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
What iPad are you running? @Beathoven reports above a 26-40% DSP hit in AUM on Air 3.
Or is ApeMatrix more efficient? Can you even compare CPU and DSP?
Obviously I’ve got the ceiling with my tech knowledge :-))
I am running a 10.5 pro, but keep in mind... each instance is running 16 steps of sequencers within each instance. They are also running dozens of in-app modulations AND effects within each instance. That’s pretty complex I think.
I loaded up 3 sequence-based preset instances in AUM and it hovered around 29%
Ok. So, again, 3 instances of sequenced patches, all playing:
DSP mostly reads around the 45% - 50% occasionally dropping to 35% for a few seconds.
Interestingly, adding a further 2 instances, both playing sequence-based patches, only nudged the DSP up to 51% on my Air 3.
Just a reminder: until the CPU gets close to maxed out, the CPU% readings can be deceptive because of the way that throttling works.
To get a more definitive sense, figure out how many instances (running the same preset) can be run before you get to 90% CPU.
https://wiki.audiob.us/cpu_load_comparisons_and_testing
That's the showstopper for me ... with a sound like that I'm thinking about creating rich ambient pads. I suspect it might be a CPU killer though with more than a few notes, given the lushness of the sound?
Hi Guys
Great sounds from this beast.
Any one know how to switch on the sequencer when inside AUM?
I can turn it on as a Stand alone just can’t find in AUM
Cheers
You have to hit the play button in AUM too
Looks really cool. love the purple color, reminds me of an Emu MP-7.
It sounds nice but MPE stands for "MIDI Polyphonic Expression" so how does it fit with being monophonic?
Really tempting, but yeah monophonic is a shame, is that to make it friendly to older ipads I wonder?
Thanks; running the same iPad here, so good news.
Interesting that Apematrix is half the CPU cost of AUM. Don't have it and have been considering it recently.
Yep I knew that, it was the button to switch on the sequencer that I could not find. Solved now thanks, the tiny buttons to the by the side of the logo revealed it.
It has more to do with expressiveness than polyphony.
Most of my favorite synths are mono, so for me it’s not a problem at all. Unfortunately...
I don’t think it was for that reason especially, there is something unique about monophonic synths, and thats not just the fact that they play only one note at a time. I used to love my old Moog Prodigy.
I have opened 3 instances in Audiobus, each driven by Polyphase with different sounds running under different channels and seen only 20 % on the DSP.
Not the same in AUM seems to draw a lot more juice.
To be clear, I wasn't running exactly the same presets on both quick tests. I just randomly picked 3 for each that had sequences built in... figured they'd be the most cpu hungry.
And, full disclosure... I beta tested this one. Seems like he's been working on it for nearly a year.
I don't want to go on and on about how much I freakin' LOVE this app because I don't want to sound like a beta-testing sycophant
But, let me say that Shockwave is easily one of my top favorite apps of 2019. Maybe top 3. It's just so fun to get lost exploring in. It's hard to explain. I'm not treating like a synth so much like others here are comparing it to. I realize several users here are musicians and want a sound tool to use in their music production, etc.
I mostly dig making interesting sound compositions and experimenting. I don't want to get bogged down in a bunch of virtual cables playing around with modular stuff. Don't get me wrong, I really like miRack too. I only mention miRack because that's the sort of mindset I'm in when I experiment with Shockwave. Except all of the components are self contained and connected via dials, sequencers, and modulation.
Also, don't let the interface intimidate. It looks like a lot, but once you figure out a handful of dials, it all falls into place. I'd recommend new users play with presets and see how they were set up for different effects.
When Jacob mentions the "X-Ray" button, he doesn't actually show what that does. He sort of noodles on his keyboard instead. I'm guessing that was an oversight. Anyway, what happens is that all the dials that are modulating, light up and you can see what's doing what.
Another very cool thing is that you can send midi into Shockwave AND you can send it out. So, you can have one instance of Shockwave set up and being driving by sequence 1, modulated by sequence 2, and then sending sequence 1 or 2 out to drive yet another instance of Shockwave, or a drum synth, or anything really. You can get really interesting combinations going very quickly.
You know how when you get that new synth and you're just gushing over it for maybe a week or so. Then after while the new app smell kinda wears off and you feel compelled to buy whatever the next hot new app is? Well, that hasn't happened to me with Shockwave. I've been playing with it off and on for nearly a year and I absolutely love experimenting with it every time. No joke.
Obviously, not every app is going to give every user the same level of satisfaction. But for me... Shockwave remains as fresh today as it did months ago, and the more I explore, the more I love it.
The sounds you can get from this beast are so vast, deep, evolving, big, thick, strange, alien and lush. I can't speak to it's performance on a machine below a 10.5 Pro, but I can say that I've never hit any kind of brick wall or cpu cap. I can't even remember it crashing at all. It's built very solid.
That's all I got. I hope others get as much joy out of this one as I have and continue to.
Yeah it's not enough to put me off, I'm inching towards the buy button anyway
And even Moog put a polyphonic setting in the Model D app, which is one big advantage it has over a real one.
I’m liking it a lot on first play but there is one thing bugging me - if I am turning a knob, the modulation panel pops up very quickly. Jakob said it pops up after a couple of seconds (I thought anyway) but it seems more like half a second? Is there a way to turn this off or make it a longer press as I’m having to close a lot of popups when just turning knobs. I’m on the original iPad Pro 12.5 by the way.
@skiphunt
This is what I do in AUM pretty much every session
How does this fair in sound to the 2 other named Phase Distortion synths on iOS, NPD and Phase84?
I have a first gen iPad Pro 9.7 with the 2 gigs of ram, and this is what I’m getting after 4 instances all running separate sequences from AUM... I’d be shocked if your air 2 couldn’t handle it. It seems very efficient.
I’m floored at the sophistication of this app and the polish of the available special features.
The one thing I wish for: a modulation overview panel that would show what, for example, the modulators are routed to (e.g. LFO1 is routed to x, y, z; LFO 2 is routed to w, y, z). Maybe it ma there and I’ve missed it. Still exploring.
Hit the button called "Mod" and you'll have a panel that shows an overview what's routed to what. And there's a slider for each so you can change the modulation for each.
NPD is a great sounding synth. I beta'd on that one but never really got on with the interface so I never bought it. I don't have the other. I haven't used NPD enough to do a fair comparison though.
Some more videos would be most welcome... for those of us who are broke after BF, but who can’t resist giving a loving home to a stray synth on a cold night. 😁
MPE currently only seems to work in standalone, not in AUv3 (though the button is there, so it's presumably on the to-do list). I also had some initial problems getting it to hear my MPE controllers (Artiphon and Seaboard Block), which mysteriously resolved themselves when I connected both controllers at once. And when I couldn't connect directly, routing through MidiFire for some reason did the trick as a workaround.
The modulation window keeps appearing when I dont want. Like when adjusting a knob (maybe its recognizing that as long press?)
Anyone else?
Thank you very very much. I was only able to explore this app under less than ideal circumstances so this slipped by me. Appreciate the assist.
So much to explore and it sounds fantastic!
You might have to mess with channel settings since it’s billed as single channel MPE. If you haven’t already you should get the third party dashboard iOS app since Roli haven’t seen fit to create their own. It’s called “Block Dashboard.” I think I tried it with KB-1 and it worked ok, MPE style.
@musgo I was also thrown off by the description "one channel MPE". I don't think that exists, since MPE needs at least 2 channels. One channel (usually Channel 1) is used for global messages. The remaining channels (usually Channels 2–16) are used to transmit notes and expressive data.
However, I think monophony and MPE are compatible. I assume the MPE mode instructs the synth to interpret the channels as described above, but being monophonic, the synth will only render one note at a time.