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.
Werkbench still alive and well? A few Qs from potential buyer
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I love apps that will help with live, spontaneous yet structured things.
I love how it looks like I could assign slots, play one thing and have instant backing to build on.
In all the videos I've seen, the user fills some slots first before hitting play. Then once that initial recording is playing, they assign and fill some more on the fly. What I'd like to know is can you fill those first slots while it is playing? ... So, pre-assign slots / hit play / record your live sound at first slot / your pattern instantly plays. That seems possible but I haven't seen it happen. I was also thinking it would be cool if you can pre-assign filter or pitch etc values to each slot, then you'd have an instant pattern but with variation, based on your live input.
Also, I was assuming that once playing, you'd have to record your live sounds at the right time, ie at the time of one of your assigned slots. But I was kind of hoping you could fill that subsequent slot by playing at any time at all, seeing it has the threshold record thing going on. For example, if I have assigned slot 1 and 3 to record, but I record my sound while the sequencer is at 4, will it then appear in the right places? That would be cool.
I think this app is unique in having the pattern program slots pre-assigned, then filled with one hit, and also one of the few with an instant record threshold operation.
And is it running OK on iOS 13? The developer @KarlBolasol last posted here over a year ago, with some updates he was planning to do. I'd like to think it was still under active development, and not abandonware.
Comments
You can record or add samples on the fly. Just turn off “mute while sampling” under the sampling tab.
You can also pre-assign per step filter/effects/levels, even on steps that don’t have samples yet. It’s @ the “fancy controls” console in the middle.
works for me, running the latest version of iPadOS 13 on my iPad Pro .. It’s not the most stable app in my arsenal, but it doesn’t crash often enough to be a dealbreaker. Best to be safe and save often.
Last I heard, he was working on making it universal. That's been a while, though. Send him a line and he'll most likely answer. Probably just life stuff getting in the way.
Running just fine on iOS 13 for me, fun app. Always provides some happy accident jammage. Very, immediate.
where did the ‘steampunk’ version go ?
just revisited for the first time in an age & it’s gone all futuristic !!!
Yeah rubbish isn’t it. I only bought it in the 1st place for the steampunk ui.
Don’t forget the most disturbing icon on iOS.
It would be cool to have it universal. I recall buying werkbench mini or something which was supposed to be for iphone. But I think it was abandoned.
Gonna check my older devices later
Guess i must have absent mindedly updated at some point. I recall having worked up an interesting piece which was on there for aeons, as I never got round to figuring how to bounce it out, that was gone.
Great app though, very quick with results.
😂🤣😂
Always reminded me of that infamous 70’s LP cover featuring the nude horn scenario !
Yep. Mute while sampling is a handy feature to avoid feedback (and inadvertent resampling) when you're using the internal mic and speakers. Werkbench is from the era before all of our fancy interfaces, etc. Should probably be disabled by default if another version ever ships—it's been a source of occasional forum questions for years.
My biggest wish is for overdub and for an option to merge sounds by dragging one on top of the other. That’s all that keeps me from using it more than occasionally.
@wim you might achieve this by sacrificing crossfade and reserve the 2nd sequence for layers only, results in two instead of one...
(poor man's solution)
Overdub option is on top left of sampling tab. I agree though, would be amazing if they updated with workflow enhancements like drag & drop merge, etc. One workaround for merging currently is to use the “record input” feature under the importer tab - set the mode to “trigger” on the left and just simultaneously hit all the pads you want to merge while it’s recording.
Thanks, @Telefunky , interesting thought.
I forgot that overdub was there. Now that you remind me, it was only merge that was bothering me.
I got into it long after its prime, when AUV3 was starting to take over the scene. Definitely one of the apps I’d consider keeping an older iPad “frozen in time” just so I can keep it running. (Along with Samplr and a few other classics)
It’s not the easiest interface to intuit your way around at first - took me a while to figure out simple things like closing the fancy controls section. (transparent triangle) but it’s an extremely rewarding performance tool once you get used to it.
lol i had to look it up after this comment ... lol ya you’re right 🤣 wt actual f !!!!!
Does that mean I don't need to record my sample when its step is active? That's one of my questions which might not have been clear. Say I've enabled step 2 and 4, do I have to record my sound at those points of the sequence? Or can I do it at any time? This is specifically while it's already playing.
All the videos I've seen show 2 ways of recording, one while stopped for the first steps, the other while playing for subsequent steps. The first way uses the threshold, the second way I assume does too, but in the videos I've seen, people are always recording the sample at the exact time the step is active.
you can record any step at any time, no matter what active step the sequence is playing at the time. Recording is independent of the playback position.
The newly recorded sample will play when the playhead gets back around to that step again.
cool, thanks
Yar. I think the videos you've come across are probably giving a false impression. You can toggle multiple steps at once to arm them for sampling so timing has nothing to do with it. There's actually no way to 'time it', so to speak.
This thread got me playing with the bench again. Thank you!
As ever, I want 4 (8?) tracks with 16 patterns each. It's just so much friggin fun. Maybe instead of blowing up the track count, some clever way to resample a set of steps would help with keeping it all minimal? Like, turn on 'Resample Mode', arm a step, press N other steps and on touch-release, all of the touched steps get bounced to a new sample. /dreaming