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
Sure - that’s true. How about three or four different instances/setups? Probably not really needed or wanted, but possible.
I was referring to ToneStack. Good to know this guy can do it though.
I'm very fond of tonestack despite its IAA heritage. I would definitely miss echoplex delay, octave and spring reverb among others.
How does stark fare in these departments. Is reverb of a springy kind?
I gave it a quick test drive with a Mexican Strat (indicating you don't need an expensive guitar to record):
I open AUM and loaded Stark and fed it into Enso to make the 8 measure backing loop. Then saved that loop and opened a parallel Enso track re-loading this loop and recorded the solo using Stark over the Stark loop.
I like the AUv3 interface with Amp, Room, Cabinet and 4 FX usefully displayed on one small AUv3 window. This alone will probably stop me from swapping out to ToneStack for Guitar Rigs. AUM saves all the small knobs settings so it's like having Rig Presets. Should be true for AB3 and most DAW's I think.
Definitely worth grabbing while it's intro sale for $10, IMHO. Will be useful for keyboards and synths too I'm sure but I'll drop $20 on a really cheap guitar stomp box and this is a no cables get the job done type of modeling tool that cost $100's a few years ago and didn't sound this good.
When Atom ships, AUM will become a "mixer" style DAW for me armed with these great new AU Apps.
I am also very fond of Tonestack and have used it a lot. More recently though I have found some great tones in Bias FX. Tonebridge is OK because it is AUv3 though I find many of the tones a bit thin. But STARK has a lot more potential as an AUv3 IMHO. Despite initial worries about DSP figures in AUM (worries that have since been allayed - thanks @McD ) I found a funky jam track on Youtube and a modern crunch sound through a British Amp 2 in STARK and recorded the result on my Android phone - warts and all
Why would you need multiple instances to do that? In AUM, for example, you can have a channel with the dry signal, while sending to a bus channel that has the sim on it. Record one or both. Feed the dry recording back through as many different tweaks as you like. As long as you save the ones you might want to keep as presets, there’s no reason you can’t tweak to your heart’s content.
However, having the ability to have multiple instances is great as you have the option to combine more than one amp with slightly or radically different characteristics. That’s a very common thing to do with real amps as well as with virtual.
Great riffing AlterEgo_UK, beautiful McD. Definitely sold me on it.
wim, multiple instances will make reamping easier when working with multiple tracks of dry guitar. One instance for each track. No need to print to audio first.
Nice proof of the sound quality Klevgrand brings to the AU list for Amp sim's. I was using ReAmp and just adding a lot of AU FX Apps to complete the chain:
NYCompressor
Limiter
DC-9 Overdrives (sometimes 2 to get that scratchy pick noise that screams SRV)
Alien Box (which reminds me of some Mu-Tron stomp box flavors)
AudioReverb
It's more timing playing and less time tweaking knobs with real knobs or with open/close FX'es GUI. I love. Now we just need a Metal player to weight in with a quick proof of it's hi-watt distortion tones... I'm looking for you @bedheadproducer to surface and weigh in.
Just like Reverb Apps I can't have enough Amp Simulators because Amp's are so expensive and just too damn loud use past midnight.
I love that ADverb demo'ed above.
The reverb in Stark has that "spring sound" but being able to just throw in AudioReverb or Adverb after Stark is a nice alternative to avoid that metallic quality of the springs if you don't want that. You can also use one of the BPM Sync'ed Delays if you want that level of detail.
Sounds nice! @supadom the verb sounds nice here.
@AlterEgo_UK Nice playing.
Has anyone been running it successfully on an air 2? How much cpu does a single instance eat up (on air 2)?
NOTE: I probably added a reverb in AUM (ADverb 2 "Guitar Plate") I think. Which I discovered today since I always reach for AudioReverb as a rule but I wanted to check out "Long and Dark 2".
The standard reverb FX in Stark isn't this smooth but I'm spending most of my IOS $'s adding to the AUv3 toolbox and just living in AUM as the DAW extras get added 1 at a time. "Atom" will give me to MIDI looper I've been eager to see. "Photon" could get updates to allow it to cover this use case too, I hope. Currently "Photon" expects you to export loops to a MIDI player which tends to be Cubasis or some other MIDI-focused DAW. I hate leaving AUM's mixer if at all possible.
Aha! Thanks for the clarification on the reverb.
I don’t use AUM and I like to listen to my other tracks effected while recording.
I am curious. In what way does Photon expect loops to be exported? While I often export them, I also use Photon as a MIDI Loop player more often than not. I find it super handy for setting up and playing loops - which will work better when it's state saving is more complete.
Thanks @McD - nice laid back track from you too!
Cheers @audiblevideo and @ocelot I think I am going to enjoy using this app!
Is there a list of the pedal effects? I’d really like a pitch effect or octave effect.
Emailed received from Klevgrand - They will consider On/Off Bypass switches for the Amp&Cab modules . Fingers crossed . Saying that though with Cab bypassed they need to find a way to maintain any Stereo signals . I hope so because the pedal stomps sound excellent.
You can easily reload Photon’s exported loops (or any other midi files) into itself. They don’t need to be exported to a host like Cubasis. Photon works fine for this use case.
So here’s My first 15 minutes reviews. I am a metal guitar player to give you some background.
The Clean amps do produce some beautiful sounds
The overdriven amps are pretty decent and fun.
But if you try to push them any type of post Eddy Van Halen sound they don’t cut it. You could possibly pull a doom type of sound but not thinghtness needed for hair metal or anything heavier.
Not to say that the overdriven amp are useless. I’m looking forward to plugging a bass, synth or drums thru it. I think the overdriven amps will shine more in that department.
Hopefully in future update they will give us preset saving and maybe let us load our own impulse. Also my fat fingers keep moving the effect rather then turning the effect knobs. A button for dragging the effect could fix that easily.
14$can well spent. Go buy it now!
I'm going to encourage for everyone who has these 3 apps to try playing with auDSPr Shaper and STARK together. I had previously running the first two apps through Virsyn AudioEffX to good effect, but I think my new fav is STARK, a simple effects stack with simple tone controls.
auDSPr as unprocessed sound source - compared to other synths - can really give you lots of different simple sounds to mangle (and everything is LFO able) with effects.
Totally OT: RE: Photon. I don't want to load/unload loops. I want to make and overdub MIDI loops like Enso does with Audio. Is there a way to have Photon do that?
I want that in an AU MIDI FX product. I'm expecting "Atom" to give me that.
I didn't understand Photon correctly when I first used it and hopefully, I'm just clueless (again). I find most complex MIDI sequencers to be confusing and haven't made peace with one yet.
You can't overdub (yet, I think this is coming) into into the buffer. But you have 6 pads to record parts into. There a couple of approaches I've taken:
And, I assume you know that you can set it to record for a fixed number of beats if you want which makes no hands loop recording convenient. I believe that
Sounds quite nice but could I run it at 64 samples on a 2016 9.7" iPad Pro?
I've kind of given up on real time processing of external audio because the latency even at 128 is savage.
The way I do “overdubbing” in photon is to record each pass into a separate tab, then chain a second Photon instance after that and record the output to a single pad. This works for hosts that don’t support Photon’s per-pad output. I think AUM may be the only host that does so far. I’m hoping at some point for pad merging with drag and drop, the way Group the Loop and Loopy do it.
I’ll admit that getting good results with Photon takes practice. But once you start to get how to use the various options, it’s not so bad. Success with Loopy, etc. has been that way for me as well.
Back on the subject, I took a shot at testing the distortion sounds in Stark.
WATCH OUT ON VOLUME - the LEVELS too HOT:
Another 4 bar Enso Loop recorded to make the backing track with "Rock DM".
No bass added. Only Stark and Enso were used in AUM so no extra Reverb App this time.
The Stark settings choices were:
British Guitar B1(starting from the British Crunch 2 Preset and adding the FX listed here)
Pass through Cabinet
Normal Room
FX:
1) Distortion +
2) Booster
3) Gate
4) Reverb
It will give a sense of the potential to sound "in your face". It's still my Strat so
no high output pickups... again this is not my style so I'm a total poser here.
I saw this, told myself I didn’t need it. Then realized I’m an appoholic so I bought. I put Neo Soul Keys through this thing for a test and now holy hell I’m head over heels.
What set-up/preset?
I Just did that too!!