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.
CoTracks on Sale $4.99 US
Excellent collaborative or solo app
Comments
It might be a bit "fiddly" at first, finding and adjusting the parameters for the synths and effects etc. But once you find your way around, this is one really capable groovebox. 1 mono synth and 1 poly synth which you can have up to 12 unique instances of, the same goes for the drum machine. I'm really liking the sounds this can make, and it is one of the apps I keep coming back to for coming up with some new beats/stuff fast. It can export each track/unit as individual files which is great for batch copying over tracks to a DAW.
I saw the first video and it looked very appealing, but I had heard too about no stability.
It's good enough to grab it? Thanks.
The first release had issues on slower CPUs (ipad 2/3), but they released an update pretty quickly that fixed that, and added adjustable buffer sizes. Have´nt had any stability issues with this one yet, on either iPad 2 or iPad Air on iOS 7.
Thanks! @ChrisG
I'd like to comment on the concern about stability. The timing of Cotracks' release, just before iOS 7, was very bad. So bad that i would like to fire my self.
Anyway the most unfortunate of events happend. Some rather impatient person downloaded Cotracks and went shortly after updating to iOS 7. The iOS 7 update had a bug the caused random apps to become unusable in a way that only reinstall could fix. Well, instead of contacting us or doing anything sensible, this person went and hit us with a one star review simply stating that Cotracks doesn't work on iOS 7.
Add to that the fact that iOS 7 performs just a tiny bit worse than it's predecessors. Enough to cause the performance wise very carefully tuned demo song to cause an audio drop out on iPad2 and that we didn't update any of our iPad2 devices to iOS 7 while testing, because Cotracks was working just fine on our other devices with iOS 7.
It's crazy, Cotracks keeps suffering really bad from this misfortune, still we have yet to receive the first real bug or crash report about Cotracks! Live and learn. However, we keep getting very good reviews on blogs and with the help of users like mgmg4871 and ChrisG here, we might be able to turn this thing over eventually. Thanks guys!
I bought it last night. I had a quick initial play and enjoyed it. Will aim to have a proper session with it in a few days and drop a review on the store.
I am definately considering this app. A few more well done tutorials might throw me into the purchase mode.
@SpookyZoo: Reviews are very welcome. Doesn't need to be five stars, but we need an awful lot of mass to overcome the malicious reviews.
@Tritonman2: On which subjects would you like to see more tutorials?
On the US App Store, Cotracks has a 4 star rating (seems to only have 9 Ratings for All Versions)? Am I missing something @mfa?
BTW, I bought the app and liked it. I don't have a need to work in the app's format right now, but I like the concept, and will definitely revisit it when I do some collaborative work in the new year.
@dj8 Have you tried it in the solo mode?
Thread inspired me to open this app up and look at it some more. There's no way to edit midi data after you record it in, is there?
Also, how do you start the record button and play your line in, if it starts on or near beat 1? It seems that I'm getting cut off a lot? Maybe there's a setting that I'm missing?
@mgmg4871, yes it's definitely useful as a sketchpad, IMO, in solo mode! And sometimes I've put it in 2 or 4 user mode to keep myself focused on individual parts :-)
Do you know about the editing ?'s I just posted (editing recorded loops/midi data) and turning on/off a count-in for the record buttons?
No, there's no way to edit midi data, can only be quantized, and effects added. To record. Push record button and wait until spinning ring stops.
Also, there's several in-app videos.
@dj8 I'm glad you liked it!
Yes, i don't know why, but the average music app user doesn't seem very active in ratings/reviews. I believe the bad reviews still get way more visibility than they deserve and cause us to lose way more sales than we deserve. I think it's basically misinformation, and that does no good to anyone. I bumped to an apps site that had a tag "Stability issues" on Cotracks. Grr... May be just wishful thinking, but i'm hoping that some number of sincere reviews will end that some day. But you're right, the average rating of four stars is great!
Ok, thanks, it works like I thought… Definitely needs an update for midi editing. Also, I find it very difficult to layer in new loops w/out a true count in for recording. Just adding these 2 features would make this app a lot more useful and functional, I think.
Just got a memory warning too… But it runs a zillion times better than when it was first released.
It's a great app, @mfa. It's clear that you put a lot into hard work into making it! I think these 2 things would make it a definite 5 star, heavy hitter:
I did get a memory warning… I'm using an iPad 2 and I did have about 3 other apps running, so…
Of course, it would be great to update w/ Virtual Midi support (in/out, or at least out).
I'll make sure to leave a positive review on the App Store.
@dj8 Thank you for the suggestions! Very much appreciated!
I don't know about the memory warnings. I get them at times, but can't recall Cotracks ever been killed because of that. The apps on the background get killed first and i guess that's enough or something. Stuff like exporting iTunes/ACP may take temporarily a lot of memory, but besides that there shouldn't be any memory intensive stuff going on in Cotracks.
Some MIDI stuff is on the drawing board.
Yes please, reviews are a matter of life and death to us!
@mfa, I posted my review. Your responses are much appreciated! I'll check out the looping features some more… Looking forward to future updates!
I forgot to leave a review on this...Hmm I know for sure I left a review on this somewhere . Somewhere but the AppStore apparently lol. Anyway, left one now!
Does it take days for others reviews to show up? I mean, Apple doesn't review the reviews right(?). At least not if judging by a lot of reviews out there (unrelated to cotracks).
Btw, was AppZapp I reviewed it on, but it got removed during my temp ban lol. But I just added a new AppZapp review too, hopefully it might help some..
I've found this one:
http://www.musicappblog.com/cotracks-music-app-review/
Bought it right now.
It's like a mix of Rockmate, Xenon Groove and Synthstation, even there's at some point from official demos where they sound pretty close.
I like the way to share sequences between instruments but I miss the editor as well. Point to Xenon.
@ChrisG Dev mentioned that he read your review above, so it mystery be there. Actually, I think read it the other day.
@mgmg4871 Weird! One of us, or possibly all of us, are having early symptoms of dementia. You're like 60-70 something was it?
@fjcblanco said:
Yes. He always write really good and detailed reviews, tutorials etc. Haven't been to the site for a while. MusicAppBlogs Facebook page is usually updated with news quite fast, and the main musicappblog page is where all the reviews, articles and tutorials are at.
Lol. @ChrisG Close enough.
@ChrisG - how you get banned from AppZapp hahaha...that's actually monitored?
Thank you for the reviews!
I really like Music App Blog and John Walden's style. He's more like a real journalist. Writes original stuff instead of just collecting the bits and pushing the same stuff you find on every blog. The same applies to the weekly newsletter, that's really worth reading! He's like building a conversation with he's readers, asking questions, and sharing the conclusions. There's always a bit of a new angle in the stories.
That was problably the most comprehensive review that I have ever read.