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
Hello @Blue_Mangoo ,
After regularly using Velocity Keyboard (one of my most used apps), I came up with an idea that could even improve further the core of your already wonderful app.
Have you ever thought of using the internal microphone in addition to the accelerometers ?
By taping harder and harder on the screen surface, the sound produced by the finger is louder and louder.
Below is myself taping crescendo on my iPhone :
If you could include this information in addition to accelerometers data, maybe you could achieve a better result in velocity sensing, particularly when the iPad is not on a soft surface and cannot benefit from the recoil.
Hope this makes sens !
Hello @LFS and @Blue_Mangoo - the recent update 1.3 (where I understand an attempt was made to fix the issue) does not fix the problem I described earlier here on the Cubasis 3 forum. I have already reported this to @Blue_Mangoo.
fyi....use a soft piece of foam beneath the ipad....the interface is much more empathetic . The softer the better.
Hello,
Yes, thank you. But I already know that.
Here I am just talking about a sort of fundamental technological improvement (may it be doable or not...).
Regards.
Dear @Blue_Mangoo ,
I cannot find Velocity Keyboard as MIDI input inside Apematrix host.
In AU mode, no problem but in standalone mode, Velocity Keyboard is not exposed as MIDI IN in the Apematrix MIDI IN sources menu.
Otherwise, I still can select "Apematrix" in the Destination menu of Velocity Keyboard.
Is it normal ? Or do I miss something ? Can anybody confirm this ? Is it on Blu Mangoo or Apesoft side ? Thanks a lot !
@Paulo164 that would introduce x2 additional latency. (noticeable to unplayable in large buffers >256)
It would be useful on 64 buffer size ,but still if you use other usb interface the mic input is not used.
(although Audiobus supports both built in and external interface)
A question for Velocity Keyboard Y axis users (or @Blue_Mangoo ) :
Can you set the range of the Y axis ? Also what if you swipe up or down and touch other notes? Will they be ignored or triggered ?
When you slide left or right , can you play with the Y axis or touch radius ?
And last one combination : Can you play with Y axis and touch radius at the same time?
Not sure it would introduce much more latency than accelerometers, since it would be measured at the same time.
The difficulties for me are :
When using an audio interface , the builtin for example , the host or the app sets the buffer size.
So, when using a 256 buffer at 44100 you have ~5.5ms latency for both the audio in and out
That means that the VK app has to wait ~5.5 additional ms to calculate the transient and translate it to the sound even if the accelerometer is quicker .
Edit: So it will translate it to midi information and then the iOS synth will output sound after another ~5.5ms.
VK can't grub the audio faster than the buffer size ,so only solution would be using 64 buffer which iOS doesn't really like it!
Hope it makes sense
As mentioned , Audiobus already does it
Ambient noise will always be problem , even with bandEQ filtering . A piezo would be better on the back of the ipad and placing a foam underneath to absorb live bass frequencies
Also the user would need to mess with "Measurement Mode" to disable autogain on the mic.
Thanks for the info. It seems VK will replace my Roli
, I'd love seeing a setting to lock note when performing Y axis expression (or on sustain mode) and provide a release velocity based on radius
Soooo, has anyone tried Velocity Keyboard with GeoShred SWAM sounds ?
Yes. But the result doesn't sound very natural. It's much better with Geoshred keyboard
You get velocity but you loose other controls.
I found it was best to stick with GeoShred and surprisingly didn’t miss the lack of velocity along z axis.
Could you perhaps add a dot in the upper right hand corner of a note to indicate sharp, and a dot in the lower right corner to indicate flat?
VK is closing itself or switching to another au or giving me an AUM menu. I have gestures turned off in my iPad settings. Is there an AUM multi-finger gesture that is doing this?
Also, I keep getting stuck notes. It really, really needs a kill button. When they get stuck, often I need to shut down and restart one or more apps. It is very frustrating.
Geoshred gives you Velocity on the Y Axis anyway if you turn on Finger Expression! VK is great for everything other than SWAM though
I was interested mainly in the radius feature of the VK for the SWAM sounds (somehow I missed the previous answers ,thanks
)
So true.
@Blue_Mangoo I have been velocity KB user for long time.. The only addtional feature I was hoping (compared to Geoshred) is to show note for all buttons.. Rather than showing only a few note names.. Highlighting note names with some jazzy light spark is not that useful for me (like Geoshred does).. But showing all note names can be very useful..
Updated. Which is great because I stopped using this and it was my favorite
Think I found a bug. Kb tuned in fourths, 10 rows, 15 columns, C mixolydian, driving NeoSoul. With kb set at +1 the problem is most noticeable, but occurs in other octaves as well:
The F in the right-most column doesn’t trigger its note correctly. It seems to be sending a note-bend signal along with the note.
Anyone still having trouble with volt and velocity keyboard?
@Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr — Can you confirm, please. I know you are deep in with MPE
Volt is working better with Velocity since the update. Shockwave still hangs. It seems to be the sus pedal. If I don’t touch that then Shockwave is reasonably stable. Bugs aside, these two apps really have a synergy with Vkb. Shockwave especially is very good for leads.
I still get spontaneous keyboard closures with polyphonic apps if I play more than three notes simultaneously. It’s extremely annoying.
Still badly want VK to save state properly. Without that it loses a lot of its convenience unless you always use the same setup and don't use different scales etc in different sessions.
Are presets not working for you?
I just want it to remember the state is was saved in in a particular session like every single AUv3 app is supposed to. I shouldn't have to save presets for different sessions. The app currently always defaults to whatever were the settings in the last used session. It doesn't remember different states for different sessions.
All apps should have custom scales and diatonic keyboards. Moog and SynthScaper do it right; very few others are on the ball. I don’t understand the dev’s resistance. There is no shortage of great music that stays in one scale.
Agreed. It doesn't even remember it's octave setting.
Yeah, it should work like it’s supposed to. I don’t think it’s a reason not to buy it though. Setup is very quick and easy.
Yeah but going back to an old session where I had something set up I may not remember what scale or key it was in. I've been caught off guard a few times by this when I started playing a custom keyboard and thought, this is completely not in key....
Really impressed with how easy it is to set up custom scales in Riffer, unfortunately this was one thing I forgot to cover in my tutorial video. As you say, all apps should allow easy set up of custom scales.