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.

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Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

Convolution Reverb? What’s The Deal?

Trying convolution reverb for the first time. Someone recommended Thafgnar in another thread, that’s the one I got and I’ve been testing the free downloads the dev links to/provides in the app.

It sounds good but I guess I don’t see what all the fuss is all about. Anyone care to enlighten me? I don’t know much about it or how it works at all. I stumbled through the free IRs and it’s definitely working (pretty sure anyway!). I’m using studio cans so I’m getting a good feel for the sound, just wondering if there’s more to it than this? Seemed to be a lot of hype and excitement over these coming to iOS. Are there maybe more funky or “out there” IRs out there (mine are pretty vanilla) that open up the possibilities? Or is there some specific modulation that you can do to get some other effects?

Don’t get me wrong, it does sound good, no buyers remorse, just thinking I’m not getting the whole picture.

Thanks in advance for edumacating this poor soul! 🙏🏼

Comments

  • @Obo said:
    Trying convolution reverb for the first time. Someone recommended Thafgnar in another thread, that’s the one I got and I’ve been testing the free downloads the dev links to/provides in the app.

    It sounds good but I guess I don’t see what all the fuss is all about. Anyone care to enlighten me? I don’t know much about it or how it works at all. I stumbled through the free IRs and it’s definitely working (pretty sure anyway!). I’m using studio cans so I’m getting a good feel for the sound, just wondering if there’s more to it than this? Seemed to be a lot of hype and excitement over these coming to iOS. Are there maybe more funky or “out there” IRs out there (mine are pretty vanilla) that open up the possibilities? Or is there some specific modulation that you can do to get some other effects?

    Don’t get me wrong, it does sound good, no buyers remorse, just thinking I’m not getting the whole picture.

    Thanks in advance for edumacating this poor soul! 🙏🏼

    It is all about the IRs one has.

    If you are using it for reverb, spend some time on the web listening to examples of top-notch convolution reverbs such as AltiVerb. It may or may not do anything for you. A convolution reverb has many applications. They are often used 100% wet (or close to that) on a master bus with an IR of a nice sounding room/studio/club to put all the players in the same room. They do an amazing job of tying it all together.

    Great IRs also provide a realism that some find amazing while others are so used to lush algorithmic reverbs that they may not seem “juicy”.

    There are some great IRs to be found of large reflective spaces like mosques, caves and cathedrals.

    They are also great for capturing the characteristics of weird spaces...and for capturing Eq.

    For guitar and bass players, there are well done IRs of great speaker cabinets that make their amp simulators sound much better.

    And one can accomplish interesting sound design by using as an IR file’s this aren’t .... the result is something like a vocoder.

    Anyway, if you search on the web, you will find a load of information and examples.

  • You can also make your own.

  • I make my own sfx impulse responses; trickling water, filtered and chopped white noise etc. You can get some great cross synthesis effects that way, some of them have an almost spectral quality. Good quality room responses can also be beautiful...

  • edited November 2020

    What's already been said here pretty much covers it. For IR files, this KVR thread would keep you busy for days. Fokke van Saane has made a lot of interesting free IR sets available. Frozen Plain Frostpoint is one of the most funky or "out there" IR packs that I am aware of, but there are more like that if you dig ... or make your own like @rcf.

  • Thanks guys. The responses are kinda sorta what I thought it might be. The only part that didn’t quite jive was “if you’re using it for reverb”. I take it there are other uses?

    Regarding Van Saane, looks like I already have a start on his stuff. His was the first that came up to download on this app. The next was “Voxengo”.

    Sounds like I have some reading/watching/playing to do!

    That’s one thing that’s been kind of cool about picking this up later in life - always some new thing to learn that I’ll have absolutely no clue about. Sometimes I think it’s a blessing, other times a curse. There are days I really wish I had my 16 year old mind back. It can be like trying to get a drink from a firehose!

    Anyway, I do appreciate the feedback fellas. Here are screenshots of most of the IRs I have currently.


  • @Obo said:
    Thanks guys. The responses are kinda sorta what I thought it might be. The only part that didn’t quite jive was “if you’re using it for reverb”. I take it there are other uses?

    OMG! Yes convolution is for much ore than reverb.

    As I said, IRs for speaker cabinets are used by guitar players when recording to improve the sound of amp simulators by giving the characteristics of real speaker cabinets.

    They can be used for snapshotting eq

    They can be used for cool sound design and vocoding effects.

    Google is your friend.

  • @espiegel123 said:

    @Obo said:
    Thanks guys. The responses are kinda sorta what I thought it might be. The only part that didn’t quite jive was “if you’re using it for reverb”. I take it there are other uses?

    OMG! Yes convolution is for much ore than reverb.

    As I said, IRs for speaker cabinets are used by guitar players when recording to improve the sound of amp simulators by giving the characteristics of real speaker cabinets.

    They can be used for snapshotting eq

    They can be used for cool sound design and vocoding effects.

    Google is your friend.

    Haha, right on brother. To me the comment about guitar still sorta sounded reverb-esque. But I missed the part about EQ (woke up at 3:45 am and just kinda stumbling through the world today, trying not to cause too much harm to the unlucky folks in my path)

    Thanks for the tips!

  • @Obo said:
    [...]
    That’s one thing that’s been kind of cool about picking this up later in life - always some new thing to learn that I’ll have absolutely no clue about. Sometimes I think it’s a blessing, other times a curse. There are days I really wish I had my 16 year old mind back. It can be like trying to get a drink from a firehose!

    In a similar boat, and although I do wish I had taken a more active interest in some of this at an earlier age, I would not want my 16-year-old mind back. Hell no. That dude was just a know-it-all who knew very little. :D It's all about approaching things with the wonder of youth.

    Convolution also gets used a lot in film sound design and dialogue editing. You want a voice to sound as if it's coming from an old radio, there's an IR for that.

  • Okay, after spending some more time noodling around and understanding a bit better how this works, I take it all back. I don’t know if I was using the wrong instrument or if there was a glitch or what but now I’m very impressed. Have even recorded some of my own IRs. Very cool!

  • Did you buy the IAPs for Thafgnar?

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