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
First of all,thanks so much for your kind words @JoyceRoadStudios !
The idea behind my working process really comes from the fact that I like to keep things quick and simple.
Most of my life,I've worked with real tube amps.I mean one amp (at a time),one cab,one guitar.
Most of guitar amps have at least two channels,clean and dirty.
You've got to do with it.
You are right @JoyceRoadStudios ,I know my gear.
Many years ago,I had many great guitars at home.You know what?i've sold them all because one day,I've realized I only played on my Luke guitar and that I could get every sound out of it.
I swear I know this guitar like it is a part of my body.
Getting that kind of relationship with an instrument can take many years but once done,you won't need anything else.
I'm not interested in buying guitars anymore.
About IRS,I confess that the first time i've bought some,I've spent hundreds hours checking most of them.
It was time consuming,but a very fun experience.I've learnt and discovered many great things.
I had to do this,but,most importantly,I had to get out of this😂.
I knew what I wanted.Which kind of sound,textures,I needed.
You must hear the sound in your head before doing anything else,or you'll loose a lot of time😉.
And,for me,the most important of all,is PLAYING AND HAVING FUN!
Flo
Anyone can recommend some good fender cab IRs? I never was a fan of IRs in amp sims but maybe there are better places/websites to look for quality IRs.
https://www.ownhammer.com/store/
The (r)Evolution is a good value, but doesn't specialize in Fender cabinets. What I did was go through the video demos of those amps and then pick one that seemed closest to the style I usually play. Then I bought the individual cabinet, not the bundle. I think it cost me $8.00.
Next I spent a fair amount of time getting a feel for all the variations of that cabinet, and picked six to import to Thafknar. Only Six. I stashed the rest and have tried to forget about them so I don't spend all my life plunking around through hundreds of files.
I broke down during a sale and got the (r)Evolution bundle. But I have to say I only use one other of the cabinets from that selection so far.
Before that I had tried many free IRs and they just don't hold up to the Ownhammer ones IMO.
Thanks a lot @wim for that report! I can relate to spending countless hours with finding the right amp tone. So far I more or less successfully used EQs and saturation to dial it in (similar to what gain stage app does) but I’m curious about giving IRs another try to get that signature Fender amp sound that most of us guitarists fell in love with at one stage in our lives. Didn’t we? 😄
I’ve worked with the Fender IRs inside the rEvolution bundle and I think they’re just ok. IMHO best IRs in that bundle by a long shot are the Vox AC15/30 IRs and the Marshall GNR-75 IRs. The Orange and Boogie IRs a little dark, and the Fender ones are a tad anemic. I’ve also bought the Ownhammer Tweed IR which is not made by Fender but are a tweed style IR. They’re ok. The one Fender IR from Ownhammer that I can personally highly recommend is the 410 SVRB which is the Fender Super Reverb 4x10 open back. It’s great.
It’s tricky with IRs though, you may be looking for a certain Fender sound, but in reality it’s more important to think of things like “do I need an IR to brighten this or to darken this” or “do I need an IR with more upper mid presence or more bass” etc… honestly I have found that opposites can sound better. If your amp sim is already bright and thin then a fender IR could make it even thinner. So I actually tend to use modern heavy hitter IRs on vintage style sims, and I use vox and fender type IRs on the heavy hitter amps, to balance things out.
I somewhat agree about the rEvolution bundle Fender IRs sounding a little bit thin, at least for the IRs in the Summary folder. I actually find that helpful when working in a mix but not quite as satisfying when noodling solo. There are some variations with more "thump" if I cared to go digging. But I'm huge of simplifying these days.
That's where the Nembrini IR loader has proved to be a pleasant surprise. I find that simply kicking in the power amp with the right settings gives me just the little extra meat I'd like to see sometimes without chaining in yet more FX. The EQ and compressor are there too, but I'm studiously avoiding them for now because they're yet another invitation to spend more time tweaking than playing.
In my opinion, Fender-ishness comes more from the amp than the cab. Those Vox cabs in rEvolution pair well with Fender-ish amp sims, imo.
Yes they do, and I also pair those VoxAC15/30 mix IRs with pretty much every Nembrini, even the high gain ones. Sometimes I’ll use the Marshall IRs. I don’t know what it is, a certain upper mid sprinkle dust? But those two are just stellar, as they are in real life.
This is true but also a bit contradicting if “your gear” is actually some folders with a couple thousand IR files… I’d love to settle on 3 IR’s, but which ones? 😳 . Sure, the summary folder, but the “dark mix” sounds good on that one, what about the “T1” on that other cab that makes it less muddy….?. I do wish I had just a dozen to start with, there’s that feeling of “what I’m tossing the good one without even trying it?”.
I'm curious too
If you don't know it, Thafknar is a great app for general IRs (and cabs).
AltiSpace 2 is also great for convolution reverbs and comes with a vast assortment https://apps.apple.com/us/app/altispace-2/id1580223509
AltiSpace 2 unfortunately limits the IR length. So it can’t run some of the long IRs I like using for reverb . I find that I get better performance from THAFKNAR (on top of the ability to run true stereo-to-stereo reverbs).
Thanks for the replies, I didn't know about AltiSpace's limitation. @richardyot commented earlier that IR Loader is optimized for cab IRs, so I'll just stick with Thafknar.
Is it exact to say that IR cab can be clone with only reverb, delay and EQ? I know what IR is, but I just want to be more precise about my knowledge.
While some people claim they can get close with eq, reverb and early reflections, I have not heard an implementation that is as effective as a good cabinet IR. And that was more or less the consensus opinion after quite a few of us compared an app that took that approach to the same app with its cabinet emulation turned off and ran through ir’s instead.
Thank you!
You sure can and I'd recommend to do it!
I've had so much fun loading all kinds of different IRs into Thafknar (my favorite IR processor), there's no reason not to use anything you record as an IR.
No. Except your reverb emulates the cab's response closely enough which is uncommon in reverbs. That's why IRs are still used today.