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
Bummer. I suspect you are right.
And the second lifetime guitarist and tone master says this comparatively... is lacking
Any accomplished guitarists who love this that want to upload a demo of it sounding great?
Ha, no pressure, but you better be "accomplished" if you want to participate!
Let people self select
Similarly, when a classic analog synthesizer emulation comes out, I’m usually more interested in hearing from people who know what the original sounds like and who have had have first-hand experience.
Of course, I’m happy that everybody else is excited as well
One of the things that I have observed in this thread, is that it is often hard to tell if someone finds that Stark actually sounds as good as other amp sims of if they have a very strong pref for using AU and are primarily jazzed to have an AU that does something amp-like. I have no quibble if that is where someone is coming from. It is just important to know if you care more about the sound palette than whether it is AU.
Having re-read a lot of the Stark discussions, it seems like the enthusiasm is largely driven by the latter.
The other thing that I marveling out is this idea that, even if you don’t need it, get it now because it’s $10.
For goodness sake’s it’s not like it’s 90% off. And if I remember correctly, I have picked up a few $30 apps for 99 cents
cro
Not if your looking for distorted tone. I messed around with every combination possible of distortion and eq included in the app. It’s not gonna happen.
@flo26 did post a decent sounding clip but with a Marshall cab Ir
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/32119/new-stark-demo-hp-sim-passthrough-bypass-ownhammer-ir-cab#latest
Yeah, headphone out into the Apollo. It can’t be used as an interface for the iPad unfortunately.
For how long will it have this intro price?!
as a guitar player it’s ok for clean guitar sound. but where it really shines is for bass synths and amp. and running a sampler into it. it just shapes the tone of the sound very nicely without getting overly fizzy! i highly recommend it
@eross said:
That never occurred to me. My bass parts need this extra quality boost.
What settings to do you recommend? Amp, Cabinet, Room, any internal FX?
all of them, the cabinets have some nice characteristics to them. the presets are very nice, tap and tweak some of them and you’ll be happy> @McD said:
Now we can wait for a real bass player to join and blow the App to pieces and
explain how their $800 Audio Interface exposes it as pure trash that degrades the signal
with aliasing.
They prefer just mic'ing their Gallien-Krueger 1001 RB-II Bi-Amp Bass Amplifier head into a Fender Bassman Cabinet from the 60's when wood was real wood with a Electro Voice RE-20 Cardioid Microphone into an Apogee Duet Audio Interface. You'll have to have decent equipment to "know" the difference.
I know the difference but like is full of tradeoffs. Stark is a cool simulated Amp for gentle
saturation and tone improvements. Much better than ReAmp in it's variety and ReAmp is
great.
I'll keep beating this dead horse for the exercise.
Well, Stark sounds NOTHING like my 1961 Ampeg B-15 and 1963 Fender Precision bass recorded with a vintage Telefunken U87 through my Neve console.
Because of this I conclude that Stark is worthless for every application.
You're welcome.
🤘
The Bass Players Champion hangs out here. @Daveypoo has spent more mod'ing a single bass than I have spent on the iPad and all the Apps. I forgot to mention the signal source. Watch this for additional details:
TL;DW The Bass should always be blue. It accents the lows. "I guess that's why they call it the blues."
I don't know about Champion... Chagrin may be more apt...
So here's the deal with the color of that bass: I despise it. I would've stripped and refinished it ages ago if it wasn't the most subtle SPARKLE blue I've ever seen. You have to get right up close, but is in fact a sparkle blue bass. And this is why I'll NEVER refinish it. I couldn't destroy something in a factory sparkle blue, if only on principle.
This bandleader in an old band of mine said that every guitarist in the East Bay has a guitar that shade of blue, so he called the color East Bay Blue. I've never named an instrument before, but that was too good to pass up.
Her name is East Bay Blue.
She is the envy of all the girls in the yard. Lot's of surgeries tho' but the skin is original.
It can't do distortion. Not even with careful eq tweaking. It sounds a trebly mess. And the drive algorithm, much like ReAmp's sometimes, gets this same harmonic ringing over and over no matter where you are playing on the neck. And it just sounds so fake (and deflating).
I've spent the last couple weeks since release trying to find a few sweet spots in it just so I can fire it up and play around when the notion strikes. I ended up with 3 whole presets, and none of them are compatible across the bridge/mid/neck pickup selector. And for reference I don't much like Tonestack or Bias either...I still find the best, most nuanced results come via Saturn, even if you want to call what it does 'guitar processing' vs. amp simulation.
1 and a half hearty thumbs down. Is it a $10 app (dunno if sale price is still going)? Yes. Is it a $20 app? Maybe if you haven't invested money into Bias/Tonestack and want a simple AU solution. But unlike their recent homerun apps, Klevgrand tried to squeeze too much into this and charge a similar price point, which suggests they cut more than a few corners to do so, and the end result tells me that Indeed they did.
Personally, I'll have to file this one under the 'toys' section along with their dreadful Kanvas synths (despite the Jussi idea being really cool).
Got that. Important to know up front. I never use distortion as I understand it. I do like
Tube Saturation which is distortion technically but is more like an EQ change in practical terms.
I need to learn the hear that. I have ReAmp so I can listen critically to pick up the flaw.
I don't have a great Amp to know quality when I hear it.
I'd love to try these 3 if you'll share.
I'm already primed to actually spend a lot on the FabFilter products for Auria Pro. I just picked up the Pro-Q 2 AU product on sale. I should check out Saturn for this use case.
It's not for you but if someone has to choose between Stark and ReAmp what would you say? Neither? Just ReAmp?
AUv3 is worth $5 so I consider it to be on a path with IAA $5 Amp Sims as an investment.
I actually think like that when deciding if it's worth it to me. I'm sure many do.
I think it has applications beyond Guitars but was marketed to them and they took a dump on their baby. Guitar players are really particular about their tone. It's insane the lengths they will go. Hand them a Chinese Strat or Les Paul copy into a cheap amp and they will show you that real tone starts with the hands and not their ears.
I'm sure they have learned their lesson taking on the Big Dogs with a poor imitation.
To be fair, it sounds like others have had success with other instruments, synths and bass that is. I'll eventually try it with synths, but as it's primarily intended for guitars, it's a big disappointment.
Between Stark and Reamp, the latter easily. The cassette and tape reel settings are fantastic, a much more subtle approach than their DAW Cassette (which rules, but brings a very dominant character to the table unless used at miniscule settings), and as has been said, when used on multiple tracks, the subtlety adds up to a very pleasing overall effect. I haven't messed much with the Reamp preamp drive, but the guitar tube amp drive at 'some' or 'all' harmonics is the primary culprit of the harmonic ringing I'm talking about in conjunction with Stark. It's a very unnatural response that totally gives away that you're 'cheating' with a simulator.
I'm not sure how to 'share' the presets from it but gladly will if you clue me in.
I will add that my presets are nothing special; I leave the boost cranked, bass at 10 o'clock, mids at 12, treble at 2-3' and presence at 2-3 (I'm playing a Les-paul type Telecaster hybrid) I only use the 'Wide' cabinets with the stereo setting at 50% and keep the room ambience at medium, low decay, and about 15% mix.
So I'm not doing anything very fancy at all...and extreme settings are no better.
Thanks for sharing your insights.
Your settings is probably a better request than "presets":
Clean/Drive?
Amp Model?
Clock face times for:
Gain
Boost
Bass
Mid
Treble
Presence
A screen shot or photo would cover it since the AU interface exposes all these settings.
I also don't see a way to export presets... just save them for personal use.
I edited my post to share those settings. Amp model is always American 1 or British 1, I have one of each both clean and drive
And I like to use the booster pedal with bass at zero and treble at ~11 o'clock, boost at about 9 o'clock. It's tricky though, as a Telecaster guy I love playing on the bridge pickup, but Stark wants to turn the sound of everything into either mud or a bridge pickup, so I found myself dialing back the treble settings more than usual (but not too much, or you get mud, especially when toggling to the neck pickup).
I have a Mexican Tele' and I stay on the lipstick pick-up. So, we probably like different things.
I'll check it out and maybe record what I like in the headphones against this with the bridge and record both to improve my ability to hear guitar tones.
I like the tones of great players like Robben Ford and Lee Ritenaur who I've seen play and was able to Lee Ritenaur study their rigs. Eric Johnson came through with his acoustic album tour and I missed it. I was too far away to figure out James Pevar's rig but he had so much gear in a rack.
Guitar Tone is a deep water subject... I can wade by the shore and keep walking towards the
guys surfing out there.
Yeah, I forgot to add I'm a guitar tone amateur compared to most guitar players. I only know what I like
@oatphipps: fwiw, @flo26 demonstrated that the cabinet sim is the weakest of Stark’s links. If one feeds Starks output into something like Fiddlicator or other IR app running a decent cab IR, the result is tons better than using Stark’s cabinets.
@oat_phipps Have you tried running the parts of Stark you dig through ReAmp to see if it makes up the difference?
Don't have Stark, but I'm curious if this would do anything interesting....
Dude. It will go to $20 and all of the buyers will start to declare it essential.
Did anyone get a refund because they prefer the IAA Apps? So, it has a cabinet IR
feature that can be bypassed but now I'm waiting for the IR AUv3 to drop. They might declare iConvolver as better but I couldn't pick them out of a line up, I suspect.
A well designed AU with a good UI is worth $10 in any category over an IAA for less.
Maybe the NS2 guys will help out here. "It works for me... those don't."
@McD I'm SO tempted to argue with you over this just to keep the thread going.