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.
Best way to sample a synth?
I want to sample some of the sounds in ZedSynth seeing as it is no longer available in the AppStore and is pretty unique on iOS.
How would you go about it? BM3 or AudioLayer?
Thx
Comments
Depends on how you want to use it. BM3 is quicker, but you just end up with a BM3 bank. ReSlice + AudioLayer is my choice for stuff I want to be portable. ReSlice isn’t strictly necessary, but I prefer playing a bunch of notes into one longer sample, slicing it up, then exporting to individual files in one go over the one sample at a time workflow of AudioLayer by itself.
BM3 workflow is way better though.
Thanks. And do you sample note for note? Any tips?
I’ve only ever sampled chops and edits.
Edited my post above. It may answer your question a little better. I’m not that much of a sampler guy, so I would wait for better opinions...
Thx @wim - appreciate it.
This is what I would recommend.
If you have access to a Mac there's an auto-sampler in the Logic Pro ($199) and Mainstage ($30) products. You connect the synth to the Mac through and audio interface and connect MIDI to the synth from the Mac. The auto-sampler allows you to select which notes to sample and how many velocities to record as well and packages the results in the portable ESX24 format AudioLayer imports.
If you have a Windows system there's a similar SampleRobot type of app.
For pure IOS I'd use AL or BM3 and start the process of recording notes and build an "instrument". After a few dozen notes you'll wish for the robot... but that's why I mentioned it first. It's possible to do it manually with AudioLayer taking about 3-5 minutes per recording.
Total time estimate:
5 minutes x 88 keys/every 6th note x 5 velocities per note = 375 minutes or 6 hours+
You can reduce the quality with fewer sampled notes or fewer velocities.
Good luck with the project of archiving your treasure.
Bring it over and we’ll hook it to the mpclive and do “autosample”
Absolutely Beatmaker as it has transient detection and a threshold mode when sampling, it begins when the note is played.
GarageBand has a nice Sampler setup but BM3 has finally started living up to its potential in terms of key maps, layerings and different effects.
Connect a MIDI keyboard and set the synth's pitch bend range to +/- 12 semitones, play a note for a moment, then bend down one octave and then play the note one octave above.
Do they sound (almost) the same? If so, then sampling only one note per octave should be OK. The more different the two notes sound, the more notes you'll have to sample per octave.
It's a good idea to do this for every synth program or otherwise you'll waste a lot of space.
Also play the sound at different velocities to find if sampling at different velocity levels is necessary (i.e. not only the level changes but also the sound character) - more often than not, it is.
Nice tip.
I just did this in beatmaker. Recorded a sequence of C0-B8 and then imported it on a new pad and sliced with transient detection. It worked pretty well. Initially used reslice but there is a limit on slices.
Thanks
Non-iOS solution which might be worth considering depending on your needs:
https://samplerobot.com/
I've found this a pretty effective way to sample some patches from some HW synths into AKAI compatible instruments for live use. (also has several other formats so there is probably a way to import back onto iPad)
AUM, loopy HD ( would require audio bus 3 ) audio share.
You could sample one shots, long jams or anything in between and then access those files later for any purpose, using in a daw or any iOS app...
You could save them to drop box or probably iTunes but the best solution for storing audio files in iOS is audio share hands down.
My opinion, get AUM and audio share
Stagelight sampleverse instrument. It auto slices as you play the notes in, then detects the pitch of each slice and maps them all into an sfz.
Except it doesn’t have background audio or AudioBus support yet, so how do you play anything into it other than external hardware?
And after you have the slices you can "save to single layer" and get all the samples auto-mapped to the keys (you specify the starting key). I guess it works best if you have recorded all 12 notes in an octave (or more, for multiple octaves). Just create a midi pattern of the notes you want to sample, then re-use this for the diffferent presets. You can start the pattern from the sample recording window.
Recently bought Mainstage for Mac specifically for the Auto Sampler. As mentioned above, it’ll work with any midi-controlled software or hardware synths, including iOS synths. So good! The automagically-created EXS24 instruments can then be used in Logic or Ableton easily. I’ve been sampling my Nord Drums through the Analog Heat and two H9s - lots of fun, and would honestly take forever any other way.
Curious to know how the MPC Live’s version works, with regards to round robin, automatically detecting silence, etc. If they’d only add legato/glide to key groups, I’d finally crack and buy one. Everyone has an oddball dealbreaker - that’s mine.
(deleted post, . just suggested something what already was suggested above
Great feedback everyone! Thank you 👍
One thing to keep in mind... if the source sound has a lot of modulation (stuff that varies over time) that will get messed up when sampling unless you sample every.single.note. Well, unless you intend to play them back in app that supports time stretching on sample key interpolation. I think most do pitch shifting but I haven't really messed with BM3. To be clear, hopefully, I'm talking about when you use a single sample like C4 to cover multiple notes (say, A3-E4). For the most part, especially if it's a synth in a mix, that works perfectly fine (and requires a LOT less storage!). With modulation though, not so much.
Threadjack question for Mainstage AutoSampler users: do you have access to the individual samples AutoSampler creates or are they hidden inside of a bundled EXS file? If you have access, can you predetermine the naming pattern for the samples? Thinking about a way to create sample sets for NS2's sampler. It has specific requirements for the naming. From http://blipinteractive2.co.uk/downloads/ForumMedia/NS2/Manual/Sampler.html:
Great. I've been hoping for clarification of what Sampleverse brings to the platform. Looks like something I need to test having purchase both IOS and MAC products. I just need a way to convert SFZ's to ESX24 to get into AudioLayer.
I learned today that Mainstage Autosampler produces ESX24's that don't come up on AL.
Arg.
I think we're on the cusp of a new 'wave" of sampling as a tool for IOS.
AIF! FLAC! OGG! the samplers are re-emerging from the swamp. Run for your DAC's!
SFZ, SF2, ESX24, REX.
Now let's talk DRUM MAP standards. Come down from your Hi-Hat.
Yes, individual samples are saved to directory
~/Music/Audio Music Apps/Samples/Auto Sampled/{name_of_sampled_patch}/
files are named like this: {name_of_sampled_patch}-C1-127-JB1H.aif so you need some tool wich will rename it to myPatch C1.aif and you're done