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
Touchable Pro seems to be working quit nicely (beta) these days..
Bitwig isn't that great from a touchscreen perspective, it's ok.
But it has a lot of other great features that are now surpassing Live minus Max4Live. Touchable and LK are much better experiences for touch interaction with Live
@RajahP I know only LK but looking at the video Touchable seems to have much more functionality. Which one do you prefer?
BTW, I must say that Studiomux (same dev as Touchable) is really great when combining iPad and desktop. Both iPad and desktop can use each other’s Midi devices.
@krassmann Touchable Pro has a lot more Ableton integration with device controls and custom templates.
Touchable Pro is the best thing to have a remote connection to Ableton Live if you don’t have a Push 2
Is this available “out of the box” or is this a customized layout?. Looks very pro!.
Out of the Box UI
I am surprised that Touchable Pro isn't highlighted more here... I am thinking of clearing my desk (Machine Controllers) and just settle down with Ableton live and Touchable Pro. You can't write text to hardware... etc. Live is really deep.
LK is different from TP (I think)... TP is basically a controller...
Yep. It’s a great interface for Live.
About 3 years ago, I've had a friend stop by who had issues with Touchable on his iPad.
We've tried setting up the server on a Mac and connecting to Touchable over WiFi and after more than an hour of fiddling around, we didn't manage to get a reliable connection between the two. A few times they connected, but mostly, Touchable just couldn't even see the server.
From what you wrote, the connection must be more stable now?
Or are you on Windows maybe?
It's funny that you intend to switch from Maschine to Live. Working with Live, I'm thinking about adding a Maschine MK3 as a means to access sounds from various Kontakt libraries, Arturia Analog Lab and the Spectrasonics libs since on desktop, I usually spend considerable time to search for sounds and tweak them.
Yes, I’m on a Win 10.. had issues with connection also.. seems you need an older version of iTunes.. but there is no problem with connection now..
Yes, Maschine does have its strengths.. but development is a bit too slow.. I just want to make music at this stage and Live seems to have what it takes to do it ..
Well since you already have a Maschine have you seen this?
@rs2000 I've been giving Touchable Pro a thorough testing the last couple of weeks on Live10 and today Live11.
I can say that the connection has been no issue at all, and you can connect via USB as well. Quick and reliable.
It hasn't all been seamless but overall compared to LK (with Ableton) and Logic Remote I think Touchable is on balance superior. I'd say superior by a long way actually. Only thing is it has crashed a few times. Not as many as Ableton mind you.
My favourite feature of Touchable is vst device control. You can create default vst configurations by wiggling knobs in configure mode. Once saved you drag the vst into Live and on Touchable the current state of all those parameters in available for control in pages of 16.
My least favourite feature of Touchable is the EQ8 device implementation. The touchable EQ curves don't match Live. Sadly this is the best feature on Logic Remote imo.
I'm a long time Ableton user and have had two Maschines. Whilst I think they are impressive it never really helped me with getting sounds I wanted more quickly/easily. In the end it was a DAW in a DAW and it was complicated..... (for me)
Leading the race in my "new setup review" is my iPad Pro 2018 with Touchable Pro and AUM running midi generating devices (including LK midi mode) for melody, rhythm and chords and sending it to Ableton Live via IDAM on a M1 Macbook Air (not yet purchased).
Great information @RajahP & @soundtemple, thank you!
Maschine can run as a vsti in Ableton Live. It just seems so cumbersome..
Linking Ableton to the iPad should be the ultimate setup..
Edit.. and Bitwig cannot run Touchable Pro..
Back to Ableton: Has anyone here tried to use it on a Windows tablet?
Maybe it's possible to configure a number of gestures and use a sensible zoom level so it's actually workable?
Check out http://surfaceproaudio.com
The site is run by Robin Vincent who writes for Sound on Sound. He tests various DAWs and instruments on Surface devices, though he doesn't post as much as he used to.
Some interesting stuff here.
I don’t get it… if you’re already using a desktop/laptop with Ableton, what’s the advantage of sequencing on the iPad?.
I could see the iPad as sort of a Maschine where you don’t have to even look at the laptop. But it doesn’t seem the case with any of these setups. You still need to operate on the laptop to add plugins, map parameters, etc…
This I can relate to…
Maybe it's possible to configure a number of gestures and use a sensible zoom level so it's actually workable?
For me it’s having a touch surface and/or knobs… completely bypassing the mouse. I’ve also read bad reviews about the Surface touch interface, otherwise it seems like the best of both worlds.
touchAble is certainly very interesting, but if I have to add plugins or instruments using the laptop that makes touchAble interesting only for performance…
The video highlighted using the Maschine to control BitWig 😜
Now that I got the Komplete upgrade this is next on my radar. Need to give Bitwig another try for sure. I do love the straight forward simplicity of the Maschine software but dang it ain't very touch friendly.
BitWig is pretty nice. I didn’t really enjoy the Touch aspect of it on my Sony canvasZ PC tablet that much though. Windows Touch just sucks compared to touch on iOS.
I do find most Windows hosts don't take advantage of touch well but a few VSTs (Infiltrator comes to mind) feel just as good as iOS multitouch to me. But I think that means the dev needs to work for it as opposed to it being provided by the OS / SDKS (uhhh, insert layman hand waving). But yah I was amazed to see just how smooth and fluid Inflitator is on touch.
He's gone completely Euro these days, so Surface is less of a focus.
What's the actual price difference? I know Ableton has all these tiers, and like Apple, the middle tier is a little bit more than you'd want to pay, but the top tier has SO much more and is accordingly more expensive...
I know that FL Studio has no cachet among the "real" producers, but it does have FREE lifetime updates.
@rs2000 i have tried Ableton on the SP3. Setting up scaling and macros to make touch work there was just too much and Touchable Pro did it better. Ableton just isn’t set up or configurable for touch. They didn’t build it in like Bitwig did. Again Touchable Pro with Ableton is really great. Btw @tahiche Touchable Pro does allow you to select plugs and map params…
But to me it was weird to use a second touch device (iPad) to run Ableton on a touch device (SP3). Bitwig use, w/touch is a one/stop, and it was designed for that use case. The touch interface on SP3 is slick and responsive, smoother in some ways than iPad.
That's exactly what I've thought. If I can't make a Windows tablet work well with touch natively then there's no point using it - except with a pen maybe...
Ok.. I connected my Maschine Jam to My Bitwig 4 (8 track)… I think I’ll settle down with Ableton Live for now.. Multi iPads running Touchable Pro, seems like the best option…
Seems you can add plugins and inst. from the Browser…
Yep. Bitwig using touch is very nice even on the older SP. You can do everything on the tablet without recourse to pen, mouse, or QWERTY. The onscreen keyboard is configurable for MPE support
And Ableton is fine on SP, but not for touch. I guess using pencil (the Bluetooth stylus) on the SP might be an advantage over a regular desktop. But trackpad or mouse is probably faster for most people. My son who is an Ableton user always refers to my SP as “that weird thing you have”. He uses an MBP of course, and doesn’t understand the point of touch support for Ableton.
Update: I have received my "new" second hand Win10 tablet now and did a first test with Ableton Suite.
My first try failed, touch response was really weird and knobs and faders were basically impossible to use.
But after enabling Windows Tablet Mode and increasing the Ableton UI zoom factor to 120%, I was blown away by how well this worked! Well enough that I would say, from my first impression, that Ableton on a tablet is a reality today.
Add to that the price of this 12" Windows tablet which is lower than the cheapest iPad you can get and all the unlimited connectivity we've come to appreciate in desktops and laptops, I wonder if and when I'm going to buy another iPad.
To be continued 😉