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.
Midi start/stop
Here we go again... I have a really hard time programming drums in advance. I kind of need to hear the song together with the drums, to be able to hear where to add fills, and how.
This is why I like working in GB so much, it's so easy to just lay out a simple basic beat, record some bass, guitars, vocals etc, and then start working on the details with the drums. But since GB has some other limitations I thought I'd try something else, and was thinking about trying a combination of Drum Studio and MT Daw.
So my question is, is it possible to play the drumbeat in Drumstudio in sync with tracks in MT Daw? In the end I will of course record the drums into MT Daw, but while I'm working with them I'd like to hear them together with the rest. I think you get the point.
Thanks
Comments
I don't know about drum studio but if you don't want the syncing headaches then the best way to upgrade from GB would be to go towards all in one DAW like cubasis. As for now developers are still a little confused about midi sync implementation and there doesn't seem to be one solid protocol that everybody adopts, which results in chaos. If you're strapped for cash Beatmaker 2 may be a cheaper option but you'll need to spend some time with the manual.
I have Cubasis, but (IMO) drum programming there is a pain... something with the grid resolution makes the hits snap where I don't want them.
Also... although they fixed some of the performance issues, like playback noise, I've found that recording through AB still can be problematic. I did a test a while back (after last update) where I recorded some piano. I recorded both the built in sound on my piano and iGrand thru AB simontaneously, on two tracks, and at the end of a 4 min song iGrand was like 2 seconds behind (!). The direct audio was fine. Same thing with Gallileo.
I have no such problems in GB, so I assume it's down to resources (I'm on iPad2). Thought I'd try with a less resource hungry daw, like MT.
In that case I couldn't recommend beatmaker 2 more. It has been extremely stable for me for the last year. I've recorded both audio and midi on it and never had problems. The mpc style drum machine is well featured too. It also records via audiobus with no issues and is reasonably light on the CPU. The drawback is that the program is around 800mb so it may be a problem if you're short of space. It has a slightly different lay out from the usual DAW but nothing that you couldn't learn. At a price it is a steal.
Yes, I'm a bit strapped for space (and resources), so I'm going to have to go for lightweight apps, both in size and cpu/ram. Thanks for your input though.
So... I'll probably buy DS+MTD and give it a go, but if someone knows if midi start/stop will work it would be great to know. At least if I know it doesn't work I won't spend hours finding out ;-)
Thanks