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
hm must be a bad unit then...
Hi there fellow Circuit users!
I’ve accumulated a whole set of loops on my circuit now, which i‘d like to record in Beatmaker 3 for further arrangement.
How would you go about doing that? Would you record all the patterns onto the pads or directly into tracks? which way is more efficient?
Cheers
Interested in the answers to this also
I am about to go off to YT to try and find a tut for using Circuit as a midi controller for the iPad, but if anyone can reccomend the same I would be grateful...
i just got my circuit yesterday but i just sequenced synth one with fugue machine and recorded it into the circuit sequencer.
i’m having a hard time setting up the midi out from ipad tho , i turner midi filtering to send to none haha and it still sends to synth one in the circuit. i can’t get it change from synth one to synth 2 with midi filtering so i need to find the midi settings in circuit
but start stop is in sync!
if you power up with shift you can set the midi channels i believe!
according to loopop you should be able to control any parameter in beatmaker with circuits 8 knobs. and you got 4 times as many! as for the pad grid: you can use these when you are in chromatic mode on synth 1 and 2 to hit beatmakers pads. although the layout takes a bit of getting used to.
so I watched some ElectroniSounds videos. and Dean recommends to record all the loops onto the pads. then you‘ll only have to lay out the loops within the pianoroll.
this way seems a bit odd at first, but you can design a whole song in one pattern. what‘s not so nice is, that you can‘t slice the audio into pieces for stuttering purposes etc. that‘s where replicant comes into play i guess.
any other thoughts on this?
jamming on this circuit is giving me GAS for hardware again lol. i’ve had so much and sold most of it but i have the fever again. i’m thinking about being the circuit mono station , seems to play really great with the original circuit and quite capable of a wide array of sound. since the circuit only has two synth tracks i def find myself wanting more and using ios synths to fill but i just wanna keep jamming on the circuit , so i think the mono is the best answer to add just a couple more voices. there’s so many desktop synths out there but i’m really loving what circuit can do and what i’m seeing mono do online. for now i’ll set it up with my electribe then on ios use koala to make loops and phrases, probably put in some groovebox app as well, and just get a simple hassle free jam going
yeah I know what you mean. I've sold a bunch of volcas because I came to the conclusion that it's faster to use vst instruments instead. At the moment I try to figure out a worklow with my ipad and the circuit. I surely cannot go all these Synth and FX apps go to waste ;-) I guess I just need a simple recording app in which I also can use AUV3s. Something like Reaper for Ipad or so :-D
I am ok.
I have been really practicing intensely with the Octatrack as center of the rig.
All audio going into iPad as final destination.
All hardware and I use SAMPLr as an instrument and BLOCS/LPAD app as transition tools and auditioning.
I also throw in ELEC PIANO APP, BORDERLANDS, ANIMOOG, and GEOSHRED.
I am really always walking the line of 2 tracks...Electronica w vocals and more on the dark NIN/MINISTRY side and then my NYC TECH club stuff. My mood is general determinant of which.
Lot of practice for muscle memory on much you ...you of all ppl know.
I am also busy with my lizards, parrots, dogs, and life stuff.
I do have few projects that may get a little attention if I am reading the cards right. I am fostering some industry relation ships in techno that I have not done in years. That may prove to be an opportunity I have been training for my whole life.
IF IF IF IF I get lucky and things progress as they have been.
I have had some help from others that I could not do any of it without of course.
But, COVID has been pretty creative for me you know.
IS FAMILY WELL? YOU ? HEALTH?
i want to run the audio from circuit into my ipad, no problem just plug in my focusrite via USB, however i also want to midi sync it with my ipad at the same time, problem lol can’t plug both into the cck... so would any powered USB hub allow for this? or do i need to look for something specific
i see usb 3.0 all over amazon, is 3.0 good for this set up. i have ipad pro from like 2018
@reasOne does your Focusrite have midi ports? Could use DIN to DIN for midi. USB hub also works.
i wish it did! is the old 2i2 .
word ya i will need a port i just need to look and see if usb 3 will work with this
I used a MIO lead midi 5 pin din to USB. I believe when I had a circuit which I sold a while back I'm sure that done the trick and pipe the audio out of the circuit headphone jack. Made by the same people who brought us Audio4+ iconnect boxes etc. I just plugged it in using the din to midi jack cables that came with the circuit.
They are not cheap but more reliable than some cheaper brands that don't work aswell. I'm still using the lead now with my LP Pro
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00CO5IRSG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_oUNAFbTS0MV6M
so you ran the mio from the headphone jack to circuit midi , while the usb side was in your audio interface via cck?
finally got a powered usb hub and now using the circuit to sequence stuff in aum as well as hear the circuit is working! super easy to set up and def the best aum midi controller i’ve ever used! i’m not rich so i can’t get the mpcs or maschine stuff but either way i’m very happy with the results here!
works great with apps like beathawk to use the synth engines of circuit to trigger samples 😀
@reasOne NO.
A bit of Circuit love.
Im using my Cicuit most of the time as a midi controller and sequencer for AUM. Combined with Segments an a few choice synths it is a killer setup. (And Ive not even got to using program change jet.)
I had a few Korg grooveboxes and never completely clicked but I find this combo works.
I just got a Launch Control to offload the mixing side and now just sequence on the Circuit.
The ipad with external controllers can get pretty close to perfect for me.
i agree it is really good almost perfect for a controller, have you seen loopops template for playing samples chromatically? i haven’t tried it yet but it seems really good
A powered USB hub (USB3 is A-OK) and a USB->MIDI cable thingy should have you going with audio and MIDI. Some USB->MIDI cables are crap. https://www.amazon.com/Converter-LiDiVi-Professional-Keyboard-Adapter/dp/B071KLC884 seems to have good reviews. Best bet is probably to get one from an actual music gear retailer like Sweetwater or whomever.
Or... get a new interface that integrates audio and MIDI IO. Lots of threads here with recommendations.
Interesting. Can you give an example of how you would set up an AUM session with Circuit? I mean are you recording your Circuit sequences for example into Atom instances are something like that? I‘m really curious ;-) You would have to change the midi channels all the time, wouldn‘t you?
Cheers
If I get to a stage where I want to add more than two synths then I usually send everything to Xequence 2 then change midi channels. I think Ive only done that a couple of times, usually I just export the stems and play with them in blocswave. But the Circuit is by far the most friendly feeling groovebox/controller by a long shot for me.
Tbh I get the best results with the generative apps like troublemaker’s sequencer and riffer than playing the circuits keyboard but it feels more like making my music with the circuit
ah I see. So there are three ways to use the Circuit with an iPad: recording stems from the Circuit, recording Midi sequences and playing in keyboard mode. Thanks for the inside info!
Now I need to find out which way suits me best. I mean I love building up loops when using Circuit as standalone but I always want to get further with these ideas. I haven't tried recording midi yet.
I retract what I said earlier in this thread, I’m going to decommission my Circuit and take it entirely out of use. I’m not going to sell it, I’ll shelve it and just keep it around as a toy. However, I’ve spent the weekend with the editor on it at a higher depth than I’ve ever gone into, and I now realise it’s not sufficient as a synth for me at all.
It lacks modulation possibilities entirely, between oscillators and filters. There’s no way to cross modulate the oscillators in any way, the ring modulator is all there is (and that doesn’t specify what is happening there – is it modulating using the waveforms selected, or some other wave?). I can’t modulate the filter from an oscillator. Very simply, the oscillators are not modulation sources at all.
It’s a nice synth, but not suitable for me, it’s too restricted to be a ‘main’ synth. To be honest, there aren’t any hardware synths I really want that I can’t also supplant with an iPadOS synth instead, and probably better. The sequencer in a circuit isn’t what I want at all, it’s too square and unexperimental. The only thing left is to use it as a controller, but I don’t really like it as a controller. Out it goes, I’ll remove it from sight and I shall stop thinking about it.
I’ve spent the entire day programming the Circuit from scratch, treating it as purely a ‘basic’ synth, not trying to do anything wild or outlandish, not pushing it to limits, not trying to show off my synthesist skills. Just keeping it basic, doing completely ‘normal’ synth patches that almost any other synth could do. Same with the macro knobs, not trying to push the envelope there (ha), just using a knob for one thing (except in one case, where I quite liked an LFO that fades in and then as a separate part of the range, gets slower).
I can authoritatively say, the Novation Circuit is about the worst synth I’ve ever programmed. It really is a shit synth, in so many ways. And to top it all, it doesn’t sound good. I’ve packed it up back in the box it came in.
@u0421793 thought I’d share this: as a drum machine / groovebox addict I bought the Circuit and have made tons of music with it but not a single bit of that music employed the synths.
One could argue that I’m only using 1/4th of the machine. One could argue that for a sample sequencer there are far better options. The truth is that I love the Circuit for what it is And what it isn’t: the sound and workflow are unique and I have zero regrets along with zero interest in the onboard synths.
Speaking of synths though I love the Circuit workflow enough to have also bought a Circuit Mono Station. And I’ll likely get the sampling-only Circuit too. All this is to say: maybe you’ll find the synth portion of OG Circuit to be useless, but maybe the sample-flipping and sequencing to be greatly rewarding.