with each other' meaning you can draw/create waveforms in WaveGenerator and seamlessly import them into the other apps.
As far as I know there is no way to create a new wave-table from scratch in Infinite, WaveGenerator is needed for that. It's a very deep app and will take some time to dig in to and even more time to master
How about the sound? The demos don’t really give me an idea. Is infinite a more optimized engine as it’s the latest one, or do patches sound the same in both?
While it's most likely the same basic soundengine (all PPG apps sound really good), Infinite has a lot of synthesis options that don't exist in the other apps.
There's an interview in which W. Palm explains the 'extensions' he added to Infinite.
Imho it's impossible to tweak these sounds on any other existing virtual synth.
Most of that is about extra harmonic content (sorry, I lack the proper terminolgy).
It's hard to beat a Moog on bass, but Infinite provided a valid alternative - though not the domain one would associate PPG with at 1st thought.
(I don't mean yet another Moog fake, but a bass that rules on it's own... it reminded me a lot on the typical buzzing when you play a real Fender P-Bass)
You can apply the method to any kind of synth/pad sound as well, extending the spectral response greately.
Just read carefully about the (tiny) matrix operation and follow the steps mentioned - then it's easy to operate.
If you just tap and follow 'intuititive ideas' it can be totally misleading.
I think the sound is up there with the best on iOS. It’s capable of some tones that you don’t get from other synths. The glassy, morphing sounds are awesome. Tough synth to get to know really well though.
Thanks guys! I will keep it on my wish list for now.
PPG Infinite
@pantsofdeath video (besides Wolfgangs vids) is the best for getting an idea
I asked this myself last weekend and after some reading, demoing and close listening, this is what I understand:
Wavegenerator is based on classic wavetable synthesis where scanning through and interpolating between wavetable waveforms produces evolving sounds.
WaveMapper has introduced a kind of "transient synthesis", which, if you look closer, is wavetable synthesis too, only scrolling much faster through a wavetable so you can reproduce attacks better. This works surprisingly well within limits.
The trick is in generating the "TCS" wavetable from a sample, which can be done in WaveMapper.
Different from my original expectation, if you want to create your own sounds from your own samples, then WaveMapper might be the best option.
If you're fine with a choice of preset transient and tonal wavetables and a more conventional UI plus a number of new synthesizer options then Infinite could be the better one.
If you get both, you can create both types of wavetables in WaveMapper and import them in Infinite.
Well stated @rs2000 !
16bit limitation is really unfortunate as most are 24bit these days.
Thank you
My ultimate goal: An acoustic piano patch done with WaveMapper/Infinite.
If you normalize sample levels before converting to 16bit, you'll have no problems.
Thanks. I know I can convert. It’s just extra steps and I’m lazy.
Great video. Thanks!
Cheers. Nice breakdown. I do like the hands on aspect to Infinite as shown in the above video. Might be more fun than Mapper perhaps...
They're very different. I believe that most will feel at home with Infinite immediately, while WaveMapper might need a slight amount of experimental and discovery attitude to get to grips with.
My choice would be WaveMapper for the desktop DAW and Infinite for the iPad.
For fun - Wave Mapper ftw. I own both but WM is like playing Jeapordy with cool parameters behind every door.
Most DAWs do bit-conversion on the fly and I've never seen or had any practical problems with it.
(I mean even the hardware Electribe 2 exports in 16-bit when exporting a Ableton Live Set).
Regarding WaveGenerator when you manually draw the waves it's still at ~8-bit resolution
If I'm not mistaken the app works with 32-bit floats internally and when used as AUv3 'core audio' will most likely do the up-sampling to match the bit-depth requested by the host or the external device...
The bit-depth discussion is getting pretty absurd really, as long as it sounds good it really doesn't matter
WaveMapper is the easiest of the four PPG apps to program oneself IMO.
You have 3 wavetables OSCs + noise. You then have 2 audio inputs into the amp - each one is a choice of the output from the filter, each of the single OSC or noise outputs or the mix of all the unfiltered outputs. Add to this ring mod from OSC3 to OSC1 and drive in the filter section. Modulation is quite simple but still adequate. A simple delay keeps the fx minimal.
Infinite is a morphing mad machine ! It can seem complex, but I think that’s often due to many of us having mind sets that are stuck firmly in subtractive synthsis territory. At least it has an AB button so you can just try different things and still get back to somewhere safe. I still don’t get it 100%, but it does make some lovely sounds.
These are my 2 favourite PPG apps.
Thanks for that - I wanted to write the same as Samu, but couldn‘t express it well, and not as objective...
Hey guys. I ended up getting Infinite. Really digging it. It’s super deep but easy to get results with even without a lot of knowledge. That matrix is a head scratcher though. I guess I’ll have to hit the manual.
One of the best Mod Matrices ever!
...and one of the most essential applications of Accessibility Zoom
But unfortunately the Accessibility Zoom 'breaks' the mod-matrix in Infinite and the other PPG apps that have it.
(Ie. the 'matrix' stops responding to horizontal movements and touch and the app needs to be relaunched to get it to work again, it doesn't help to temporarily disable the zoom either).
I do feel there's some 'coordinate miss match' of some kind ie. the app doesn't respond properly in zoomed mode or fetches the touch before zoom so what you see on the zoomed screen is not actually what one touches in the UI...
The zoom in PPG apps has been 'broken' in iOS10, 11 and now 12 on my Air 2.
That mod matrix should really be tap-to-expand!
Does Mr Palm already know about the issues and auggestions?
I doubt he's reading these forums.
Don't know but I checked my crash-logs and they have already been sent away to the developer.
(When the accessibility kit encounters issues it sends crash-logs to Apple and the App Developers. I had a few accessibility related logs that have already been sent (they are automatically sent when syncing the device).
I'm digging it quite a lot now, more than Generator. The matrix gives little explanations in yellow asa to what everything is when you pass over it. So no need for the manual after all.
Is there a way to share patches between Generator and Infinite? I couldn't figure it out. I could send a wave form though.
As far as I know only waveforms can be shared since the patch architecture is quite different between the apps.
Infinite is an outstanding synth. From crystal clear to rumble low end it will deliver.
Sadly iOS has not the „pro“ features like the Infinite Pro plug-in. Still in general my favorite PPG app.
Thanks. I thought that might be the case.