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.
Fx synth
I'm after an awesomely simple, yet effective fx/noise/what have you synth. I know I can do similar stuff with animoog but I'm already using it for other stuff. I've tried Magellan but I struggled with getting any decent sound out of it. Isem seems to have all the right characteristics but knobs don't really have an extreme influence on the sound.
It must be able to run in the background and to be midi mappable, at least one LFO, 2 oscillators, noise gen. Knob tweaks need to be enough to drastically alter the sound as it will never run in the foreground. Effects are a bonus but I'm more in favour of raw sound.
Ideas?
P.s. Not ivcs3 please, I must be able to control it! 
Comments
Hey @supadom have you tried Arctic ProSynth? It is completely midi mappable, has 2 osc with up to 8 unison voices each, 2 lfos, noise, ring mod, 2 filters, and a few fx including a vocoder
@supadom A basic version of Arctic ProSynth is about to release called XK-1B. If you like you can upgrade to full version of Arctic ProSynth.
Modular is also midi mappable
I'm kind of in the same boat as the original poster. I know nothing about synth but as I experiment more with drum machines and other AB-compatible stuff to go with guitar, it would be nice to have a synth option for creation.
Arctic is $4.99 and universal
Modular is apparently free, but with in-app purchases. However, the keyboard looks quite small, and some reviews said it was awkward to use.
Between these two and others "on the Bus", any other good synth recommendations for beginners?
@StormJH1 Don't confuse Arctic with Arctic ProSynth. Same Dev, but Arctic ProSynth is newer version.
@mgmg4871 said:
Point taken. I looked it up on my iPhone, so the latter must be iPad only.
Sorry, I may have explained myself badly. I'm after a synth that has extreme morphing capabilities without too much effort. I want to use it as a synth but then tweak the shit out of it to achieve special effect type of sound. I know most of the decent sound can be tweaked to death but some, like animoog have got stuff like a full octave detune that sends the sound to outer space. Youknowhatimean?
Cube
Agreed. Cube Synth.
Here's another one Doug reviewed.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/interpol/id698024733?mt=8
Cheers guys. Not to be fussy but I'm not a great fan of wavetable/additive synthesis. You'll say: but you gave Animoog as an example. In fact I shot myself in the leg. I mostly use variations of the default preset and program from there within the virtual analog realm.
I guess I was trying to cheat life and get ivcs3's sound without having to learn it. They could release ivcs3 jr I suppose
.
Thanks for your replies guys.
The obvious choice here is iVCS3.
Just jump in, it's not THAT confusing.
At first I would suggest stroke machine, but then I realized that it's not midi mappable, but I guess that it's the kind of synth type that you are looking
Or you can buy animoog for iPhone on your ipad, and run 2 animoogs at the same time
No midi and maybe way too simple but I have to mention BeepBoop here. Some of the keywords in the first sentence of your original post seem to describe this "strange noise making-device" perfectly.
@Rafael_laurenti said:
Yes, but animoog for iphone has no audiobus.
Oh, I forgot about that!
iPulsaret, Granular synthesis at its finest, aliiows you to manipulate and play with a keyboard. You can morph your sounds in ways you would jor believe.
I'm not sure what device you have and what else you plan on running at the same time.
That said, Alchemy? Tons of effect patches and lots of midi knob mayhem to be had.
It's kind of resource heavy so that's the only thing giving me pause.
Thanks @daveproper I'm on iPad Air and normally run audiobus with sunrizer, isem and animoog on the input, turnado in the fx and loopy on the output. Then there's impaktor that is AB unplugged, looper of which runs in parallel to loopy. I've run heavier set ups and never had a problem so I'm not too worried about that. I've tried alchemy before but didn't get into it. The effects I'm after are really mostly dry electronic blips, pops, crackles, crazy oscillator sweeps. I'm not too fond of huge reverb based evolving landscapes. I presume that preference comes from the fact that I also want to use them rhythmically. Sorry everyone, I'm aware I'm becoming more clear towards the end of the thread...
@supadom - NLog Pro - just got updated for AB SDK 2 as well
So I've been messing with isem's lfo's etc and it's been sounding weird enough, I even managed to crash it once. It doesn't let me detune the oscillators but it does about 50% of what I wanted
Edit: it does detune oscillators but it isn't amongst midi learnable knobs.
@MusicInclusive said:
Thanks for the tip. I used to have nlog pro so I reloaded it again. It probably doesn't sound as rich as isem (to my ear) but the tweakability is sweet. I'll have a tinkle.