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
Sure. This is our first time testing with external beta testers. When I started this thread I didn’t know that testers can join just by using a public link. I thought that I would have to manually enter every email address. I limited the number of testers so that I could avoid entering hundreds of addresses. Now that I learned there is an easier way to register the testers, I think we can open it up to more people.
So here is what you need to join the test group:
Install Testflight app if you dont already have it:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/testflight/id899247664
Use this Invitation link:
https://testflight.apple.com/join/RPTo2w8j
Ok I think we can increase the range of gain on the input gain control. I don’t want to make it too huge. Its at +-15 dB now. I’ll take it up to +-20.
Thanks. I will work on a tone like this.
@Blue_Mangoo thanks! Will try later today.
@Blue_Mangoo Wow it sounds really amazing. I'm not gutarist so i'm checking it with drums and bass / leads - and -i'm amazed. Huge sound.
Appreciate layout if UI, it is useable in NS2 also in small "rectangle" view
Maybe in terms of CPU optimalisation it would be nice if instance which is not processing anything at the moment would suspend down processing just on inevitable minimum - now, based on CPU meter, it looks it is eating same amount of CPU even when it is not processing any sound at the moment .. This makes sense in case of multiple instances used in project, where not all are playing in same moment ...
Yes, the CPU usage is a serious weakness of this plugin. I spent months to shave off a few percent CPU and it’s still hogging more than I would like it to. At this point I’m afraid there might not be any way to significantly improve that situation because the main thing that is eating up cpu cycles is also the main thing that makes it sound good. There is one thing you could do to improve it though: I don’t think 16x oversampling is really necessary for most of the amp types, and thats especially true for clean amp types. Taking it down to 4x reduces the CPU load a bit.
If you do go ahead with the 5 band eq idea, I would suggest you have a higher and lower midrange control, and a high presence control. If they are at zero at 12 o clock position and subtractive to the left and boosting to the right, you will have excellent tone-shaping capability. The mid range is particularly useful for guitar within a mix.
Of the presets in the app I’ve used so far all sound good, but could do with a little extra presence to capture that ‘bite’. The attack transient is key in digital guitar modelling, due to latency and the nature of the beast, it often lets down otherwise serviceable amp models.
One further point, using 2 channels of AUM with 2 different but similar Gain Stage models, with subtle panning really improves the complexity and overall effect. The other AU advantage is you can simulate wet-dry rigs in multiple channels AUM.
Yes. 5 channels would help. I’m still working out how to set them up so that they do everything people would want them to do. The main reason why it’s important to have an Audio Unit guitar amp is so you can use a parametric EQ plugin to adjust the tone. If we put a fully parametric EQ Inside the plugin, it begs the question of why we bothered to make it AU3 compatible.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around the intended purpose of this app. A couple of your comments (@Blue_Mangoo) made it sound like a holistic blackbox, but then most of the others talk about using it as a component to build your own gear combination. So is this effectively a combo amp with no effects loop? For maximum flexibility and fun factor wouldn't it be better to decouple the pre-amp section from the power amp and cab? Then you can insert whatever effects you want in the middle, recreating an effects loop, or other creative use cases.
Hi @Blue_Mangoo , thank you for letting me participate in testing Gain Stage. My favorite guitar ampsim-AUv3 setup these days is ReAmp + IMPULSation; it looks - combined with some other AUv3-FX-apps (that I can turn on/off) - like this in AUM:
ReAmp has 6 (tweakable) Guitar Tube Amp presets and I loaded 6 (freeware) Cabinet IR's in IMPULSation (Fender, Vox, Marshall, etc.). This is more than enough for me to choose from for getting jazzy, bluesy and 'ambient' tones that I like (for my PRS SE One and Epiphone ES 339).
How can Gain Stage beat this? For me that would mean: one (!) AUv3, with:
* a (short) dropdownlist of 'classic' amps (also geared at the use of single coil, humbucker and P90 elements);
* a (short) dropdownlist of 'classic' cabinets (with 'baked in' cab-IR's);
* a 4-band EQ (bass - lo-mid - hi-mid - treble) (just for the output);
* a 4-band DRIVE (bass - lo-mid - hi-mid - treble) (like in ReAmp);
* a mono/stereo-input selector;
* a mono to stereo-output selector;
* preset-management (with a user-folder) within the app for saving/loading combinations of amps/cabs/EQ/DRIVE-selections.
That's it, I guess...
Other 'tonesculpting' like compression, distortion, phasing/flanging, delay and reverb can be done with other apps in the AUv3host.
Just a thought, because I'm not too overwhelmed by the tones in Gain Stage as it is now. You'll never satisfy everyone with Larry C.'s Kid C.-tone, nor with Peter Green's 'wrong phased' Les Paul humbucker if I asked you for that...
Agree, most of us have the tools already, EQ pre gain, post gain, and on the post delay/reverb output are all easy with AUM
Now that's how you sell some drugs... get 'em hooked and cut off the supply.
Works for me.
Kids will sell their parents Vinyl/CD collection to raise the money for an iTune Gift card
when the pure stuff stops being passed out.
Yes to this
The most successful IOS Amp Sim app is probably the Amplitube "Franchise".
They put a bundle of tones into a product and help buyer's make a quick decision
based up the Bundle name:
Hendrix
Slash
Dimebag Darrell
Brian May
Then they get less frustration with the app because they can simply say:
Of course you don't sound like Hendrix, etc. He practiced for years to make that Tone.
We can't make you play great... just let you own his equipment for $20. Get to work.
80% of tone is in your hands.
ToneStack gives the product away and sell $100+ in IAP's with a discounted "whole enchilada" bundle.
Stark tried to be an All-in-one AUv3 replacement for the above... which rolled out over
several years and was trashed in the first 24 hours here. It's wasn't that bad but it wasn't
that great. Worth the money for me.
Using better IOS FX Apps with ReAmp also became my Guitar Rig.
I'd call it a studio black box and let it build from word of mouth. It's not a Guitar Sim...
It's better. It's a "Tone Stylist Rack Unit"... something like the UAD Apollo interface that
lets musicians add DSP models of various $2,500 studio gear. You recognize the Tones
and appreciate that you can't get lost with pages of knobs.
This approach is what i LOVE about the Jax Filter Collection. It's a bunch of DSP codes.
Pivot and don't over promise. Make lots of DSP presets and sell more over time.
By not defining the use case it will likely be sold by word of mouth and build into a
franchise product line of IAP bundles like BeatHawk, Colossus Piano, etc.
I'm sure the tones you made for Guitars will have some interesting benefits for
synths, drums, etc. But If you intentionally made Synth, Drum "DSP'es" you'd have
more fans here. Fred Anton Corvest is great at that approach to making Apps successful.
Bandit is a swiss army knife for some truly gnarly "tones". Like an amp with a thrashed
speaker cone... just what some guitarists want. Or a loud amp mod'ed with a power rectifier.
yes. Basically it is that.
The reason for having an effects loop in an amp, as I understand it, is because you want to put some of your effects after the distortion stage (i.e. after the preamp). I believe that if it were possible to put effects after the output of the amp, people would do that but since the output power is too high for effects pedals to handle, the effects loop was created as a work-around. In the case of a software amp, there is no problem with putting the effects after the amp so there is no need for an effects loop. One might ask if it would make sense to put effects before the speaker cabinet, but in almost all cases it would make no difference whether the cabinet came before of after the post-distortion effects. The reason the order doesn’t matter is because the cab IR is a linear effect, meaning that it affects EQ and time-smearing but it doesn’t saturate or drive the signal. For linear effects like reverb, delay, and IR’s of all kinds, changing the order around has no effect on tone.
Yes. Our plugins on testflight are the new gateway drug.
I think you are right about amplitube winning the marketing by making a separate app for different styles. I think that would really help. I can see from the discussion on this thread that if a customer opens up the app and finds a whole lot of amp tone that isn’t his style, he says ‘meh’ to the whole thing. Right now I am trying to solve that by making something for everyone. But the more people we satisfy, the longer the list of amp types becomes. By the time we please everyone, it will be difficult to find good tones because there will be too many options.
Okay, cool. That makes sense to me. I haven't given this many mental cycles, but it jives with something I was recently trying out. I have the Helix Native AU on desktop, and was feeding that into Valhalla Shimmer, but started wondering if it made sense to "shimmer" the cab, like a guitar in space, or if the shimmer should be before the speaker and mic. I did some quick testing of recreating an effects loop by running two instances and disabling various parts to recreate a separate pre-amp and power amp with the shimmer in the middle but I didn't notice an immediate difference. Although to be fair I should re-attempt that because it was late and I rushed through it, so now I'm doubting if I did it correctly.
[Edit] Actually, intuitively it seems like this would be different. In cases like this, where the effect is adding sonic content, like say the octave up pitch shifting, by having it in front of the cabinet you'd get the normal roll-off from the limits of the guitar speaker and cab. But having it after the shimmer effect is unfiltered.
Theoretically yes, but you don't get total recall of your favorite sounds with the plugin then. You would have to start using apeMatrix/AUM/DAW templates all the time which isn't possible if you've already started working on a project.
I have no idea how to do this without integrating two full-fledged EQs (pre and post amp) inside the AUv3 plugin.
I suggest a bit of computer science: FOLDERS. Really helps organize chaos. Works for any data type. Like paper. I keep all my folders in a big heap on the floor. Saving up for a cabinet.
I heard that helps.
Seriously, Preset Management has also killed a lot of great apps. Too few... it's a rip-off.
Can't make my own? It's poorly design. Can't share 'em. WTF? You'll see.
Handle it well and it increases the value of an app 10 fold.
Some dev's just hate the basic GUI polish like good data management options for their user.
They focus on managing the app's data. But users have data management problems too.
Check out Pure Platinum Synth for a good role model in this regard. Excellent Preset Management, IMHO. It takes weeks to get through everything and probably has few refunds as a result. More presets can mean more fun for the buyer. Trading them with your friends with User Presets is a hobby for many here.
Yes, for a shimmer effect, the order does matter. Effects that can be swapped without affecting the tone are EQ, reverb (but not shimmer), delay, and IR convolution. Most everything else is order dependent (compression, distortion, chorus, flanger, phaser, pitch shift).
However, I can’t think of a situation where putting an effect plugin before the speaker cab would allow you to get a sound that you cant get by putting it after. The difference is usually not very noticeable and even when it is noticeable you could usually compensate by adjusting the EQ
I think that it’s not the matter. I could send you a bunch of tones that I like, but the thing is usually my needs about tone are not static, since it depends on what I’m gonna use it for, and rarely is a question of “want to sound like Buddy Miller for this”. this is not the way I work, what I want is not an app that sound like this or like that famous tone, but an app that let me look for the tone I have in mind, and in the process getting something similar enough, or different but exciting enough. Is the way I work with my hardware amps.
Blixa Barged and Marc Ribot use similar clean Fender amps, but their (great) tone is pretty different, That is what I expect from an amp.
Best
I think we should do an app that has extensive preset management and preset sharing, but I want to do that in an app that has a complete suite of effects. It seems half-baked to say you can save a preset internally to gainstage but then expect you to get your chorus, delay, compression, etc from external plugins. You would have to save a preset in your DAW anyway in order to save the complete rig.
So gain stage will not have internal presets but a future app probably will.
Tags and filters on those tags works far better than folders !
I think opening the Beta to anyone is going help. No waiting and a better product at the end of this phase. I'll expect 100 pages before we see a product however when I thought we'd see a product by the weekend. Now it might take another 10 weeks but it will make it better.
A lot better because it gets vetted.
Sorry but that’s not the case. Having delay before reverb (and also IR) can yield a very different sound to delay after. The position of EQ definitely does matter too - putting an EQ before an overdrive/fuzz can sound very different to putting it after.
@Blue_Mangoo : it seems like like Gain Stage needs an output volume knob that is post-everything and has no effect on tone. I am finding that with some combinations of settings that give me a nice tone the output is too hot for the post-EQ or IR that I feed the signal too and requiring me to stick AUM's gain control after it.
Since adjusting the current input/output gain settings a simple output level control would be useful. It will make level matching when switching presets much more friendly.
Hm, so it is not possible to stop processing if incomimg audio is none, and just activate it again when plugin receives some audio from host ?
I suspect the primary concern is latency. Running HOT insures minimal response times.
The start/stop adds some latency or funky thresholds like a Noise Gate app.
Getting an answer is just another clue to the other developers to compete. Kemper and
the other master "model" eliminators won't disclose their discoveries and @Blue_Mangoo should hold some aspects of the design secret. The use of the app is open but the implementation details should be off limits here.
But @Blue_Mangoo has been generous with details before. And probably slipped a lot of clues to budding FX coders that will use the details and compete on price. Good for us as
cost sensitive users.
This app has some special sauce for me... high latency is the complaint of every working guitar player and IOS apps. Solve that one problem and you have a winner. Give that up and it's meh.
Currently the output volume control is the second-to-last thing. Only the peak limiter comes after it. So if you aren’t peaking out then the output gain IS the last step in the signal path.
I want to keep it in that order so that you can push the volume higher without clipping. If you need a post-limiter volume control, using the gain control in AUM is a good way to do it. We will have more options when we make a standalone fx rig but for this plugin I want to rely on the host app to do those utility things