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.
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For me it’s quality vs quantity. The Overloud distortions are amazing. What really sells it for me is the Brunetti pedals, they are actually licensed and authorized versions of the real thing. There’s the Vanilla, Taxi Drive, Mercury Box, Burning Box. I think they are insane. Honestly the rest of the pedals are just as awesome, I use the Fat Muff a lot. And the fx pedals list is extensive. We all go on and on about the overwhelming list of amps and rigs but the Overloud pedals and racks are a total home run. And yes it’s also nice to have all those amp models with separate channels for clean and distorted that you can switch via midi. In the real world Brunetti and Fulltone are extremely high quality pedals and actually use very similar FET circuitry design for tube emulation. Vanilla is billed as a Soft Overdrive but I think it could be similar to OCD. It does have more parameters to adjust than OCD. I bet the Taxi Drive is close too, I love that one so much. The Mercury Box is basically the lead channel on the Mercury amp. Burning Box is for high gain. Looks like Amplitube offer an OCD sim in a Fulltone pack for $60 that’s desktop only. Seems like iOS versions of Bias and Amplitube offer mostly unlicensed pedals, I’m sure they get the job done. Personally I’m all set with TH-U pedals, just amazing fidelity to my ears...
@JoyceRoadStudios Thank you for answering. Appreciate very much. Yes, i will check the sample rate and firmware of focusrite. I will let you know if it solved the problem.
@JoyceRoadStudios are you or anyone else experiencing problems with program change midi messages in Overloud AU3 in AUM?
I've been using a Harley Benton / Melo Audio MP-100 which has been giving me a great deal of joy as a foot controller with Overloud (over bluetooth with a Yamaha UD-BT01). In standalone Overloud (using the Bias FX preset) it works flawlessly for CC toggles and Program changes to change presets, but when hosted as an AU3 it's been working differently (i.e. badly). I can make program changes if I select the midi interface in the AU3, but to send CCs at the same time I need to also route it via AUM's midi routing, but then if I attempt a preset change the CC toggles stop working. So something going strange with the handling of the two different message types.
I get the same problem when hosted in Audiobus or Quantiloop. I've emailed Overloud about this, but was doubting my diagnosis for a while last night, so thought I'd ask if anyone else is feeling the same pain? As a workaround I can use a different preset on the MP-100 and assign CCs to preset changes, but it's inelegant and makes the bank change (prog change x4) footswitches redundant and liable to trigger an app crash if pressed by accident.
On the good news front, I've had success in the standalone combining two midi controllers in Midifire to give me plenty of bluetooth footswitches for FX toggles, preset changes and Looper control. The simplicity of the built in Looper is proving very useful and enjoyable.
Apologies if this strays OT, I figured this was the thread where I'd find the most active Overloud/AUM users.
@JoyceRoadStudios you are absolutely right about those pedals. I’ve been a TH-U user on desktop for a while and the Taxi Drive in particular is amazingly good. I also like the Vanilla a lot.
Having said that, my favourite pedal plugin is the Mercuriall Greed Smasher (a Grid Slammer copy) but I don’t know of anything on iOS that sounds like that.
Yeah, same. I did check out the Vanilla last night (only effect I've purchased individually), and it did not disappoint. It's a very warm overdrive and it doesn't necessarily work in front of every amp model, but where it does work, it's phenomenal. Thinking about grabbing Taxi Drive and then calling it a day on FX and rig purchases. How does Taxi Drive compare to Vanilla? I'd be looking for something a little brighter/jangly.
Vintage Collection Vol. 2 is decent - I didn't have the "wow" experience I had with some other rigs. But actually, I was secretly really excited for the Silvertone Twin Twelve, and thought those rigs were quite good! I actually owned (and sold) the JHS Twin Twelve (v1) pedal - that did a pretty good job with the wolly/fuzzy tones of a cranked 1484, but of course, a "cranked" 1484 would be ungodly loud. There have been other modelers to take a crack at Twin Twelve tones with varied levels of success - the Helix version of it disappointed me a bit. Overloud's version of both clean and driven 1484 tones is probably the best I've heard from a software modeler.
I have to say about Overloud - although not everything is perfect "out of the box" and it can be quite cost prohibitive to try out different rigs, at the very least you get well-rounded tones with convincing low end across the board. That is not something to take for granted with modelers. Much of this relates to the excellent cabinet modeling, I think.
Two things that would really put this over the top (one very realistic, one probably pretty far-fetched):
(1) IR Cab loader (that allows use of 3rd party IR's) - Yes, we can already do this with AUM, but if I could just stay in Overloud, the efficiency would make this a truly elite standalone app. And, as has been discussed, I believe this is a feature already on desktop, and there is a grayed-out option in the store for an IR loader, so it looks like a future possibility.
(2) AUv3 Effects Blocks - Again, AUM can do this, but if they allowed you pop in an AUv3 effects slot so I could throw some Eventide in there, that would be even better. Of course, they want you to buy Overloud effects, so perhaps they would not go in that direction. That being said, I believe we had either IAA or AUv3 effects loading in Yonac and Positive Grid(maybe?), and those apps weren't shy about selling IAP's either.
I wish I could help with this, but it sounds like you’re way ahead of me on the midi expertise. I started out with a friend’s Midi Mongoose he had laying around. Couldn’t find a 7 pin to USB adapter so it was very convoluted to go 7 pin to 5 pin to usb to usb hub with proper male and female connectors. Anyway it’s a good pedal but only does program change, and scrolling between patches was really annoying in series of 5, because from preset 5 you couldn’t just go to 6, you had to go to 10 and then back to 6. Anyway, gave that one back and have an Xtone pro on the way, audio inerface midi foot pedal combo that does CC.
If you say it works well standalone, I wonder if the Melo could actually be the problem as it goes from app to app. Do your standalone midi settings transfer over well to the apps you’re using if the Melo is out of the equation?
If you have mapped things in the standalone so that they are listening to the specific MIDI device -- and then additionally are piping things in via AUM's MIDI control or in AB3 -- you may have set up some competition between two MIDI streams.
When you say AU3 -- do you mean AudioBus 3? It might be helpful if you show screen shots of the set up in all the relevant apps.
@JoyceRoadStudios Thanks for responding, I think the Melo is in the clear as it’s sending over Bluetooth, so effectively a dumb controller. I think it’s a ‘program change’ midi message issue and whether they are received via the host or direct to the AU3. Using Overloud as a standalone app all is good.
I do though have another option for sending program change messages, so I’ll give that a go and see if I hit the same problem.
Otherwise I can highly recommend the Melo Audio MP-100, works superbly with presets for JamUp and Bias FX1... if only I’d bought it 5 years ago. Great though also as an all purpose foot controller. Harley Benton version is the same rebadged and cheaper. Note though that the 5 pin midi does NOT send power, so no good for 5pin Bluetooth dongles.
Just stick a midi monitor in front of the Th-U plugin and see if it is receiving what you think it is.
I'd just like to reiterate this. When you use an app as AUv3 (not AU3), it should receive all its MIDI via the host's routing feature. You should not attempt to make it receive MIDI directly. If you're doing this, it is likely the source of your problems. Note that you can route more than one MIDI source to the same AUv3, if that's what you need.
Thank you, running down the problem now. Midi messages all good in AUM and program changes received and passed on to other apps (Model D).
So, the issue is Overloud AU3 does not successfully receive PC messages routed through the host app (AUM in this case). When it does it then breaks the receiving of other midi messages (CCs) from the external midi device.
Overloud AU3 doesn’t receive CCs unless routed through the host (ignoring in app midi device setting). This is as expected.
However, It can receive PCs successfully direct from one midi device (selected in in-app midi device settings) whilst receiving CCs from a different device routed through AUM.
I appreciate that’s possibly the dullest post I’ve ever written... I hope someone finds it useful someday (or even better it gets fixed).
I would change your set up so that the AUv3 is only getting MIDI via its host and turn off the options you have that are causing it to listen directly to the hardware. You can do all the mapping and routing of the relevant MIDI to the AUv3 through the host.
Sorry for AUv3 confusion, yes I definitely mean Audio Unit.
Slight cross post, I understand what you’re saying @uncledave, but routing from host alone does not work. The core problem is that Overloud is not successfully receiving program change messages from the host. I’m interested if anyone else can replicate this?
The fact it can simultaneously receive PC messages direct is, I’m sure, not intended app behaviour, but for now I can use it as a workaround using 2 different devices, 1 routed in AUM sending CCs and one direct to app sending PCs.
I would have stuck to my original workaround of just mapping CCs through AUM, but @espiegel123 got me to dust off another program change controller and now I’ve gone footswitch crazy.
Again, apologies for any confusion and for continuing to derail the thread.
Edit: @espiegel123, sorry, that wasn’t you that prompted me to try another controller, you just prompted me to see what it was doing - but I wasn’t complaining, more knobs the better. @uncledave cross post as in posts crossing, not that I was cross in any way
I think the Vanilla really shines when you crank the Cream and the Tip, I have mine past 8. I like putting it in front of a clean amp, used as a soft overdrive it can be “always on” because it doesn’t mess with the original amp tone. But it’s really spectacular in front of an amp that has its own gain set around 3. The Taxi Drive is definitely brighter, it also has a spanky sound that makes my Les Paul sound clankier like I’m playing dirty surf rock. It has a very beautiful, strong, and springy distortion. The Vanilla is definitely mellower but meant to be creamier. I can’t pick a favorite. Then you have the Burning Box, which is just brutal, it can sound like Taxi Drive at the lowest settings but then it becomes really nasty for high gain perfection. The Mercury Box is darker and bassier so I like to turn the edge up and the bass down and it works great. What kind of overdrive are you looking for? They have a couple of others with really great voicing. The Brunetti are wonderful because they maintain the amp tone and have great harmonics. Lots of other distortions can sound both flabby and harsh, as well as compressed. Not the case with these.
Try the Vanilla on those Music Man rigs, Tip and cream cranked, Fat to taste. Also on the Twin reverb with gain at 3 and the clean Dumbles. Works with my guitar, maybe you’ll get better results with other amps.
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Maybe because I own the full pack, but in my collection there’s a cabinet called “IR Loader”. It’s not in the store but it is in my components. I read about it earlier in the Overloud manual. It’s not greyed out for me, but the thing is even though it has parameters I can adjust, it doesn’t have any actual sound nor does it change anything when I load it. So I’m assuming eventually Overloud will add the feature in iOS to load IRs into this cabinet, that would be awesome!
Sure that would be amazing, loading something like Blackhole inside Overloud and having that midi controllable in-house. I can imagine stability issues creeping up. Also I want Nembrini to get its own amusement park so I don’t have to chain their stuff outside only. But yeah if I could get Nembrini inside Overloud... wow.
@qryss It’s funny you mention the Grid Slammer. I was looking over the Overloud rigs, did you know that a lot of the rigs are captured using a real Grid Slammer? The rigs are modeled after capturing a real amp, but they also use a collection of real cabinets and pedals to capture all the sounds, and the Grid Slammer is in many rigs, not just in the product list, but specifically listed beside certain rigs you can use. Most of the Choptones rigs list the Grid Slammer and you can view a complete pdf list of each rig to see how many captures have it listed. Of course you can’t separate it from the rig patch, but they used the actual pedal so it could be closer to playing it than a pedal sim. Anyway worth checking out, it’s listed in so many rig captures along with the mic and cabinet used etc...
Fuuuuu...dge! New Fender rig announced, hopefully that low intro price bodes well for iOS price. Also the Mezzabarba rig looks interesting...
Anyone else notice certain buttons doing the opposite? For example, Brunetti Singleman “full-moderate-quiet” works opposite, the Taxi Drive “Fat” switch works opposite, THD Univalve “Full Power” works opposite, there are some others...
@JoyceRoadStudios I really love the exquisitely detailed descriptions of the gear you are demoing. I almost want to plug my headphones in to see if I can hear the tones you describe even more fully!
At some point in the future, I would hope you might possibly consider adding a Strat (even a cheap Mexican one) to your gear collection.
I mean seriously, what studio on earth worth its salt doesn’t have a Strat on hand???
Of course the request is personal, since I don’t own or have any interest in owning a Les Paul*.
I believe the majority of players own Strats or Tele/single coil guitars because they can get a wider variety of tones from a single instrument. I know that was a big part of why I chose my Strat.
Anyway, the reason I ask is because it would be extremely helpful for us single coil guys to hear your detailed opinions of the myriad rig combinations you explore.
Just a thought...
*I personally have zero interest in owning a Les Paul due to the numerous critical design flaws that have existed in the instrument from day one and the poor quality control levels which have made selecting a Les Paul a virtual crap shoot. When I do purchase a humbucker axe, It would most likely be a PRS guitar, or some other brand with a higher level of quality control standards.
My main guitar is a clone of a 1972 Telecaster Thinline. I put Mojotone Wide Range Humbuckers in it which let you split the coils so you kinda have four single coils and two humbuckers. Then it’s wired up with Deaf Eddie’s five tone Tele mod which gives me an enormous number of options to choose from. And they really are all very usable and different.
So you could always do something like that..?
My Strat is a bit of a rare bird.
In the late 80’s/early 90’s, Fender released a special series of Strats with locking tuners, a Wilkinson rolling nut (both to help it stay in tune while wailing on the whammy bar) and equipped them with Lace Sensor pickups (designed by Don Lace). These pickups eliminated the 90 cycle hum of single coils.
My axe is a Strat Plus Deluxe, which features a blue, silver, and red pickups in the neck, middle, and bridge positions respectively. All gold pickups were toned to a more traditional Strat sound, while these are somewhat more aggressive and diverse. It also has a treble boost In one of the tone knobs.
It’s pretty unique, and for the most part, I love it.
I just wanted a few excellent single coil reviews of the TH-d gear is all.
Some day in the near future (isn’t that an oxymoron???) I’ll get a humbucker axe...
It occurred to me that 60 cycles has to be a "Note" but what note?
I know A=440. 1/2 is A down an octave. So, 220, 110, 55... close. So, is it a Bb?
Google to the rescue:
Pitches closets to 60 per second.
B1 or NOT B1... that is the question.
Actually the question is why does the wall power cycling at 60 oscillations per second get
induced into a single coil guitar pick up and most microphones and the straight wire cables?
Ghosts in the machine or EMF and conductors? How can it be canceled?
Can a good parametric EQ help? Does TH-U have one?
Look into this. I'll wait.
Elsewhere (like the UK and EU) it is 50Hz.
But what you hear is often rectified mains hum so it’s double that - 100Hz or 120Hz.
I appreciate the kind words, and really I’m just sharing in the excitement with everyone. Of course we hear different things with different headphones and pickups, I suppose I’m actually inspired to share amazing things I find rather than trying to dictate to people what they should buy. I’ve video captured and recorded lots of my favorite sounds but instead of posting I talk about them. While I don’t find any of these products prohibitively expensive at all, if anybody is curious about a component before buying it I’m more than happy to provide audio of it, at least with my gear.
Snapshot of my “playroom”, most of it anyway. Behind the chair is another table with mic preamp, mixer, monitors, guitar work bench, some outboard processors I don’t use anymore. Anyway you’ll notice right in front I have an old Hondo H76 strat copy in pieces. $25 purchase, body, neck, and frets are good, truss rod has life. So I’m working on building this Frankenstrat copy and putting in high quality single coils in there, replacing the bridge and tuners, and rewiring the beast. The Hondo cavities and bridge holes are a tiny bit different in size than a Fender cavity (metric system) so I’ll need to get creative, I’m also stripping the paint and going natural to let it breathe. I might get a higher quality neck if I can size the neck pocket correctly, but either way there will be lots of epoxy used. Anyway soon I will have my “Strat” rat. Next to the LP I have a P Bass, a cheap 50 year old Brazilian nylon string, and a Godin 5th Ave Kingpin hollow body which has a P90 pickup at the neck. Besides the Gibson and Fender purchases, the others were throwaway gifts that I’ve restored. I sold off my Mesa trem-o-verb and Music Man amps a long time ago.
Yes the headstock angle on a Les Paul is a questionable design, and I’ve played lots of underwhelming LP models. The black beauty I have is a magical creature though, I got it brand new in 1999 after saving a lot of money and trading in all I had. It’s not even a Gibson custom shop or USA shop guitar, it’s the Art and Historic shop 1957 re-issue, attached to two specific luthiers. Unlike the USA Custom shops that use several front back and side pieces of varying woods and have white binding, this one is made of just one piece of mahogany and has yellowish cream binding. The warmth and sustain are endless, but it’s almost a little too rich, I find the neck position almost unusably dark, I play mostly in the bridge position. It weighs 11 pounds. Anyway I also spent months trying out different models in stores, and I kept coming back to this one as it had the best intonation and neck. She’s been my main gal for 21 years, so I would say I lucked out with my investment.
It’s not a Strat that I want though, I find the body kind of hard to play actually. I like the contour of an LP and how my picking hand rests at the bridge. I’ve dreamed of a butterscotch Tele for several decades, theres a hotrodded ‘52 with a humbucker, or a Baja with fat neck. There’s the mid ‘80s 1952 reissues. There’s a 2015 Korina wood Tele, way overpriced. The gorgeous 70th anniversary broadcaster, if you have 2k to waste. I saw this Japanese Offset Mahogany Tele the other day that was a limited run, look at this beauty!! Was $800 new a few years ago now it’s $1400 used. It’s not just iOS G.A.S. that I suffer from...
Cool!
Thanks for all the background on your collection — and wish list!
I'm guessing I can wait for the FrankenStrat to come to life. Hopefully before any possible Black Friday sales.
In spite of the guitar crew here tempting me numerous times daily, I've somehow managed to not purchase any of the Overloud amps, effects, or rigs. Hopefully my patience shall be rewarded soon. Looking to purchase the all amps and effects package — plus a number of rigs.
I'm glad you found an awesome Les Paul! Like every kid raised in the 60's and 70's, I lusted after them. My first axe was a cheap Les Paul copy, but by the time I could afford a real guitar, I was getting interested in more diverse types of music and felt a Strat offered a ton of distinctive tonal variations.
Sadly today I live in remote Northern California, where you have to drive well over an hour just to find a crappy Guitar Center loaded with crappy cheap-ass guitars. I have a good friend in Nashville, though, so one day (when travel isn't life-threatening) I plan to pack lightly and hopefully return home loaded with tone!
@JoyceRoadStudios - Cool play room setup! I actually do like that Korina wood offset Tele a fair amount. Previously, I hated anything in a Fender that involved natural (unfinished) wood tones because it looked like those 70's Strats that reminded me of your family's station wagon. But it's grown on me quite a bit over time, and I think if you get the right headstock and pickguard/pickup cover colors and style, it can actually look fairly modern. That "Tele" above looks awesome to me, but Fender was pushing that offset stuff a few years ago and they were all overpriced. The Fender purists go nuts when you mess with traditional designs, too, but I think that's sort of silly. They need to make some effort to innovate and offer different body styles after 70 years of Strats and Teles.
Getting back to Overloud, the Taxi Drive does sound like something I should check out. I didn't have a specific real-life pedal in mind that I "needed" in Overloud, but definitely need something brighter to compliment Vanilla. Vanilla is excellent with some setups, but there are only 4 parameters (and only two of them impact EQ), so as a FET-based OD/Distortion, it does a great tube impersonation, but can get a little saggy/muddy if your amp is trending that way.
As we've discussed, I'm really trying to limit superfluous purchases in Overloud. I have 3 rigs and think that is enough for the time being. I also have the Funk/R&B collection that gave me a good "starter" set of amps and effects. If I buy Taxi Drive, then I've spent only $10 on add-on effects, and can probably manage with that.
The one thing I do feel like Overloud is missing relative to other setups I've used is a good compression or preamp option that can enhance sustain. We have the Ross and the VCA, but neither of them seem to be able to create saturation without adding additional noise, or changing the character of the tone by forcing you to roll back output to avoid clipping. Nembrini's PSA1000 is probably the best iOS effect I've tried for this, but of course you have to use it through AUM, and it's actually pretty noisy itself. The problem is that lot of the Overloud clean or edge-of-breakup rigs have great tone, but the notes seem to die out in a way that their real-life counterparts would not.
Not sure if you agree with that assessment or not, but do you have any effects or tips/tricks you use within Overloud to compensate for this? I guess the real-life effects equivalent of what I am after would be like a Xotic EP Booster or BOSS FA-1 (used by The Edge). Though you can get a similar effect with some compressors, and it's kind of crazy we don't even have like a BOSS CS-3 or MXR Red Comp equivalent for more of a "squish" style compressor. I could also try an external pedal fed into my interface, though I'm always skeptical that will work properly with modelers.
I think there are a couple of things I’d experiment with:
-Maybe could also raise the input gain on your interface just a notch, if it’s too low the sound can dwindle quick or seem anemic to begin with
-Even the clean amps and rigs sound better with the gain up around 2-4, you can raise the gain a little but maintain the clean.
-There is actually a preamp pedal in the collection called CT Pre, it’s in the overdrive section. It does a good job of boosting the signal but I’ve found that it needs to be set perfectly with each individual amp so as not to distort
-In the Funk collection there’s a Gate Expander pedal. With the right settings and put in front of the chain it does a great job of reducing noise.
-The RSS Comp and VariMu Comp work well for me in terms of adding sustain and boost without much distortion.
I spent time checking out the “competition” yesterday. Amplitube iOS actually has the Fulltone OCD pedal for $5. The Amplitube demo sounded decent so I got the pedal and the ‘53 Bassman amp. It’s a good pedal, but amplitude doesn’t sound so good in AUM, better standalone. So I worked with turning off the amp and cab and just using the OCD in front of a Nembrini amp or a TH-U amp, not good. Then I opened TH-U in front of Amplitube and just had Taxi Drive in front of ‘53 Bassman, amazing. Even standalone I have to say the Taxi sounds better than OCD. It could have to do more with the actually apps than the pedals.
In what way did Amplitube sound different in AUM? That sounds like something is configured wrong.
I got my LP in San Jose actually! Had to drive down from SF over and over to keep hovering over it. These days many people buy guitars online and try to return them. It’s such a bad idea with expensive guitars. Not too much risk with a cheapie, but still....
I spent time with Bias yesterday doing the “guitar match” feature, trying to convert my LP to a strat. Besides some realistic strat fret clank, it sounded pretty bad, not a good feature at all.
There's no reason it should sound any different. It's totally the same app whether it's playing through AUM or not. My guess is the difference is in input or output volume. I only mention it because if you like it, it should be totally possible to get it to sound the same in AUM ias out side of it. AUM itself doesn't color sound in any way.
@wim @espiegel123 I’ll be more specific. I had Cali Reverb and TH-U amp loaded in AUM separately. I put Amplitube in front of it just so I could use the OCD pedal. Just loading Amplitube changes the stereo width. it’s a whole different sound. Also I had GS vintage clean, I wanted to put Ampltube in front of it, but doing that mutes the entire signal. There’s only sound if Amplitube is added after GS.