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.
Comments
Plus sideways 8
Interesting. With my M1 iPad Pro I've had no issues at all with Dorico playing back Pure Piano, Sampletron and multiple AudioLayer instances at the same time. But I do first open up AUM on its own and set the buffer to 1024, before opening Dorico, therefore Dorico follows AUM's buffer setting lead. I set up a buffer of 1024 as standard with Studiomux too as I'm looking for stability, not low latency. And much like Cubasis, Dorico features multicore, so the load of each instrument AUv3 is balanced across your available cores.
Staffpad is great and having access to Spitfire library elements (at a price) is a bonus. But I like Dorico on the desktop so that's why it's my preferred notation environment on the iPad. Plus I think it's very reasonably priced for what you get. Sibelius is more of a sidecar application on the iPad whereas Dorico has most of the important aspects of its desktop sibling.
I'm hoping that Steinberg can manage to bring its 'Halion Symphonic Orchestra (long of tooth but sounds great) to the iPad. It's 8Gb but with modern iPad storage capacities, it would be a nice option to have.
The main thing I'd like to see added to Dorico on the iPad is all the playback customisations of everything from dynamics to human feel. Without these playback customisations, things can sound a tad robotic. You can of course go into the pianoroll of each player and shift note values off-grid (without affecting the manuscript) but that's a little too laborious for me.
I'd also like to see proper MIDI out options so that you can use Dorico with IAA instruments e.g. use Sampletank (to use Miroslav) via AUM and even external MIDI devices. But it's early days. Dorico is only a few months on iPadOS and it's already had 2 significant update revisions, I'm sure things will only get better.
I was wondering if the M1 would help provide more headroom for AUv3 limitations.
This is good info.
I gave up on multiple AudioLayer instances when it arrived for similar scalability
limits. MY next hope at that time was importing instruments into NS2 like @ScottVanZandt
was doing before he switched to StaffPad with a massive investment in libraries totally
well over $500. I thought I HAD to get the libraries and waited but the default orchestra
in Staffpad for $90 is very, very good. Better than any SF2 orchestra.
I don't understand the relationship between AUM and Dorico. Does Dorico pass MIDI or
how do they sync up?
I have the cheap 2018 iPad so I'm on the middle end of all historical iPads. But it was a $400
buy-in and has made a ton of music after buying dozens of apps.
I'm a Cinesamples fan because they offer 50% off sales periodically and for each sale I'd
pick off one more library or soloist package. Spitfire never seems to discount much.
Yes. You're desktop use seems to dominate but you do track IOS pretty well for a Pro
level creator.
Steinberg seems to organize teams around apps with some shared code... Dorico and
Cubasis cover some overlap in features. It would be great if they merged into a more powerful IOS DAW but not likely to happen... they would tend to compete for customers
and the security of the team.
This makes me wonder even more how you're using AUM and Dorico in some sync'ed
approach.
No syncing is involved, but Dorico just like any other iOS audio App sets its buffer to match the first audio App opened (after reboot). This iOS standard is even more important with Dorico because it doesn't have its own preference pane for settling the audio buffer (it sets its buffer behind the scenes if it's not slaved to a prior apps setting).
As a standard practice, I reboot my iPad on a regular basis and open AUM as my first audio app to set the master buffer for all other audio apps to slave to. AUM also happens to be my scratchpad.
If Dorico were the first audio app opened after reboot it obviously sets an audio buffer in the background sufficient to play a certain number of Microsonic instruments (which are all pretty shite, much as they are in Cubasis). By first setting my master buffer setting in AUM to 1024 I'm basically setting up my iPad Pro for maximum simultaneous instruments. A lower buffer setting would matter if I were tracking live instruments but I can live with 20ms latency with my shitty chops!
And with Dorico in mind, it's designed primarily for procedural note entry, not live performance. It can record a live MIDI performance but that's not its primary use case.
Couldn't be further from the truth. The Dorico team are completely separate from the Cubase team. Unlike Cubase, Dorico is a really new product. The desktop version only launched in 2016. Its main reason for existence was that composers were getting fed up with Sibelius and Finale as they were based on ancient code and featured clumsy UX. Steinberg saw an opportunity as the notation view in Cubase wasn't originally intended as a professional notation offering. Steinberg also needed a standalone notation package to compete with Avid who have both Sibelius and Pro Tools under the same roof.
I'm an Ableton loyalist when it comes to desktop sequencers so I'm not talking as a Steinberg fanboi. Dorico has been really well received amongst its core market - composers for film, broadcast and games that write for real orchestras. The biggest praise for Dorico has been the speed of the workflow as it's built on brand new code that can take advantage of modern computing architectures. It's a real delight on an M1 Mac.
This is the main music tech blog for that particular space, it will give you a better idea of the core Dorico market, better than me anyway!:
https://www.scoringnotes.com/
There are of course efficiencies of scale for the teams within Steinberg, so code that can be shared, will be shared (you've seen with the commonalities between Cubasis and Dorico). For years part of the Cubase sales pitch was its integrated notation environment. But that didn't cut much mustard amongst the composers they were targeting, hence Dorico being launched as a standalone product.
My own interest in scoring software is more with regard to my partners eldest daughter. She has talent and ambitions of going to the Royal College of Music (London). I'm helping her with music technology and using the opportunity to soak up all I can about orchestration from a classicist perspective. I'm a DJ/Producer who's learnt music theory ad-hoc over the years. It's refreshing to take a busman's holiday via the gaze of a wannabe Leonard Bernstein!
Just to toss some randomization into the thread: I've been having fun scoring with ABC Notation., a text-based way of describing staff notation. I've been using Easy ABC on the Mac so far, and may pop for The Craic to be able to write on the iPad ... though I expect ADD will kick in and I'll lose interest before then.
I can't say I recommend this distraction!
It is kind of an interesting approach to scoring though.
Given our last discussion ref decoration and abodes, I'm somehow not surprised by your notational pastime.
Good tip! I didn't think about that.
I'm focused on rendering... it's just better with StaffPad for me.
I was just thinking about the code for the Microsonic instruments. Certainly that requires some code sharing between the apps.
It's worth mentioning that StaffPad and MuseScore have merged businesses... what that will mean in a future update is unclear except for the disclosure that realtime MIDI to notation is coming in the next big release.
@McD
I noticed that MuseScore and StaffPad had merged. I think it's probably a good thing as Sibelius and Dorico up their game on tablets, StaffPad will need to be seen as more than 'that notation app with handwriting recognition'.
The biggest advantage of StaffPad as I see it is that it's tablet-native. I have both StaffPad and Dorico on my iPad the Dorico UX is only great with connected keyboard and MIDI device. StaffPad feels far more akin to the Apple design philosophy of 'it just works', although that can't be said of its handwriting recognition for the moment!
I totally get why your preference is for StaffPad, and you're right that as far as music production is concerned, I definitely view music on an iOS device as an extension of my desktop production environment. Although in the case of Dorico, it's also a case that it's becoming a major player in the UK education sector, and with my partner's daughter in mind that was an important consideration.
It's certainly priced (on IOS) to destroy Sibelius and Finale. And it has features to compete with MuseScore. When I was a Music Student I would have loved a great engraving app to
improve the quality of my documents... we had to write out all the parts and send the originals out for reproductions. What I would have give to hear the musical compositions I handed in before I handed it in.
This is a good time for creatives to live and be educated. The tools are just amazing and
you don't need to sell your soul to put out solid work.
One other thought regarding Sibelius/Finale/Dorico vs StaffPad and this post is more for others reading this thread - @McD is already aware of this. Sibelius/Finale/Dorico are very much 'desktop publishing' products for notated music (think Adobe InDesign or QuarkXpress). Instrument playback is a secondary goal, albeit a goal that's handled exceptionally well in Dorico Pro 3.5 on the desktop. And so it should be considering the price (UK - £480, and the student version is hardly cheap at £281).
The built-in desktop library - The Halion Symphony Orchestra is a huge improvement on the Cubasis Microsonic library in Dorico iPad and sits somewhere between the iPad version of Miroslav Philharmonik 2 in SampleTank and the desktop version of Miroslav Philharmonik 2. It's an old library that dates back to 2006 (ish) but it's very playable and easy to set up much like Miroslav. It doesn't compare to the likes of Spitfire Audio libraries. Many Dorico Pro users make use of Spitfire libraries such as Abbey Rd One or the BBC Symphony Orchestra; which offer incredible quality in the sub £500 library category and also have the ease of use of something like Miroslav (although it must be said, Miroslav Philharmonik is hugely underrated simply because it's a SampleTank product).
However, regarding StaffPad, it must be said that once you start piling on the costs of instrument libraries you're soon in the £500 total outlay vicinity for a full orchestra. And that's for significantly stripped back versions of the desktop versions of similar Spitfire Audio libraries. Even if you go for cheaper libraries than the Spitfire Audio ones the financial outlay soon stacks up.
The major problem for Dorico iPad right now is with regards to instrument playback as there aren't any decent AUv3 orchestral libraries and without Dorico iPad featuring Core or Virtual MIDI you can't use IAA instruments such as Miroslav in SampleTank. The good news is that the Dorico dev team are considering MIDI out for a future iteration but right now they're busy finishing Dorico 4 across all available platforms, so the MIDI out situation won't be resolved in the short term.
Spot on.
Audio-to-MIDI
StaffPad will support audio staff/track and "convert audio track to score" and also audio-to-score in a near-future release - which means we could convert audio and audio-tracks to notation score and export the score to MIDI. It remains to be seen how accurate the final Audio-to-MIDI conversion is going to be.
There's a comment on the FaceBook "StaffPad User Group" about the "beta" update
version.
https://forum.audiob.us/uploads/editor/9h/l69s8wlispr7.png
hmmmm, wonder what it means
@McD anyone reach out to this Sean Gould yet??
I won't... "beta" means you shouldn't talk about "fight club" but I'm glad we care lose.
🤜
I suspect the beta will be long... apparently it's version 1.5 in beta. There have historically been 5 major updates since Staffpad shipped years ago on Windows "Slate" devices, I think. Before there was an apple pencil.
https://forum.audiob.us/uploads/editor/yb/4clyqf5fncx6.png
Some of these beta users have 100's of scores that need to be converted to run in the new version. I do not so bring it on! The comment on audio importing is what will take time to stabilize before opening it up to attract new buyers.
WIKIPEDIA RESEARCH: Originally released for Windows 8 on 31 March 2015. StaffPad was subsequently released on iPadOS on 5 February 2020.
Hmm, I think I will wait this one out for a while. I hope they don't "fix" the ability to run StaffPad on the Mac for free.
I have a Mac... I own IOS Staffpad. No Staffpad in the Mac OS App Store.
I guess this means I also need a new M1 Mac to get to this free ability.
Probably, unless it has already been taken away. I’ll check tomorrow. Means the virtual investment is backed up in one more place and it actually works reasonably well with an old Wacom trackpad pen. In some ways it works better as I can map the trackpad utility buttons to undo/lasso toggle/eraser which makes editing a bit easier.
@McD As confirmation - StaffPad appears in the iPad/iPhone app store as a Mac compatible app so you would indeed need an M1 to download it.
The problem with these cross-compatible apps is that you don't know if the author really meant for them to be available and they may suddenly decide that they want to start selling the app as a separate Mac app purchase. I have seen at least one fairly large app taken off the iPad/iPhone App Store despite once being available for download.
Thanks... that's enough uncertainty to put me off thinking an M1 MacBook is a good idea.
An M1 iPad is definitely a good idea for me to be able to really use all the software I own
already and expect to keep buying.
StaffPad is BF Week Selling at $40 and IAP Libraries are discounted 30%.
NOTE: You do not need any additional libraries to create film quality orchestral music.
But you'll probably covet the IAP VOXOS Choir or more percussion or more ambient sounds or extra keyboards/synths or more versions of Brass, Woodwinds, Percussion or Soloists like the excellent Tina Guo Cello.
But for $40 you can get into assuming you have an apple pencil... you must have an apple pencil or your stuck with "cut and paste" of imported MIDI to make much which for some might be a good approach but limited... not everything responds to a finger touch and there's no note drawing without an Apple pencil (they don't support the cheaper options and I haven't read about anyone trying one like the Logitech).
If you’re going to purchase premium orchestral section libraries but want to save a little by combining them with the built-in library, I can highly recommend picking up the Orchestral Tools Berlin Strings and Brass sections and using the built-in library for the woodwinds. This demo on the Staffpad YT convinced me to go that route (it uses the same mix of libraries).
The dynamic range of the strings is really epic. I just happen to have $75 in App Store credit. But no budget for the brass… I think I need to hold out incase Loopy “Blue Balls” Pro arrives in the store for BF at the intro price of $75.
@MobileMusic : I’m getting tired of repeating this but for the umpteenth time, thanks so much again! That video was GOLD .
NOTE: The Staffpad sale pricing is good until Dec 3. based upon the StaffPad
Facebook account:
https://forum.audiob.us/uploads/editor/gf/9x8t5m42baxc.png
That's great news.
I have a question. I’d like to record some orchestral background parts for guitar piano songs and I think Berlin brass/strings seem possibly the best on iOS. However I don’t want to write scores- it’s just not going to work for me - my plan is to record the parts with another orchestral app just so I can feel the playing of the composition, and then import the midi into staffpad and convert to Berlin, export as audio.
I tested this ages ago and it worked but only briefly. So does anyone have experience of this kind of use of staffpad not to score just for the sounds? I’m really curious how this works with volume fades Etc played on the midi part coming in does all that hold as the point is for it to be more expressive.
Also.. is there yet an easier way to do it? I remember everyone being excited on the Apple event thing when it looked like you could just play and record the sounds in staffpad with a midi keyboard - but I’m thinking this didn’t happen
I guess you meant @MobileMusicPro