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
Hi @ohwell, Xequence is fine. It’s Stagelight that I’m having a problem with the grid in.
I’ve been trying to think how to articulate the problems with the UI in Different Drummer more clearly, but it’s difficult as it’s so cluttered and non-intuitive. It really is a fantastic app, but it could use a complete UI makeover.
Interesting thread.
I’ve been obsessing over this for a few days, here’s my thoughts on why I need Zenbeats: https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/39818/app-design-do-looks-matter
For me it’s not about wrong or right design, it’s about the mood. Is mood important to you?. I need some sort of equilibrium between what I’m seeing and what I’m hearing. There’s sort of a color and shape to music, if your music is angular and dark gray, looking at an interface that’s white, pink, and rounded is off putting.
So I’ve decided my music looks like Zenbeats. That’s a +1 for right looks. And ZB is ugly, but it’s the perfect ugly.
Another point here is I don’t want the interface to look too polished or like a “finished product”. I want it to look like a tool. Like I’m using the app and not like I’m adapting to what someone else thought. That’s another +1 for Zenbeats. It looks like a screen on an 80’s drum machine. It’s a glorified drum machine, isn’t it?.
SAMPLR?. Another favorite. Again, it looks like a machine, like something that won’t break.
With Beatmaker3 I feel like it’s gonna run out of memory from trying to look pretty. It’s psychological, I know. But so is making music.
BTW: I’m sorry for posting the exact opposite of what the post asks for. The thing is I don’t download anything that I can’t look at. It’s that important for me.
I do have Infinite Looper. That’s butt-ugly. Horrendous.
Special price for great looking app but horrible user experience goes to ModStep. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s a pity cos it’s a powerhorse but a horse in the body of a centepide.
I don’t care what the interface looks like if it makes sense and leads to a good workflow. If I can go back to an app and use it right away without having to relearn what cryptic icons mean or what the path to a simple function is I’m good. Samplr is like that as is Caustic. Zenbeats works well for me. I haven’t used any apps lately that were difficult but I’ve let a lot of stuff go since I began my ZB journey.
Just saw this thread for the first time.
Immediate answer: Thesys and the PPG WaveGenerator matrix.
For some reason I also tend to put BM3 into this category, fantastic app but I stumble over some workflows repeatedly.
But that's UI and workflow, the visuals look great in fact.
Groove Rider, Mono Granulator (and other's of theirs), Quantum MIDI sequencer, Sample Wiz (and most other Wizdom Music apps) and Different Drummer bug me. If i were a developer, I wouldn't hesitate to get UI feedback from this group!
Apesoft MOOD (auv3)
Like WTF!!??
Xequence
Zenbeats
Auria Pro
But it isnt just the UI, the whole UX is very poor, do it our way or the highway, the square wheel.
Toneboosters...Mostly because I'm using my phone on the go. I'm sure it's better on iPad.
Thesys by Sugarbytes.
Does amazing things but what were they thinking? Why do so many devs think that tiny text is either pretty or modern. Any tool must first be practical and easy to use, design is secondary, and this is coming from a designer. Tiny text in tiny boxes in a simular colur tone. WAKE UP! We are not all 18 with perfect eyesight, I am 61, with knackered eyesight and arthuritus in both hands, but I bloody love and always have sequencing and making music. Don’t turn the music world into a youngsters playground that only kids can access. Many of the worlds best musicians are over 60!
This is too sad, as I love its sound and its standalone UI
Exactly this, I don't like the UI much (regardless of the theme), but the UX is what keeps pushing me away
I must admit, I got so used to Auria that I don’t see it as deficient in either UX or prettiness, now. As a UI designer / product designer, I probably wouldn’t do much to it at all, just a matter of borders and separations, nothing make-or-break, nothing really must-have, not worth even spending the time on.
The discoverability is poor, but once you’ve learned most of the secondary ways of accessing things (and they’re fairly uniform) and you’ve used it for an actual project for a while, it all becomes so obvious you really wouldn’t go back and build in hints or clues, you’d just refer to a quick sheet of what else it does beyond the basic and how to get there. By then, you really don’t care what the overall thing looks like, you’re only concentrating on per-track or per-parameter aspects.
+1
I find it feels alien on iOS. It doesn’t feel like a native app should. Everything you tap just feels a bit off. I don’t feel like the designers care about what makes iPad apps feel right. I can’t think of any app that has skins that feels right on iOS.
Also Auria Pro.
Another app that feels like it’s been ported from another system with no regard to how the native app should operate. Auria pro feels like it’s punishing you by making you use your fingers to operate it. It is properly unpleasant to use.
Grooverider 16
It does what it says it does but cramming so much UI into the tiny ‘screen’ area and forcing hardware UX conventions aren’t my cup of tea.
It succeeds in pretending to be a hardware groovebox. I wish it didn’t try.
Anything by JAF
They actually look nice but are practically illegible. Having to zoom in to read a label is madness in a filter with three controls. Also a filter would benefit from being able to control res and cutoff simultaneously but the stupid zoom thing puts paid to multi touch. Incredibly poor use of space.
On the opposite side, FAC plugins are the polar opposite of Jax. They make great use of the screen space available on various different sized screens and are very clean and easy to see and use.
Samplr is particularly beautifully designed. Everything feels just like it should and it’s the prefect app to show off the iPad at its best.
I am with you on SampleWiz. It’s an app that I really like to use, but it is not visually appealing. Turning off the hobbity animation definitely improves its looks, but it could still use some work.
Yes!
That cold war/shortwave radio/test equipment Apesoft look is great for all of their other apps, but Mood is the ugly child of the family.
Still a great synth, though.
Just to be clear...
The aesthetic of Mood is fine. What I have a problem with is the AU design. It's all based on pages (unlike standalone) which is hella-annoying-orama.
Mood sounds great and I'd prob use it over Model D but not with that AU page-based interface.
I've probably said it before but Geoshred. It's got plain, down to business menus then a complete mish mash of whatever. The fretboard, just what the hell is going on there? Who put those colours together? It's all too busy, full of details which don't add anything. If it was overall rubbish I could of happily ignored it but it's too good to pass it up just because the UI sucks.
@Toastedghost
+1 on Thesys
@DatGood agreed
Ah, I forgot to mention 4Pockets, though I can't really explain why.
These, totally these....
I haven’t dared to look at the reboot.
Crystal Synth XT — powerful, under appreciated synth; butt fugly
PPG Infinite - Mod Matrix = an exercise in futility for my old eyes
Springsound
SynthQ - just a smidgen too busy and colorful
Pluto skin FTW
Honorable mention = Thesys .. I love it and it’s a LOT better on a 12.9 iPad, but I just wish it had different zoom modes - one that kept only the sequencer lanes on the screen and hid the other parts until you needed them. It’s too small or its too big and scrolly , no middle ground.
Grooverider. Cyclop. All 4 pockets apps (theyre good i just dont like the design)
Klevgrand has made some of the finest UI designs since the release of Kleverb, theyre just minimal, immaculate and beautiful to look upon.
Just an off-the-cuff comment. It's weird that I purchased it sometime last year and managed to wrap my head around the GUI afterall without having to change it.
Lol.
anything that has a distressed look with screws and obnoxious skeuomorphic design drives me crazy.
Sugarbytes apps make my eyes bleed, and what's most bothersome is that they are so consistently bad and overdesigned. Their recent Drumcomputer is less bad, but I do wish they'd keep the interfaces less cluttered, as they are pretty decent sounding apps.
Winners on imho are Drambo, K-Devices, Spacecraft, and Bleass, (although I wish they hadn't added the weird gradient to their apps recently, kinda kills the joyous simplicity that it had before and looks worse). Clean UI, and UX's that are well thought out for a touch interface!
The thing with the 4 pockets interface, for me, is that the skins just look a bit cheap. Especially if you compare to fac or something. I'm also not a huge fan of the scrolling. But at least the size of everything is pretty nice. They could be worse, they could be better, I guess 😉
Yes, love the K-Devices, Bleass and Spacecraft interfaces
No offense to the developer but the 4Pockets stuff just collects dust on my iPad.
There's something about them that doesn't make me want to use them...
No disrespect to @brambos (what a guy!) but the 'exotic' styling of Kosmonaut and Mononoke rubs me the wrong way. Noir is perfect.