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.

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Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

Quanta synth tuning?

If you use the oscillator in normal way and play a C major scale, it does what you would expect but as soon as you feed the granular engine with the oscillator (or any sample in C) there is no way you can play straight. Tuning just goes mad.

Is it me? Is it supposed to be this way? Sure, Quanta is really nice to create soundscapes and anything granular but, having support for MPE, I had expected to play in a more melodic way. I can't do that unless I decide I'm playing free microtonal scales and alternative tunings.

Comments

  • edited April 2019

    Since the terrible safari bug I am super anxious to use this app.
    I would love to see a video or tutorial how to make soundscapes and things like this with this app though...

  • It is the nature of granular synthesis that this happens. The perceived pitch is influenced by the content of the grains, the grain overlap, the grain width, grain spacing, etc.

  • @tiantong said:
    If you use the oscillator in normal way and play a C major scale, it does what you would expect but as soon as you feed the granular engine with the oscillator (or any sample in C) there is no way you can play straight. Tuning just goes mad.

    Is it me? Is it supposed to be this way? Sure, Quanta is really nice to create soundscapes and anything granular but, having support for MPE, I had expected to play in a more melodic way. I can't do that unless I decide I'm playing free microtonal scales and alternative tunings.

    First off, if your samples aren't playing in tune then you probably have something going on in the "Grain Tune" row that's shifting the pitch. To note (pun intended), you have to set the "Note" column in the "Grain Tune" row to 100 to get normal pitch tracking. Anything else that's set in that or the "Fine Tune" row will affect the pitch.
    As @espiegel123 notes the subtleties of granular synthesis tend to make pitches slightly blurry, but it's absolutely possible to get things to track correctly.

    Regarding the Oscillator: it is primarily there to act in parallel to the granulated sample - a way to provide tonal reinforcement; because of those tendencies noted.

    However, if you want to feed it into the granulator, you have to consider the signal flow. Typically you have a static sample that is pitched by the granulation. Therefore if you want your Oscillator to track correctly when granulated, you have to think of it as a sample and keep it at a constant pitch (i.e. set "Oscillator Tune: Note" to 0). Otherwise, you have an oscillator that's tracking pitch feeding into a granulator that's re-pitching its sources. This double pitch tracking is probably what you're hearing.


    My problem with Quanta is that I can't play it "out of tune"... more specifically, I can't seem to get it to work with any TUN files. It will change the A4 value to the comparable value, by the rest of the notes are 12TET, just based on the A4 value. Anyone else get this to work?

  • It's because the oscillator has 100 tracking and is then getting fed into the granular engine which is also 100 tracking by default. Double tap the standalone oscillator tracking to remove it (keep it on the grain oscillator) and you're good to go.

  • @oat_phipps said:
    It's because the oscillator has 100 tracking and is then getting fed into the granular engine which is also 100 tracking by default. Double tap the standalone oscillator tracking to remove it (keep it on the grain oscillator) and you're good to go.

    This!!

  • Thanks for the clarity in everyone’s remarks. Now I have the courage to go beyond the the presets and using the naked oscillator.

  • Thanks everyone 🙏 It helped. I had actually given up on it but I'm ready to use it again with the Linnstrument - while we wait for audiokit's support for MPE.

  • Oh, by the way @Chris_Randall
    Last right note on the keyboard seems a little buggy, not giving sound or giving late sound or even sound on release. I don't use the keyboard anyway but it should be noted.

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