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
@ChrisG What you're describing is a sort of multi-timbrality to the instrument. All I'm going to say at this time is that at one point I did a UI redesign because the old one would make such a thing awkward down the road. So I've definitely thought about it - part of your requests would require a fair amount of performance testing to make sure it provides a good experience for the user on supported devices. Keep in mind that although the voices choke, there are tiny overlap fades (click prevention) so things like voice count quickly can become an issue, especially since you can create some arbitrarily fast sequences on this thing. And each voice has its own filter, pitch resampling interpolation, etc. I've thought of some pretty exciting things the instrument could become…
@Zymos any input on the questions I posed to @CalCutta? I would think simplest implementation would just be to quantize the rhythm's start to a (perhaps user definable) note value
Makes sense. Perhaps a global limit of 5 samples. Say you assign sample A and E to ribbon 1, A and E wouldn't be available for ribbon 2-4. I'm just thinking out loud here. I'm having fun with it, and lookin forward to see where you'll take it all down the road.
@ChrisG You may appreciate this feature I thought about but it ended up way down on the backlog. It's definitely nice for some people to not have midi sync, it's those little imperfections which make things nice. plus when there's no sync, it means you can play the surface like a drum pad (even when it's not in drum pad mode) by lifting your fingers off quickly. anyway, i thought it would be neat if there was a "nudge" feature (like in Ableton Live). that way, say you trigger a rhythm and you're a little off, you can correct it without lifting your fingers back up.
@ChrisG said:
If someone wanted to use this in a live performance environment (which this app could potentially excel at) with other apps or tempo-based instruments that implement MIDI (ie most of them), a MIDI clock slave sync in Earhoof would assure that when you press play on whatever app/instrument you have set as your master clock, that Earhoof starts up at the same time and should stay in sync. Instead of having to manually press the start button on Earhoof after the other apps are going.
@Psicada : I love the idea of the sequencer clock constantly going slaved to a master, but not actually playing until the ribbons are pressed in Earhoof! That would be perfect for me.
@Psicada said:
value
Quantizing as you described would be the best way to go.
But even just clocking to tempo would be a good start.
Thanks for hanging out and being open to suggestions!
@Zymos said:
This
@ChrisG said:
Put it in a washing machine.
Now seriously, yes you can have midi sync on your guitar if the daw you've recorded it on is in sync with hoofie. Imagine syncing earhoof with samplr and xynthesizr and lay some vocals and guitar in bm2 and run it all together. General pasteboard should be implemented first so stuff can be sampled on I.e. Loopy and pasted right into hoofie.
Sorry, I'm calling it hoofie cause earhoof makes me feel strange.
Edit. Unfortunately even if you set the same tempo in different apps most of them stray apart within minutes.
haha one thing I gotta give you credit @supadom for someone who likes live looping, you pick some incredibly complex apps to work into your rig! (I'd never use Impaktor or Xynthesizr for that purpose, and admire your bravery)
Well, that was actually just an example. At the moment I'm only using loopy and impaktor both of which run beautifully together for hours without any midi sync. The price is that I have to leave impaktor in the foreground and loopy and other synths (mainly sunrizer and animoog) in the background. This suits me as I don't have to look at either loopy or the synths to operate them. In fact the less screen time the better IMO.
Saying that I'm on the look out for an iPad mini to run alongside those for another instance of loopy to loop vocals and guitar and maybe another app like samplr or hoofie for some rhythmical weirdness. As for bm2 I never actually use it for looping. What is your set up @CalCutta ?
I lied. I...don't actually have a guitar. Meesa sorry!
Btw, Hoofie...as in a dumbass butt slut? (Hey, that's the first result/definition google gave me, English not being my first lang I had to look the word up so...)
@ChrisG said:
How much old are you?
Everybody over 40 have a guitar, to emulate our favourite songwriter (Bob Dylan, Silvio Rodríguez, Paco Ibañez (no relation with Ibañez guitars)).
Of course, (cheap) spanish guitar.
Lower 30s I think. I don't keep track, it's just numbers anyway
quick update for those curious --- it looks like I have a fix for the problems related to launching a fresh instance of the app via IAA
@psicada
Loving Earhoof! I have 1 feature request that I feel will make the app much more powerful and useful. I need a way to control the base pitch of those sliders. Maybe an additional horizontal slider for pitch that can be (optionally) set to a scale? Or even midi note input...
I'm aware that I can currently set the vertical sliders to pitch but it's a bit limiting. If I get a nice bass groove going and then want to shift the same pattern to another note, it doesn't quite work as the vertical slider controls so much more than just pitch. It also limits how I can try out the same melody on different presets.
Easier to show than explain, so hopefully you understand what I'm trying to say
@Schrodinger glad you like it! I think I understand what you're saying, interesting idea. I'm a little confused though how it could help the user try the same melody on different presets.
Somewhat related though, I have toyed with having a way to retain the rhythms or layers of the loaded preset when loading a new one (by that I mean just loading a new preset's layers or just its rhythms). Currently the next best thing is copying / pasting the four rhythms to different prests.
@Psicada My pleasure, really inspiring app
If I have a progression of let's say [G, C, F], the above suggested feature will allow me to try that progression out on many presets. Currently there's no easy way to do that.
I can already see myself using Earhoof as a very cool percussion or drone. Allowing note selection will allow it to also be more of an ARP as well.
Hi Everybody,
Earhoof v1.0.1 should be rolling out today. It has:
Let me know if you have any problems!
Excellent news, looking forward to ACP.
Great update.
Awesome! The update I was waiting for - just purchased.
Ok, got the app, I'm ready to be happy but, hey, what's going on? No AB fx slot? Mmmmm...
The app description says it's an instrument so not sure why you thought it would go in the AB FX slot. The AB apps page lets you see which AB slots an app will work in if you want to know before you buy.
I know, I was only hoping it would be fx slot as well that's all. It would be a great alternative/parallel to sugar bytes effects. Ah well.
Agree it would be great to be able to have different presets per lane, and be able to lock multiple lanes as an option too.
Landscape mode would be awesome as well, keeping the lanes lengthwise but turning the rest of the controls and such.
Enjoying Earhoof it's a treat to play. It's like a multi layered ambient rhythm quartet. Would be nice to have different presets in each of the 4 lanes for ultimate chaos (echoing what others have said) but not at the expense of any performance. Its neat, it's different, and it does its job perfectly well with a singular focus.
It's on sale for $2.99
@Osidenick said:
Thanks!
https://itunes.apple.com/app/id817866889?mt=8
Thanks for the info. Just picked it up.
I just read the comments and now on sale, cool, thx for share