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
Would anyone mind giving me your opinion on how these compare?
TB Barricade
FF Pro L2
FAC Maxima
AFAIK the only limiters that offer oversampling and dithering on iOS are FabFilter Pro L2 and TB Barricade (Barricade adds oversampling automatically and Pro-L2 lets you add it manually). For that reason alone they are going to be far more transparent than anything else if you push them (because limiters without oversampling are more likely to add audible distortion when pushed hard).
FAC Maxima is good for making things louder, but the controls are more akin to a compressor than a brick-wall limiter IMO. Also it's metering options are nowhere near as comprehensive as the other two. IMO it works better as a bus compressor than a mastering limiter.
I would say Barricade is a very good option. It's very versatile, it can do transparent limiting but also add saturation and character via the input stage if that's desired, and complies with modern standards. It's a fully-featured limiter at a bargain price.
I discovered an earlier version of this on my desktop, was free with Computer Music magazine at some point.
Looks like I’m going to have to eat my words again. Keep these coming Toneboosters!
Thanks so much for the extremely helpful answer!!
@richardyot Very good, that puts me well on my way! I’ll dive in and try it. Then probably come back for another watch. Got any other videos about this? I could listen to you explain things all day.
Good call, this was a super helpful read for me!
Thanks! Unfortunately I don't have many videos on music production due to a lack of time.
You're welcome @audiorangutan
This website may be helpful to you too:
https://www.loudnesspenalty.com/
NoLimits by DDMF has a dithering option, not sure about oversampling. It's my favorite limiter based on sound. Thoughts on how it compares? So impressed with TB Reverb, I may need to buy this too...
While the Barricade plug-in has nice dithering options how do we actually use them in practice?
Most hosts have a bit-depth setting they use for the export and as far as I know a plug-in has no way to override the settings in the host or? (So in practice the 16-bit dithered data from the plug-in is still packaged into 32-bit floats or what ever the host is using internally).
Sorry I don't have that one, so can't compare. I did do a mastering app comparison in 2018, but it's a little out of date now, and I don't think No Limits was around at that time. It might be worth doing a new comparison if I ever find the time, but for now I will just say that at the price Barricade is an absolute bargain, and well worth getting regardless.
If you're going to use the dithering option then the plugin as to be applied post-fader on the master bus to ensure it's the very last step in the chain. I know this is how plugins on the master bus work in Auria for example, not sure about other hosts.
Dithering is rarely going to make an audible difference though IMO, oversampling is much more important.
Circuit modeling, Saturation, Compressor and Limiter. These apps are packed to the brim!
I'm aware placement in the chain of the but the plug-in doesn't 'output to file' meaning it still has to go thru the hosts conversion so retaining a perfect bit-by-bit output from the Plug-In is tricky.
(In Cubasis I manually set the host to use 16-bit when a 16-bit output is needed and set the plug-ins to dither down to 16-bit. As far as I know Cubasis always works with 32-bit floats regardless of the bit-depth set in the settings).
This is mostly theory as I personally can not hear any major difference
AFAIK if you set dithering in Pro L2 or Barricade on the master bus in Auria and then export a 16bit file from Auria the host will use the dithering from the plugin. I could be wrong though, the only way to confirm would be to ask the dev, but that is how it's supposed to work.
Can we do a hypothetical? To me, the audio in these videos sound bad! I love the songs, but the audio sounds mashed together and blaring in the mid-range, or distorted.
Do you think these videos sound bad? Did they push the loudness too far?
And then this sounds much better to me. What about you?
Also, the new 808 State videos sound really good to me.
There’s probably a bunch of other threads about this, but it could be nice for us to start building some auditory reference points for all styles. Good sounding video upload results, and bad...
I like the saturation presets. It reminds me of the Fender types of gentle distortions like the Joyo American Pedal creates. Not too fuzzy. That's my favorite tone on guitars and Phodes. A gentle/warm tube saturation sound on a scale from bright clean to power chords.
It is refreshing to not have a developer post pre release threads two years ahead of having anything working, just good plugins, good price, good developer, good stuff!
Is there something coming 2 years? Who knew Roland had their checkbook out.
I've been using this for years on desktop. Really outstandingly transparent, though I don't abuse it real work, (down with the loudness wars), I have tested abusing it and it is impressive.
Its a main stay of dirty and destructive too, really nice the way it covers the entire spectrum from clean to dirt, my main Limiter for many years and V4 has just been outstanding.
I will have to try it that way. I do use ReelBus for saturation though. I am a total fan. My basic track templates for songs and masters is full of ToneBoosters. Reelbus on masters (Subtle) and on busses (where I might use it more creatively) + Bus Comp, EQ.
Can someone explain the metering on Barricade?.
I sort of get it but I can’t tell what’s what exactly. By metering I mean the 2 orange and one gray line...
The top orange line is peak reduction, the middle orange line is the loudness level and the grey line is the averaged loudness over the course of the track.
Barricade has awesome saturation/clipping flavors.
Pull the threshold all the way down to make the saturation more audible so that you can choose the best one for the track and then take it back up to where you want it.
You can also use it with the compressor and limiter switched off and they all have that “internal automatic oversampling” Toneboosters analog magic sound with no aliasing.
👍
Looks like they have all gotten the treatment now! Compressor has a new upward compression mode! DualVCF has a wet/dry for each filter. Spwctrogram got some extra love and EQ: