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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StepBud AUv3 MIDI Sequencer - Available

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Comments

  • SamuSamu

    @nondes said:
    @cem_olcay Right but that changes everything? I want to have different notes or CCs cycling into one another. Imagine a sequence of 8 notes but another app is changing cutoff on a synth that StepBud is sequencing. If the sequence length is adjustable, it's a more controlled way to change which notes are playing.

    Oki, so in practice we'd get multiple 'rows' of 'sliders' stacked on top of each other.

    This would make it easier to edit for example both notes and velocities at the same time without having to 'switch'.
    Each 'row' could then have to + / - buttons to add steps to the row.

    And for some 'fun' we could have a 'velocity sequence' with 3 steps and a 'note sequence' with 16 notes as an example.
    Or maybe 3 repeating notes and a longer sequence for more dynamic velocity changes...

    To turn this into total mayhem each 'row' could have 'master step duration' :)

  • ZjenjiZjenji

    Update fixed the crashes I was having. Thank you! I love this app, and the dev, so much!

  • ZjenjiZjenji

    Yeah, I love the dev. There, I said it! 😁

  • StudioESStudioES

    @iamspoon said:
    This looks very cool

    Can the lanes be different lengths?

    If not :(

    Any chance we could get lanes of different lengths for creating polyrhythmic stuff? <3

    No, all lanes are clocked the same. When iamspoon says 'lanes', he's talking about the pitch lane, gate time lane, velocity lane, etc. The earliest, most primitive sequencers were analog, were step sequencers, and each lane could be clocked separately. Try Thesys or the upcoming cykle for de-coupled lanes. StepBud is great though, and the new updates make it very powerful.

  • royorroyor

    @ocelot said:
    No, all lanes are clocked the same. When iamspoon says 'lanes', he's talking about the pitch lane, gate time lane, velocity lane, etc. The earliest, most primitive sequencers were analog, were step sequencers, and each lane could be clocked separately. Try Thesys or the upcoming cykle for de-coupled lanes. StepBud is great though, and the new updates make it very powerful.

    @iamspoon Ahh.. I mistook lanes for steps + vice versa.. sorry about the mixup. I understand now thanks to @ocelot

  • BenBen

    @Samu said:

    @Ben said:

    I know this is some basic shit so thanks in advance.



    ![](https://forum.audiob.us/uploads/editor/44/

    Thank you my knowledgeable brother! This is one sequencer that I’ve found to be a joy to use.

  • SamuSamu

    @Ben said:

    Thank you my knowledgeable brother! This is one sequencer that I’ve found to be a joy to use.

    You're welcome!
    Personally I also enjoy using Atom, StepPolyArp Unit, Fugue Machine, Photon and the Rozeta Suite :)

  • bleepbleep

    @Samu, are you also enjoying Quantum?

    There seems to be quite an overlap in functionality. I was wondering, if one has Quantum (including guilt feelings of not using its full potential) and the others you mention, then what would be the main selling points of StepBud? Trying to not get every app under the sun ... but also open to new AU apps that work well :)

    Btw, are all apps in the "bud" series AU? The series might be a bit confusing if not.

  • OnfraySinOnfraySin

    @bleep said:
    @Samu, are you also enjoying Quantum?

    There seems to be quite an overlap in functionality. I was wondering, if one has Quantum (including guilt feelings of not using its full potential) and the others you mention, then what would be the main selling points of StepBud? Trying to not get every app under the sun ... but also open to new AU apps that work well :)

    Btw, are all apps in the "bud" series AU? The series might be a bit confusing if not.

    I'm using Quantum as standalone for my hardware and Stepbud inside AUM for iOS-synth-environment

  • blueveekblueveek
    edited May 2019

    @Samu said:

    @cem_olcay said:

    @Samu said:

    @cem_olcay said:

    Cubasis looping is not working because in loop mode Cubasis doesn't send the current beat position to the plugin.

    So is this a 'bug/behaviour' the @LFS and the team over at Steinberg should have a look at?

    Loop mode in Cubasis is an 'essential' feature when tweaking a section of a song and if StepBud 'stops' after loop it makes the plug-in well 'not so usable' as is with Cubasis...

    I think the best workaround is recording the StepBud sequence before looping.

    Yes, but if the 'workflow' includes creating a StepBud sequence while a section is looping it doesn't roll ;)

    Would it be possible to add an option disable the mandatory 'current beat position' and add just 'host sync'?
    (I can't imagine myself creating a longer step-sequence than maybe 32-steps that keeps on looping).

    As a 'reference' Atom and StepPolyArp Unit both work just fine with 'loop' in Cubasis...

    Yes, some technical support from @LFS or other plugin developers would be really cool.

    @brambos or @blueveek might be able to help here?
    Don't remember the nicks of the other developers, sorry (and sorry In advance for tagging the others).

    Atom simply avoids all sync issues by relying on host transport. Just use the host's musical context data in combination with the current tempo and sample rate to calculate the render sample window.

  • brambosbrambos

    @blueveek said:

    @Samu said:

    @cem_olcay said:

    @Samu said:

    @cem_olcay said:

    Cubasis looping is not working because in loop mode Cubasis doesn't send the current beat position to the plugin.

    So is this a 'bug/behaviour' the @LFS and the team over at Steinberg should have a look at?

    Loop mode in Cubasis is an 'essential' feature when tweaking a section of a song and if StepBud 'stops' after loop it makes the plug-in well 'not so usable' as is with Cubasis...

    I think the best workaround is recording the StepBud sequence before looping.

    Yes, but if the 'workflow' includes creating a StepBud sequence while a section is looping it doesn't roll ;)

    Would it be possible to add an option disable the mandatory 'current beat position' and add just 'host sync'?
    (I can't imagine myself creating a longer step-sequence than maybe 32-steps that keeps on looping).

    As a 'reference' Atom and StepPolyArp Unit both work just fine with 'loop' in Cubasis...

    Yes, some technical support from @LFS or other plugin developers would be really cool.

    @brambos or @blueveek might be able to help here?
    Don't remember the nicks of the other developers, sorry (and sorry In advance for tagging the others).

    Atom simply avoids all sync issues by relying on host transport. Just use the host's musical context data in combination with the current tempo and sample rate to calculate the render sample window.

    Yes, that’s exactly how I do it. That should give you more than sample-accurate loop information.

  • cem_olcaycem_olcay

    @brambos said:

    @blueveek said:

    @Samu said:

    @cem_olcay said:

    @Samu said:

    @cem_olcay said:

    Cubasis looping is not working because in loop mode Cubasis doesn't send the current beat position to the plugin.

    So is this a 'bug/behaviour' the @LFS and the team over at Steinberg should have a look at?

    Loop mode in Cubasis is an 'essential' feature when tweaking a section of a song and if StepBud 'stops' after loop it makes the plug-in well 'not so usable' as is with Cubasis...

    I think the best workaround is recording the StepBud sequence before looping.

    Yes, but if the 'workflow' includes creating a StepBud sequence while a section is looping it doesn't roll ;)

    Would it be possible to add an option disable the mandatory 'current beat position' and add just 'host sync'?
    (I can't imagine myself creating a longer step-sequence than maybe 32-steps that keeps on looping).

    As a 'reference' Atom and StepPolyArp Unit both work just fine with 'loop' in Cubasis...

    Yes, some technical support from @LFS or other plugin developers would be really cool.

    @brambos or @blueveek might be able to help here?
    Don't remember the nicks of the other developers, sorry (and sorry In advance for tagging the others).

    Atom simply avoids all sync issues by relying on host transport. Just use the host's musical context data in combination with the current tempo and sample rate to calculate the render sample window.

    Yes, that’s exactly how I do it. That should give you more than sample-accurate loop information.

    Thanks guys, you rock 🤘

    Yes, I'm also getting the musical context from the host:

        // Get the musical context.
    double beatPosition;
    double tempo;
    double timeSignatureNumerator;
    NSInteger timeSignatureDenominator;
    if (musicalContextCapture(&tempo, &timeSignatureNumerator, &timeSignatureDenominator, &beatPosition, NULL, NULL) == false) {
      return noErr;
    }

    I'm relying on beatPosition for calculating the steps. But Cubasis doesn't send the beatPosition in loop mode. So, I don't know how I can get the current transport position other than the beatPosition parameter.

    There is also currentSamplePosition parameter of the AUHostTransportStateBlock is useful as well, but Cubasis doesn't send it either..

  • iamspooniamspoon

    @royor said:

    @ocelot said:
    No, all lanes are clocked the same. When iamspoon says 'lanes', he's talking about the pitch lane, gate time lane, velocity lane, etc. The earliest, most primitive sequencers were analog, were step sequencers, and each lane could be clocked separately. Try Thesys or the upcoming cykle for de-coupled lanes. StepBud is great though, and the new updates make it very powerful.

    @iamspoon Ahh.. I mistook lanes for steps + vice versa.. sorry about the mixup. I understand now thanks to @ocelot

    o:) Thanks for all the responses . Apologies if my wording was a bit ambiguous.

    @Samu said:

    And for some 'fun' we could have a 'velocity sequence' with 3 steps and a 'note sequence' with 16 notes as an example.
    Or maybe 3 repeating notes and a longer sequence for more dynamic velocity changes...

    This is the sort of thing I was hoping to achieve.
    I understand I could use multiple instances for this but that would become a bit impractical if you wished to sequence and edit multiple parameters (with different amount of steps).

    I imagine being able to have different amounts of steps for each parameter within a single instance would be a popular feature request (?)
    In any case, thanks again for the replies :)

  • cem_olcaycem_olcay

    Has anyone experienced MIDI stuck with the last v1.2.1 update?

  • SamuSamu

    @cem_olcay said:
    Has anyone experienced MIDI stuck with the last v1.2.1 update?

    Not yet, but if it would happen I'll try to find a repeatable way to reproduce it...

  • cem_olcaycem_olcay

    @Samu said:

    @cem_olcay said:
    Has anyone experienced MIDI stuck with the last v1.2.1 update?

    Not yet, but if it would happen I'll try to find a repeatable way to reproduce it...

    Awesome. I get rid of the code piece where I'm sending 127 midi note-off messages on the transport stop. My worst nightmare is MIDI stucks, let me know if you have some bad experiences so I smash that bugs immediately 😄
    BTW -- @Samu have you tried the portamento mode with the last few updates lately? 😎

  • SamuSamu

    @cem_olcay said:

    @Samu said:

    @cem_olcay said:
    Has anyone experienced MIDI stuck with the last v1.2.1 update?

    Not yet, but if it would happen I'll try to find a repeatable way to reproduce it...

    Awesome. I get rid of the code piece where I'm sending 127 midi note-off messages on the transport stop. My worst nightmare is MIDI stucks, let me know if you have some bad experiences so I smash that bugs immediately 😄
    BTW -- @Samu have you tried the portamento mode with the last few updates lately? 😎

    I’ll try to find suitable iOS synths that respond to portamento first :)
    But I do feel the dedicated button takes up valuable space, if a user needs it they can add a cc lane hehe...

    Too tired to test now, need to sleep...

  • SamuSamu

    @cem_olcay Hey!

    I've been playing some more with StepBud and here's some more of my suggestions...

    Personally I seldom find the need to automate portamento time (CC#5 yay, you finally nailed it!) and it definitely doesn't need to be sent for every step (Seems like you fixed the CC sending for steps with repeats too, nice!).

    Ie. add Portamento to the same 'list' where Pitch & ModWheel can be enabled/disabled and new CC's can be added.

    Add a 'On/Off' switch for the manually added CC's.

    This will make it easier to create a 'template' with favourite CC's and enable them on demand instead of having to add them every time.

    There is also really no need to show the 'tabs' for the disabled parameters/cc's or is there?
    So when the Pitch Bend and Modulation are disabled hide the tabs to make the UI cleaner, same would go for Portamento.

    If possible add a 'built-in' preset management so the StepBud presets can be shared between hosts.

    If possible add an option to automatically load a user-defined preset when the plug-in is loaded.
    (ie. something like 'set as default'?).

    Also when shifting notes 'out of bounds'(ie. under or above the Min/Max octave) 'auto expand' the range so sequenced notes do not get 'lost' when reaching the bounds. (Maybe they could be 'wrapped around' 127 to 0 and 0 to 127).

    So far so good, I'll see if I'll have some luck with Cubasis and recording notes on time :)
    (the were very 'off the grid' last time I checked).

    Cheers!

  • SamuSamu

    @cem_olcay Here's a screenshot from Cubasis showing the 'off the grid' events.

    It's 16th notes with 0.5 gate from StepBud...
    ...also notice the CC#5 for each step. Wish to have an option to turn 'Portamento' off just like PitchBend and ModWheel.

    Cheers!

  • CarnbotCarnbot

    The master control now levels everything and brings it all to the same parameter. Didn’t it adjust everything proportionally before? Think this is an error.

  • cem_olcaycem_olcay

    @Carnbot said:
    The master control now levels everything and brings it all to the same parameter. Didn’t it adjust everything proportionally before? Think this is an error.

    You are probably using the master fader in “copy” mode. Just change it to the shift mode from the master fader control switch in settings bar.

  • lukesleepwalkerlukesleepwalker

    @cem_olcay said:

    @Carnbot said:
    The master control now levels everything and brings it all to the same parameter. Didn’t it adjust everything proportionally before? Think this is an error.

    You are probably using the master fader in “copy” mode. Just change it to the shift mode from the master fader control switch in settings bar.

    Brilliant feature, btw!

  • CarnbotCarnbot

    @cem_olcay said:

    @Carnbot said:
    The master control now levels everything and brings it all to the same parameter. Didn’t it adjust everything proportionally before? Think this is an error.

    You are probably using the master fader in “copy” mode. Just change it to the shift mode from the master fader control switch in settings bar.

    Ah, thanks, hadn’t seen that yet :)

  • iamspooniamspoon

    I’m enjoying myself with this, thanks for the feature developments.

    Without wishing to overwhelm @cem_olcay with even more feature requests here is a couple of idea I had that I thought I’d share here to gauge opinion.

    Firstly, I would love it if you could consider implementing different sequence lengths/divisions.
    This was mentioned a couple of times in the thread already (once by me admittedly) .
    This would enable some very interesting results with running say a 3 step CC modulation on one lane and another 4 step modulation on another. (a basic example but you could do more exotic things too)
    Not the best explanation, but I hope you get the rough idea and it is worthy of consideration?

    My second idea was that perhaps there could be space on the UI for some (optional?) quick load buttons to load/change sequences in real-time.
    This would be cool to extend ideas and create performances made of several sequences amongst other things.
    Obviously this would mean each instance saving several sequences but I hope that might not be too difficult to achieve technically (sorry I lack specific programming knowledge)

    Finally, I personally wouldn’t mind a black skin with a blinking red step light, so if possible and you like the idea could we maybe have a choice of skins or at least a red blinking light =

    TLDR it’s really good even though it lacks blinking red lights.

  • StudioESStudioES

    Cem, Not sure if anyone has mentioned the issue with the sequencer drifting off-beat after some time? AUM and apeMatrix on 3 different iPads.

    Happens with 1 instance of StepBud when the sequence starts to get a little more complex with note repeats, different rates, gate times, etc. (I've done the math-it should play on-time :smile: ). Becomes unusable when adding another StepBud to drive the 1st StepBud.

    And shortening those default gate times might help with stuck Midi. StepBud's "1.0" is different than other step sequencer's "1.0". :smile:

    Thanks.

  • cem_olcaycem_olcay
    edited May 2019

    @iamspoon said:
    I’m enjoying myself with this, thanks for the feature developments.

    Without wishing to overwhelm @cem_olcay with even more feature requests here is a couple of idea I had that I thought I’d share here to gauge opinion.

    Firstly, I would love it if you could consider implementing different sequence lengths/divisions.
    This was mentioned a couple of times in the thread already (once by me admittedly) .
    This would enable some very interesting results with running say a 3 step CC modulation on one lane and another 4 step modulation on another. (a basic example but you could do more exotic things too)
    Not the best explanation, but I hope you get the rough idea and it is worthy of consideration?

    My second idea was that perhaps there could be space on the UI for some (optional?) quick load buttons to load/change sequences in real-time.
    This would be cool to extend ideas and create performances made of several sequences amongst other things.
    Obviously this would mean each instance saving several sequences but I hope that might not be too difficult to achieve technically (sorry I lack specific programming knowledge)

    Finally, I personally wouldn’t mind a black skin with a blinking red step light, so if possible and you like the idea could we maybe have a choice of skins or at least a red blinking light =

    TLDR it’s really good even though it lacks blinking red lights.

    • I think you can use multiple StepBud AUv3 instances for polyrhythmic patterns.
    • For the preset loading, I might add a "save/load preset" option for saving/loading across multiple DAWs and standalone mode. That's sound useful 👍
    • I'm a decent UI/UX engineer but not a UI designer :) I'd like to try different themes in my prototyping tool, who knows, I might add different themes that you can choose from :)

    @ocelot said:
    Cem, Not sure if anyone has mentioned the issue with the sequencer drifting off-beat after some time? AUM and apeMatrix on 3 different iPads.

    Happens with 1 instance of StepBud when the sequence starts to get a little more complex with note repeats, different rates, gate times, etc. (I've done the math-it should play on-time :smile: ). Becomes unusable when adding another StepBud to drive the 1st StepBud.

    And shortening those default gate times might help with stuck Midi. StepBud's "1.0" is different than other step sequencer's "1.0". :smile:

    Thanks.

    I've done a lot of tests but haven't encountered any off-beat issue or driving from another StepBud issue.
    Although, off-beat happens if you change the rate while playing. That's because the beat calculation changes on runtime with normal/dotted/triplet/quintuplet notes when you slide the fader around for changing the rate, and that would cause you to go off the grid. However, that's not a bug, that's how the math works. I can work on a better rate-changing experience though..

    Another update on loop mode on Cubasis. I've uploaded a new version that allows to use StepBud in loop mode!
    It will be released in a day or two.

  • ciancian

    @cem_olcay

    I think you can use multiple StepBud AUv3 instances for polyrhythmic patterns.

    I don't think quite fits the use case though. What people want to be able to do is something like this:

    • pattern of three notes (C4 F4 B3).
    • Pattern of four durations (1/16 1/8 1/8 1/16)
    • Pattern of 2 CCs

    You can get some pretty amazing evolving patterns even with something that simple.

  • ShazammShazamm

  • cem_olcaycem_olcay

    The new update will be amazing! Here's a quick video showing Cubasis looping.
    I'm also improvising with ScaleBud. With these apps, even a guy like me can create music haha :)

  • SamuSamu

    @cem_olcay said:
    The new update will be amazing! Here's a quick video showing Cubasis looping.
    I'm also improvising with ScaleBud. With these apps, even a guy like me can create music haha :)

    Cool! :)

    Try to ‘record’ the notes into Cubasis as well.
    The notes coming out from StepBud are mostly ‘off the grid’ at the moment indicating some kind of timing issue!?

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