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.
Is it possible to sample a track in NanoStudio 2?
I’m using NS2 and my ipad’s CPU is stretched, giving lots of crackles. To resolve this I want to record a couple of the tracks in the project to the sample editor but I can’t find a way to do it. Is it possible? If not, I’ll have to work out how to sample it from Audioshare or something. Does anyone have any advice on this? I can’t proceed with the project at the moment because of the crackles. I’ve only got about 7-8 tracks and am using an iPad Pro 2-18, so I’m not sure why I’m experiencing low COU. But, well, I am. Any help appreciated. Thanks in advance, as ever.
Comments
what AU's you're using in your project ? Did you try increase buffer size ? It may be that you're just using CPU hungry synths, but it may be also small buffer or some other issue..
Anyway, to directly answer your question - If i good understand you want resample some tracks ... most easy way is:
now, you need go to Slate or Obsidian, load that rendered wav into sampler and trigger it by note in sequencer.. of course this approach has some limitations, it is not ideal for long audio recordings (like minute or longer) - it's better for shorter loops - for true comfortable workflow you need wait for proper audio tracks implementation
NS2 will show in the audio input slots in AB, you can send it to wherever AB
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Have you looked at increasing the buffer size? for decreasing crackles
Brilliant - thank you so much. I forgot about increasing the buffer size, so I'll have a look at that first and then do the other method second. I only want to sample a loop of a few seconds so that I can remove the synths to free up CPU, but I'll try the buffer size first. Very helpful - thanks.
Thanks. I did increase the buffer size as @dendy (and now you, of course) suggested, and it's done the trick for now :-) I'll try the sampling methods you and Dendy have recommended if it's necessary at some point, too. Thanks for the advice.
Fine, then for this is that workflow very effective. Also check all options in mixdown screen, there are some which can help you (like adding tail in case thefe are reverbs or delays in you loop, automatic trim of begin / end silence, automatic normalization of mixdown, and stuff like that)
There is also a bit more advanced method of playing audio loops, not just simple triggering with note (using Obsidians sample start offset automation) but i will explain this later if you will be interested - it's a bit more complicated (although it opens also lot new posibilities for mangling recorded audio loops, even sort of primitive "timestretch-like" effect - it allows to change project tempo where all loops are playing still in sync without changing pitch
Ooh, sounds interesting, that latter bit. As it happens, I can just about use the project without sampling by increasing the buffer to the maximum, but it's nearly maxed out and so I'm going to try the sampling method you suggested right now. Thanks again.
you're welcome
This worked a treat. I had no idea it was so simple! Big thanks.
Curious as to what’s involved in your project because I can do 7-8 tracks with several AU’s on my Air 1 with medium buffer and never get crackles. I don’t use too many AU instruments because I can get pretty much everything I want sound wise with samples or Obsidian synths.
1 slate sampler
1 Sunrizer
1 BASSalicious 2
1 Neo-Soul keys
1 iSEM
1 PureSynth
1 Obsidian
I’m pretty sure that when I bought my iPad Pro it could manage way more than this and am wondering if it’s anything to do with ipadOS beta. I don’t know, though.
That's quite a load of 'memory hoggers' (BASSalicious 2, Neo-Soul and PureSynth) so I'm not surprised at all!
It's not the CPU that is the bottleneck but rather RAM and Disc Access...
Yeah, I guess you’re right. Problem solved, anyway, with @dendy’s assistance. 👍
iSem and Obsidian in first place are very efficient, you should be able to run many instances of them... Especially with Obsidian and NS2 bundled FXs you should be able to run 50+ tracks without even remotely touching CPU limits on 2018 Pro model..
Actually, it depends on patch complexity, but you should be able to run even 100+ tracks with just Obsidians, Slates and bundled FXs
Yeah, but for some reason I can’t. I’ve now turned two of the synths I was using - iSEM and PureSynth - into samples, and now the cpu is about about 65-70%. I’ll probably do the same with BASSalicious 2, since that’s just a simple repeating bassline. That said, I am also using quite a few effects units - the FabFilter mastering apps on the master channel, EQ’s for each instrument, reverbs, etc. Now I know how to sample the instruments in NS2 it won’t be such a problem, although it does make automation a bit harder because the sounds are turned into samples. I’m very pleasantly surprised by NS2 now, having not really used it since I bought it when it first came out. Once it has audio tracks it will blow the competition away. It’s far easier to use than either Cubasis or BM3 - more intuitive, with a lovely interface.
What i do often with AU is, that i create multisamples of some patch (cust plain notes, let's say 2 - 3 sec long, it depends on patch sustain / release) instead of whole melody loop .. If you name them propery like "mysound c1.wav", "mysound f1.wav", "mysound c2.wav", .. and so on, it is easy to quickly load them into Obsidian sampler using "automap" feature which automatically loads all samples with same base name and creates sample zones based on note suffix
This process is not so complicated in NS - you just create clip with all notes on AU instrument track, leave some space between notes (for easy cut individual notes from audio later).. then mixdown that clip, open in NS audio editor - just select first note and use Actions > Save SEL - this saves selection as new audio file .. repeat for all notes in audio .. it's really quick ..
Advantage is that you will slowly build bank of your sample based patches which you can then re-use also in another songs (which is a lot less possible when you have just sampled loop with some melody)
You can save some more CPU by putting reverbs on send channels rather than as inserts in each track. Reverbs can be quite cpu intensive.
Just remember to set the reverb(s) to 100% wet on a send.
It can also make the track sound better as instruments sound more like they’ve been recorded in the same room at the same time .
Also when mixing you can cut the levels on the reverb send channel(s) and bring them back up so they sound good without being too muddy. Being able to hear a dry mix really quickly can help identify where things might be clashing. Also it’s reallu useful being able to cut or boost all the reverb with a slider or two when mixing yo get the balance just right.
Try it with delays too.
Great tip - I’ll try this. Thanks once more, sir.
Thanks. Yeah, I use send tracks, too, but like your explanation here 👍