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
This is the video that got me off the fence:
Note that at some point the distortion level kicks up -- at that point he used a footswitch to turn on one of the Katana's virtual stomp boxes (a Blues Screamer simulation if I recall).
(Btw, he recorded with two mics: one in front of the amp and one aimed at the back.
When I bought mine (the 50 watt version), I did not have high expectations of it. I just got it so that I would have a compact practice amp that didn't sound terrible at low volume and I was on a small budget. I asked a friend who gigs a lot what I should look at and he said "just get a Katana 50 watt -- no amp in its price range is close and amps twice as expensive don't sound twice as good". It took me a few months of reading reviews and periodically going to a guitar store before I got it. It has exceeded my expectations.
It sounds really cool in that video. But that guitarist would probably still sound cool even on a bad amp.
Yeah -- his lines would sound good, but it would sound like a good player through a bad amp. When I got the amp home, I was surprised about how easy it was for me to dial in a good sound. To me the real test is less super high-gain sounds than the range of distortion in this video. I find that this sort of thing is what amp sims on iOS are the absolute worst at.
Completely possible that the more expensive modeling amps are even better (they were out of my price range so I didn't try), but even the Katana blows away what amp sims on iOS and the related desktop sims. One can get those amp sims to sound pretty good if one adapts one's playing and doesn't try to get sounds out of them that they can't do -- like the sort of tone in the video.
The sound is obviously the 1st thing that gets noticed - BUT - it’s how the amp responds to touch, tone and volume from either playing softer/harder and/or turning down the volume/tone on the guitar itself and/or using your fingers and/or pick.. That’s usually the magic ingredient that will make a guitarist “take notice”. Response to dynamics..
Can you really dig into a string and have it react the way you expect? Lighten up your touch and have the sound change accordingly? It really becomes an extension of the actual notes that are played. It’s how they are delivered (even attitude-wise)..
I can vouch for the Kantana 1st version 100 combo. It’s a great combo for the money, I use it at gigs, in the house, headphones, plugged into the iPad and it rocks out. I’ve never attached it to tone studio as I get what I want straight out of it, it’s loud, even at 0.5 if you crank it, at 100 it’ll blow the windows out.
I have a few old valve amps knocking about but they’re heavy, in some cases unreliable and need maintenance, the Kantana is light, reliable and no maintenance. It’s not going to replace an Orange rocker 30 but it’s good enough to hold its own with any amp. As has been said, it sounds better than any amp sim I’ve tried with the possible exception of the glorious Flying Haggis, which appears to have flown its last flight. And, according to many, the first version Kantana beats the new version 2 hands down?
@Wrecked : mine is a generation 1, also.
I’ve put together a Midi Designer Pro template to access all of its settings (and to let me use an expression pedal to control the wah wah), and I am really enjoying it..as there are effects s pedals in it that I really like...especially for ambient guitar.
It also lets you use combinations not possible with the front panel alone (at least on the 50w..like using both Boost and Mod effects at the same time).
Cool.
Where did you hear that? I’ve heard the exact opposite, that Mk II is better
A few places, think Boss rushed it out to capitalise on the market plus Christmas. I’ve not tried it so no idea, I’m quite happy with the old one, sometimes the first version of stuff is better. I’ve got amps that are 40 years old that are way better than new versions. New is not always best but on this one = Dave Simpson, You tube does a good comparison video and unboxing Video first. They’re quite comprehensive and long. Difficult to comment as I’m not in the room, and of course opinions, opinions.
Dave's super tasty intro playing ends at 10:25-ish.. He's a big time Katana fan and great player overall..
Sorry different strokes, I was not impressed with his playing at all.
Crucial points - and that's a particular strong aspect of the Kemper Profiling Amp.
Other than that the Kemper a 'regular' modelling amp with some 80 or so parameters.
The trick of the Kemper is that it generates all these parameters from a series of measuring signals during the 'profiling process', which seems to cover the dynamic behaviour of the model really well.
Both Kemper and AxeFX units are expensive because they are literally designed and built by 1-man-shows. 2 developers with experience over decades on their respective DSP platform.
(Kemper uses Motorola M56K, Fractal uses Analog Devices Tiger Sharc)
Roland/Boss with the Katana is a completely different economic scale - they use their custom ESC2 FPGA.
Scuffham (as mentioned earlier) is also highly regarded and shows that you can do it on an Intel-CPU, too. In the end it's up to the developer's skills, not a specific hardware architecture.
Yes, I noticed that when doing By-ear modeling like the video at the start of this thread I often reach a point where the modeled amp sounds like the song I am using for a reference in the sense that it has the same balance of highs, mids, and lows, but it doesn’t feel amazing. That often means it’s time to reset both EQs and start over.
Two days ago I tested a model of the sag that occurs when the power supply doesn’t supply enough charge to sustain the output of the tubes. It was a night and day difference in terms of sensitivity and tone. The sound opened right up and became clear and distinct and very warm.
I initially thought that the tubes were the main secret ingredient of the amplifier but I don’t think so anymore. I don’t know enough about electronics to understand why solid state amps can’t sag like that but in principle I don’t see any reason why solid state couldn’t be designed to drain the power supply capacitor in exactly the same way.
Tubes are active parts of an amp design and don't produce any 'sound' on their own.
It's the parts of the whole thing 'working' together, but transformers have (probably) the most influence.
They are challenging to model: a mixture of inductance, resistance and capacitance, influenced by wire type, wiring 'style', metal choice, form of metal, isolation etc and to make things worse they even can distort when driven into magnetic saturation.
There are 2 preamps with a functionally identical design: the Telefunken V76 (tube) and V676 (transistor). Owners of both models state it's almost impossible to tell them apart in a blind test. The tiny difference is supposed to becrelated to the highly specific input transformer of the V76. While these are microphone preamps, they still prove there's no functional difference between tubes and transistors beyond circuit design.
More recent examples of transformer influence are the Golden Age Pre-73 with or without a Carnhill transformer or the Focusrite ISA, built from the most common cheapo 5532 opamps, but featuring a specially designed input transformer.
While anyone will agree about a difference (with/without transformer or between types), probably noone will find proper wirds to describe what exactly is so different.
Guitar amplifiers are often driven at their edge of specs or beyond.
In such situations small signal changes may result in excessive alterations, that's why amp tuners frequently select parts (even simple capacitors) by experience, not by specs.
When you exchange a tube in a guitar amplifier it may result in a different tone, but that's simply because the tube drives the circuit in a slightly different way - which results in statements like 'this tube sounds better' (or worse)
Tubes are hand-made and vary in specs - of which only a few are measured for selection, otherwise tubes would be even more expensive.
@Telefunky hence your name! Good to make that connection finally 🙂
Yeah, and the crazy thing is how it can affect your playing in that moment.. when everything is flowing sound-wise + feel-wise, your playing also flows freely because everything is reacting as one.. you hear it in your head, you play it with your hands, you feel it internally + externally.. it can be otherworldly when it all clicks.. those are the moments that we strive for as players.. 🎸 never mind if you add an audience to that equation.. 🤪
Of course I'm coming from a tube amp perspective because that's all I own at the moment.. and I'm certainly not discounting anything else that will give you that experience.. If you can reach nirvana from a tiny little battery powered, 6 inch speaker thingy strapped on your back.. I'm truly happy for you.. we all want THAT!!
@Blue_Mangoo — I want to encourage you to keep searching for that guitar amp tone that you've already started.. I enjoy your thought process and the directions taken when you discover something.. it's that curiosity and questioning why something is the way it is, that will lead to new, exciting, paths-less-taken or never-attempted.. and then.. breakthrough.. so please, continue that journey.. I look forward to the results.. 🙏
This is exactly the conclusion what my experiments seem to be supporting. But I hesitate to consider the matter settled because a lot of smart engineers are building solid state guitar amps that don’t sound like tube amps. If getting that cool sound we’re this simple then why are so many amps and software models still not doing it well?
Well perhaps you answered that question when you said the transformers are really difficult to model. The model I tested was not complex at all and it still seemed to sound good. But I know from experience that my ears have delusions of grandeur when listening to anything that I built myself. I’ll let it sit for a while and do some more objective testing.
Thanks for the encouragement.
I frequently recall an idea I read in a famous quality management book years ago, can’t remember anymore if it was a book by w. Edwards Deming or Joseph Juran. Anyway the concept was that if you think quality cannot be defined and measured then you haven’t tried hard enough to define and measure it. It can ALWAYS be defined and measured; if not then it doesn’t exist. I don’t know if that’s true in the absolute sense but I believe it applies in the case of the “feel” of an amplifier. Just because we don’t know why it feels that way doesn’t mean that a simple and clear explanation doesn’t exist; it just means that we haven’t found it yet.
...Anyway the concept was that if you think quality cannot be defined and measured then you haven’t tried hard enough to define and measure it. It can ALWAYS be defined and measured; if not then it doesn’t exist. I don’t know if that’s true in the absolute sense but I believe it applies in the case of the “feel” of an amplifier.
Imho it cannot be defined in the context of a guitar amplifier because that type of gear is almost always 'abused' in a way that flaws become the main feature.
An amp has a limited range of linear operation in which it makes the signal simply louder, but with an instrument you often want to cross that border and make it 'break up' the tone.
How this transition is performed (in real world) has never been part of the original amp design and depends on personal taste, playing style and instrument.
It depends on a lot of subjective and random factors, so how to measure that ?
Today guitar amps are of course designed with breakup and drive (the non-linear amp performance) in mind, but still instrument and taste can't be measured.
A quote by Christoph Kemper still applies (stated back in the days when he designed the Access Virus synth on a Motorola prototyping board):
It's easy to grab a formula from a math book to code a filter, but it takes experience to make it sound great - because that's not always the mathematically most accurate way.
Well, obviously people have their own taste. But I'm not thinking of a one-size-fits-all definition of amp tone goodness that applies to every possible kind of tone and every person's individual taste at the same time. Rather I'm thinking of the situation where you have said to yourself "I like this type of tone" and you have an audible image in your own mind of what that sounds like. Once you know exactly what you own personal ideal tone is, then it should be possible to analyze the amps that produce that tone that you personally love and define what it is that makes them sound so good to you personally. So there is a lot of variation in personal taste, but there isn't a lot of variation in terms of how to get one specific tone that you personally love. It comes from an amp doing specific things that obey the laws of electronics in a predictable way. That's the context where tone quality can be defined and measured.
This post now made me join the Audiobus forum. I’ve been doing exactly the same in AUM to get my guitar sound. At first I used bias and others but they never gave me the sound I wanted. So I experimented with impulse responses (on the desktop) hoping for an app developer to release an IR AUv3 loader for iPad. But that also didn’t happen. So I experimented with EQs to match the IRs that I liked. But that lacked saturation and compression so I added saturation and finally shaped the saturation with a second EQ and voila there it was
I earned a lot of praise for my guitar sound but as soon as I started to explain people how I achieved it they didn’t seem to be interested anymore. No boutique stomp boxes? No fender amp? No Strymon involved? Nope. Just some Fabfilter EQ, AUM saturation and EOS2 reverb on my iPad. Oh well..
I guess it’s too humble for some people
Not so magical. And isn’t iPad only a toy anyway?
I used that sound in a guitar ambient band if you’re interested (I play the lower rhythm baritone guitar): https://ausklang.bandcamp.com/
Specially audible here in the intro/outro: https://ausklang.bandcamp.com/track/nevis-live
Or YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjWEwbp7OlTKLX2ym0v2NWg
Here the AUM screenshots (bare in mind I play a baritone guitar so that setting might be a bit bright with standard scale guitars):
And my setup (guitar into toneshifter mega, connected to iPad Air with AUM):
@jacou
Funny. I've done a few experiments as well:
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/35491/grind-and-dlym-in-aum-for-your-guitar#latest
My latest one is a freely adjustable waveshaper in Audulus.
@jacou Welcome to the forum! You guys sound great. Are you using any other hardware? And would it be too much to ask to do a screen recording of you playing with settings in AUM?
Thanks!
Thanks for sharing. I’m glad to hear there are more people who are making their own software amps this way.
@Blue_Mangoo : a feature that would be great in the EQ would be ability to "fingerprint " (profile) an input sound and save the fingerprint then fingerprint another sound and have the EQ suggest settings that would give the second sound a similar profile to the first.
That would be really nice. That sounds like what a Kemper amp does. I’ll need some time to think about how to implement that so it probably won’t be in version one.
This is the problem (and solution) with pre-annoucing an app. The enhancement requests come in and delay the release of the app. We could let the app ship and then request updates. Ideally, there's some beta testing by someone like @flo26 who has the existing hardware, ears and experience to provide useful input.
If Klevgrand had done that maybe we'd see more positives about the Stark Amp sim.
As it was the "cabinet" feature killed all buzz.
If you haven't looked at it the Fabfilter Q3 (and maybe Q2) can do this. It was really helpful to me for visualizing the differences between KQ Dixie's rendering of patches that were the same as FM Player's.
Thanks. I have FabFilter pro Q. That is a great feature. The challenge with applying that to amp modeling is that you have to get the settings for the pre-distortion EQ and the post EQ. At low volume when it’s not distorting you are simply hearing both of them in series; at high volumes you get something quite different. Somehow the Kemper amps must be comparing those two to come up with the settings for both pre and post EQ independently. Or they could be using a different modeling Technique.
I don’t know what Bias from Positivegrid does, but the fact that you have to select an amp that is similar to the sound you want before you profile and match suggests that it is only matching the post EQ and not the pre-EQ. That would be exactly like what FabFilter pro-q does. This makes me curious to see if you can build your own profiling amp by guessing the pre-EQ, then using fab filter to profile the post EQ.
Anyway, if I do that later on I would prefer to figure out something like what kemper does, and that will take time.