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.
What iOS apps would you use to try and recreate the sound of this ambient album?
Hi everyone,
I am just listening to what is probably my favourite album of the year –Inner Sphere by Voyage Futur:
It's almost certainly made with analog gear but if I wanted to approximate this sound on iOS what apps would you recommend?
I love the reverb in particular, something by eventide? And the synths? The delay?
Cheers
Comments
Unfortunately, I cannot say for sure. I did read somewhere that the entire album was recorded using a Yamaha DX7 and a Logan String Synth. For the DX7, there’s the emulation KQ DIXIE ( https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kq-dixie/id1330269027 ) but also, some of these sounds seem very much in the wheelhouse of some of the IceWorks synths (Mersenne, possibly https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mersenne-auv3-plugin-synth/id1084197093 ) for the bells/chimes and I’d definitely check of the brilliant TAL-U-NO-LX ( https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tal-u-no-lx/id1505608326 ), especially for the bass lines and arpeggios.
Good luck, and thank you for introducing me to my new favorite album!!
Thanks. That's really useful. I have a couple of the ice works synths, including mersenne, so this might be a chance to play around with those some more. I'll check out TAL-U-NO-LX too.
And yeah that album is gorgeous.
Shameless plug(in) alert, but I did a set of moodunits instruments called "stringz" inspired by the old 70's / 80's string machines after I noticed there wasn't an awful lot out there as best I could find. I didn't set out to emulate the Logan as I don't have one to hand, and I'd sample it if I did! But, I did try and capture some of that vibe and used the old-school technique of combining modulated saw waves from my M32.
Little demo here, please excuse the cheese:
https://youtu.be/8R3CJL3IFlQ
The TAL will also get you close
KQ-Dixie, DRC and OB-XD come to mind listening to it.
Lovely album
Mersenne is fast becoming one of my new favourites
Strongly recommend the Sam Izrael Sounds of Izrael preset packs for Mersenne and all the other Icegear synths by Sam Izrael. Purchase details are in the YouTube info / pinned comment here (such a pity he isn't in these as an easy to purchase IAP, you have to contact him directly and use PayPal.
FM synths, DX7 (Dyxie or how is it called?), unwound use ape soft electric for Rhodes substitute
And probably some nice verb plugs alteza, blackhole, stratosphere, kosmonaut. Something like this
This album is definitely not produced using only FM synths.
For approximating the FM sounds, I guess my first choice would be NFM from Nikolozi, simply because I find it the fastest when trying to design a certain FM sound I have in mind.
It sounds like you'll also need quality marimba and vibraphone samples (my personal favorites are the ones from Soniccouture on desktop but BeatHawk and Pure Synth are good too), a D-50 soundalike a.k.a. Digital D1 or Korg iWavestation and an analog synth that can do the sounds on the album, like Zeeon and/or Korg Odyssei.
It's possible to get a virtually 1:1 replica of this album using these synths but let me tell you, it's a lot of work and you need some practice in listening and re-creating synth sounds.
So just shoot him an email first using the paypal one linked in your video?
Yeah, or you can just PayPal him first then send an email, that might be faster
I got Sam’s presets. Very NICE! And I think I just PayPal him... dont worry Sam is solid dude. Turn around was very fast!
Yeah you can definitely trust him, don't worry!
One candidate is Sunvox. Whenever I hear clean sounds like these, it reminds me of it.
If in doubt, check the desktop app and listen to some of the demo tracks
One little quick question: would someone say that Nikos NFM is something similar like the digitone? I was always looking for some FM synth that is similar easy to dial in like the digitone? Maybe someone has both?!?
Great! Big fan of his presets
His zeeon presets are great too, I used one in my Rozeta Pt 2 vid. It's 215 presets for just 3 dollars, crazy good value.
That applies to their debut album Secret Earth (according to liner notes) and it seems there are more sources involved in Inner Circle.
But the synths don‘t matter that much imho, the essential part is the choice of sounds that just melt perfectly together, including the (field recorded) nature sounds in background.
Forgot: this not a pure DAW production, so the most difficult part „in the box“ would be to re-recreate the slightly less pronounced response of outboard gear (a mixture of analog and digital).
Hey thanks every one for all of this. I am going to play around will TAL-U-NO-LX and Mersenne (I should get around to learning these properly anyway). Maybe get those presets that @Gavinski mentioned too. And yes, skill wise I am light years away of being able to create something like this, but I thought a good way to get better would be to start trying to make similar synth sounds to the ones i like.
Oh yeah, @moodscaper I grabbed your unit. There’s nowt wrong with a shameless plug.
I second the Zeenon suggestion, that synth is so rich and warm.
And for a really pure Reverb, I’d suggest Eos ( https://apps.apple.com/us/app/eos-2/id1252122327 ) for smaller, clean spaces and Blackhole ( https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blackhole-reverb/id1452345570 ) for huge, endless verbs. FabFilter’s Pro-R is pretty amazing, too, in that you can sidechain the Reverb signal to another source, resulting in a really organic, symbiotic relationship.
Post whatever you come up with, I’d love to hear. This music really resonates with me, too — I’d love to come up with something this beautiful on my own!
Korg iWavestation
as others have mentioned, the ice works synths would be a great start for the plucky synths. BS16 general midi patches have some great vibraphones, marimba etc.
OBXd with some subtle and slow pitch modulation and the LPF doing its thing is stunning for pads. I prefer it to the tal uno, but the tal uno is still great.
Ive been getting some great pads etc out of both kauldron and Magellan 2 from Yonac. The intelligent randomization can really give unique and pleasing results if you dial it back a little so it doesnt just deliver mayhem.
I would play with Tape Pro with "Wow" rate set to pretty slow and depth somewhere around 15%. The different cassette modes add great character and vibe. Some subtle tape noise and saturation goes a long way as well.
Play with a lot of LPF's with slow modulation. Moodunits LPF is great. Bleass filter as well.
Theres also a fair amount of arpeggiators going off on the album, so maybe arp bud 2 by cem olcay. Iceworks stuff has great built in arpeggiators as well. Other midi fx could be great too. Midi Echo AU is great for some interesting arp sounds that arent quite arps, use it with rozeta scaler to keep things in key.
great album, thanks for sharing