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.

Favorite Sample Slicer/Sequencer -

Alright, I think it's time to finally maybe probably perhaps sell my Octatrack MKII (can you tell I'm super decisive about this?). While it's a beast of a machine, I just don't use it most of the time and can pretty much replace most of what it does with my Digitakt, Digitone, and iPad. The one thing that I'm really going to miss is the slicing capabilities of the OT. Up to 64 different slices, control over start/stop points, speed/pitch/time-stretching, and randomization of slices integrated into the sequencer. I'm trying to find some apps on the iPad that would match that beefiness. I know that no single app will do it all, and that's ok. I'm just trying to see if there's a way I can piece things together to get the most of what I'd be missing.

Here's what I've got in my library so far:

Reslice - 32 slices only. No individual MIDI control over slice parameters.

sEgments - 16 slices only. Does have individual MIDI control over slice parameters. BPM detection/editing is a bit wonky sometimes. Still has GUI bugs where longer samples won't show up visually. Time stretching is pretty good, but you can't stretch individual slices.

Drambo - This is the closest thing I've come to recreating the OT, and the multiout and modular nature of it makes it almost more powerful. You can only automatically do 32 slices, but it seems you can add more manually, which isn't ideal but at least doable. The only thing I can't figure out is time stretching without pitch shifting and choosing on-the-fly changes to slice start and stop time (the fade in/fade out on the Flexisampler is only partially the same thing). If Drambo has time-stretching built in, this conversation wouldn't be necessary :)

Other samplers I have that don't totally fit the bill: Samplr, Borderlands, iDensity, Elsa, Looper, Fieldscaper, and Audiolayer.

Maybe I'm missing something about the 5 I mentioned above, but I'm pretty sure there's no way to get more than 32 slices at most, and time-stretching is kind of all over the place. I was looking at EG Pulse on sale today, but it doesn't really look like it'd do anything much differently than sEgments for my purposes (I have enough straight drum sequencers/samplers).

Are there any other samplers on iOS that I'm not considering here? Egoist looked kind of neat, but it seems to be fairly limited in a lot of ways and isn't AUv3.

Comments

  • @slicetwo said:
    Alright, I think it's time to finally maybe probably perhaps sell my Octatrack MKII (can you tell I'm super decisive about this?). While it's a beast of a machine, I just don't use it most of the time and can pretty much replace most of what it does with my Digitakt, Digitone, and iPad. The one thing that I'm really going to miss is the slicing capabilities of the OT. Up to 64 different slices, control over start/stop points, speed/pitch/time-stretching, and randomization of slices integrated into the sequencer. I'm trying to find some apps on the iPad that would match that beefiness. I know that no single app will do it all, and that's ok. I'm just trying to see if there's a way I can piece things together to get the most of what I'd be missing.

    Here's what I've got in my library so far:

    Reslice - 32 slices only. No individual MIDI control over slice parameters.

    sEgments - 16 slices only. Does have individual MIDI control over slice parameters. BPM detection/editing is a bit wonky sometimes. Still has GUI bugs where longer samples won't show up visually. Time stretching is pretty good, but you can't stretch individual slices.

    Drambo - This is the closest thing I've come to recreating the OT, and the multiout and modular nature of it makes it almost more powerful. You can only automatically do 32 slices, but it seems you can add more manually, which isn't ideal but at least doable. The only thing I can't figure out is time stretching without pitch shifting and choosing on-the-fly changes to slice start and stop time (the fade in/fade out on the Flexisampler is only partially the same thing). If Drambo has time-stretching built in, this conversation wouldn't be necessary :)

    Other samplers I have that don't totally fit the bill: Samplr, Borderlands, iDensity, Elsa, Looper, Fieldscaper, and Audiolayer.

    Maybe I'm missing something about the 5 I mentioned above, but I'm pretty sure there's no way to get more than 32 slices at most, and time-stretching is kind of all over the place. I was looking at EG Pulse on sale today, but it doesn't really look like it'd do anything much differently than sEgments for my purposes (I have enough straight drum sequencers/samplers).

    Are there any other samplers on iOS that I'm not considering here? Egoist looked kind of neat, but it seems to be fairly limited in a lot of ways and isn't AUv3.

    For beat slicing and options, 8 don’t think anything compares to BeatMaker 3. It can be used IAA as an instrument if one prefers another sequencer.

  • @espiegel123 said:

    For beat slicing and options, 8 don’t think anything compares to BeatMaker 3. It can be used IAA as an instrument if one prefers another sequencer.

    Riiiight. I have BM3 and it crashes regularly. Maybe it won't if I'm just doing the beat stuff. I'll have to investigate it more.

  • I concur with @espiegel123: Beatmaker 3 all the way. It can auto slice beyond 64!

  • @slicetwo said:

    @espiegel123 said:

    For beat slicing and options, 8 don’t think anything compares to BeatMaker 3. It can be used IAA as an instrument if one prefers another sequencer.

    Riiiight. I have BM3 and it crashes regularly. Maybe it won't if I'm just doing the beat stuff. I'll have to investigate it more.

    Under what circumstances? Using it as a beatslicer/sampler I don’t get crashes at all (very very rarely).

    There are a handful of AUv3s that people have trouble with. So if you are using some, you may want to limit the ones you use.

    Are you using the latest version?

    What hardware and OS?

  • @espiegel123 and @Stuntman_mike just messed around with BM3. Seems pretty good in a lot of the areas I was looking for. Wish they'd release the sampler as an AU!

  • edited November 2020

    @espiegel123 said:

    Under what circumstances? Using it as a beatslicer/sampler I don’t get crashes at all (very very rarely).

    There are a handful of AUv3s that people have trouble with. So if you are using some, you may want to limit the ones you use.

    Are you using the latest version?

    What hardware and OS?

    Latest OS. 2018 iPad 9.7 and whatever the latest BM3 on the app store is. I honestly don't remember. Stopped really trying to use it a while ago. I'll probably run it only as a beat slicer and IAA in AUM. We'll see how it goes.

  • What I've come to realize is that BM3 isn't really great with AU/IAA, its mostly great for samples. If you are sample-based producer, BM3 is king. In that regard, there's nothing that can beat it on iPad. If you prefer to use a lot of soft synths, it's just not built for that. As I'm getting more into samples, I think I'll eventually start using it more, because it really has a great workflow for that type of production.

  • @Lil_Stu07 said:
    What I've come to realize is that BM3 isn't really great with AU/IAA, its mostly great for samples. If you are sample-based producer, BM3 is king. In that regard, there's nothing that can beat it on iPad. If you prefer to use a lot of soft synths, it's just not built for that. As I'm getting more into samples, I think I'll eventually start using it more, because it really has a great workflow for that type of production.

    I concur. BM3 is wonky with plugins, but works great with samples. AUM or NanoStudio are more stable for plugins.

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