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
Verrrrry interesting!
I recommend trying the Windows version of Touchable pro if you have a touch screen windows setup, you can use it on the same PC as Live, much better than using the Live interface, i just don't think Live works with it's ui as touch.
Haven't used Touchable pro for a while since my main touch screen monitor got broken in transit and now I have a Push 2.
Time to dust this old thing off again I guess
FWIW, Live works fine with a TouchScreen based PC. It's not ideal, but you can get by with your finger for a lot of things. A stylus definitely helps for some of the smaller controls and scrolling through menus. Not all VSTs are touch enabled though, so you will need a Mouse or Stylus to do a lot of things...this is the case for BitWig as well.
@rs2000 Any chance of a video demo of Ableton on Windows tablet?
Bitwig provides touch interface capability for vst that aren’t touch enabled…
It does? Is that a setting somewhere because AudioModern ChordJam VST doesn’t accept touch as an input in BitWig for some reason.
I thought about that, yes.
Let me get a bit more familiar with it and experience some more editing and using different VST(i)s before I do that.
The box in the GUI that comes with each plugin has a pull down for all the plugins params, with a dial for each. The dial can then be assigned to any of Bitwig kajillion modulators, or just twiddled by hand, with twiddles recorded…
Ahhhh yeah that part. I thought you meant it would allow touch to work from the VST UI.
+1 on a demo!.
@rs2000 what model of windows tablet did you get?. Is it a surface?
If money is no object I wonder what the best spec Windows tablet there is at present to give a descent performance for music making with Bitwig and Ableton and have touch capabilities?
It's a 2nd gen Lenovo X1 touch. Intel 7Y57, 8GB RAM, 500G SSD. Backlit detachable keyboard and stylus included.
Being interesting in a novelty way if Bitwig being Linux capable would run on the newly announced Steam Deck as touch !
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-internet-reacts-to-the-steam-deck/
https://www.steamdeck.com/en/
The Surface Pro 7 Plus is available with an Intel i7-1165G7 which is almost twice as fast as the CPU in mine, and it comes in configurations up to 1TB SSD and 32GB RAM.
That was no option for me, costing 10 times as much compared to mine
And while the 7Y57 is specced at 4.5W tdp, the 1165G7 tops at 15W.
I wanted battery lifetime somewhat comparable to an iPad.
Guys, it may sound temptative to use a windows tablet with Ableton but I would definitely not buy a new Surface Pro now - second hand might be a different story. Anyway I don’t believe that cheaper and weaker Windows devices have enough horsepower to support the workflow that you are hoping for. But most important is that IMHO there are too many things on the move to invest serious money into an x86 device now. As you wrote the battery life is not competetive anyway.
The whole IT hardware industry is on the brink of a deep shift towards RISC (mostly ARM) based devices. Apple's move to Apple Silicon shocked the industry deeply. The M1 set the pace of hardware evolution to a new level as upcoming Macs with M1X will most probably contain 4 M1 dies that equals to 40 cores!! One chip design but a lot of options from phones to high performance workstations - absolutely genius. That will save Apple a LOT of money. Apple has invested a lot into patents for 3D stacking chip technology and partnered up with TSMC to develop a 3nm-Plus chip for 2023 with Apple being the first customer signed on to use it. Moreover Apple booked more than the half of TSMC's 5nm production capacity next year. That is something that the other players are most probably not able to compete with and the head start that Apple has got now might lead to a dominance for the next years. For the first time ever a brand new Intel factory (the 7nm in Arizona) is not dedicated to x86 chips, but used as a foundry that produces ARM chips to a large degree. Intel is rumored to buy SFive for 2 billion USD which is creating RISC-V chip designs. Microsoft announced a lot of activity around Windows on ARM, announced Office 365 for ARM, announced an x86 interpreter layer similar to Apple's Rosetta 2. NVidia and Qualcomm announced desktop grade ARM processors. That all means it's soon game over for x86. This year will be extremely interesting.
Update 2: I like how the touch gestures don't conflict with OS-related gestures so far. On iOS, you can either have multitouch gestures enabled and can't play more than 2 notes on a virtual keyboard or play polyphonically but have no multitouch gestures.
Under Windows you can have both: Sliding in from different screen edges shows all apps, the start menu, title bar etc. and still play on the keyboard with 10 fingers (if you can 😄)
I had the surface pro 6 and the CPU would hit 70% with few plugins being used such as Diva, massive, effects etc. Also felt really fiddly with ableton. Ipad with touchable pro and macbook was a far slicker and more usable option.
Bitwig definitely lot better for tablet
@krassmann The new ARM architecture is definitely very interesting and my next tablet might indeed be an M1/X or the like.
For now, I have to say that I find Live on a 12" touch screen with 120% zoom level in full screen tablet mode very usable, I didn't expect that at all.
But how far you can get with this machine? How many tracks with an average setup like medium synth, channel strip, reverb? Looking at benchmarks the Intel chip is much much weaker than an M1.
Sure, no question.
I'm already accepting to freeze virtual instrument tracks to audio clips which will also dramatically reduce battery consumption.
Similar to this one?.
How do these compare to the Surface tablets?. Is the “touch” optimization dependent on brand/model or are all windows tablets about the same in that regard?.
Oh, that's quite expensive. You should be able to find one for around €300.
As far as I know, touch support is independent from the tablet model. In the end, it all depends on the DAW and plugins you're going to use.
Currently I'm testing with Live's on-board devices and Arturia Analog Lab.
Audio file and MIDI piano roll editing works great so far.
Could this be like scientology? Lol
Once you've bought an apple product don't ever expect to be able to leave the fold!
I've tried a load in my local pc shop last week and they all seem the same. Nothing noticeable between Samsung, lenovo, surface. If you're using a stylus for drawing then maybe you would need to investigate more.
fwiw, I'm running Bitwig 4 on my super ancient Sony Vaio Canvas Z (quadCore i7/gen4 intel)
and it runs the 477MB Demo File, Tauri - In The Dark, just fine without any hiccup.
The Project consists of 10+ lanes of Midi and Audio and Effects galore:
Here's a little jam i wanted to share using BitWig 4.01 on the ancient Vaio which runs like a champ!
File uses all native instruments and effects, so it should just open right up for you @rs2000 and anyone else who wants to give it a spin.
Thanks Mr! Can’t wait to check it out.
What’s interesting me right now: Bitwig now loads Ableton projects, and in spite of the quantum superiority of laptop DAWs over iOS, I’m always looking to keep the iPad in play
So apps on iPad that export work as Ableton projects (Gadget, TriqTraq, iKaossilator, etc etc) can now feed Bitwig…
I've just spent the morning setting up my iPad to control Bitwig using Driven by Moss and Open Stage Control.
With the supplied template you have full mixer and device control from your iPad. Not the most attractive UI bit it works well and everything is dynamically labeled so you know exactly what you are controlling
Oooh nifty neat. Wonder if you could build an OSC Template to serve as the UI on the iPad.
@Littlewoodg yeah i totally hear you. I’ll never give up the iPad now.
This little Vaio fits in nicely on the shelf:
@echoopera the client just serves the UI to an IP address, so you just browse to that address on any device on the same network and your good to go.