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.
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The desktop version is very similar. There’s another sitala thread, or maybe it was this one where someone shared a website with some good sitala info, as well as a YouTube video going over some features.
@Lacerate Oh here is is.., lol.
Excited about the future of this app. Recently purchased and really enjoying it so far. Thanks and congratulations on creating this gem.
You mean for finger drumming? We're working on a special finger-drumming mode this week, but it's mostly focused on the iPhone rather than the iPad.
I'm curious: would larger pads actually be useful for the most part on an iPad? My intuition was that making them larger beyond a certain point might make them actually harder to use.
Yeah, the iOS version isn't a "lite" version or somesuch, it's based on the exact same code with some special cases defined for a touch interface and the different layouts of iOS.
On either iPhone or iPad I’d like to see an option for a pads only mode. Even on an iPad , being able to have only the pads visible during performance would be more optimal as one may want to be finger drumming Sitala and accessing other parts of the screen.
A BIG +1 one this, preferably with some kind of 'pad velocity'
Radial = center max velocity, edges lower velocity
Vertical = velocity up/down or velocity down/up
And a 'roll strip' to set roll speed (1/1 to 1/128) when held the triggered pads would roll/repeat respecting the 'position' to set for the velocity for each repeated note for a dynamic performance.
Roll + Swipe down/up would roll and and set the velocity for the sound depending on the vertical position on the pad that is being triggered.
As Sitala already outputs midi this could also double as a nice control surface for other drum apps
Another thing to consider is the fading out the illumination on the pads more instantly. Like should only be illuminated when touched. Even though it’s an Illusion it does make the instrument “feel” less tight. For comparison checkout how quickly iMaschine pads respond visually.
Have you ever used the built in manual drumming options in GarageBand? IMO, Apple has done a tremendous job with their drum kits and drum machines. You should give them a try.
You mean with the "Drums" instrument? (Yes, sure, I've tried that.) What is it that you love about it?
There's a particular thing that we're kicking around right now that I think may be really cool (still need to play around with the prototype) based around the idea that finger-drumming on the iPhone is mostly done with thumbs (which isn't true on the iPad) -- so it's not a matter of copying the things other apps have done right, but to some degree re-imagining what makes sense. I'll naturally be interested in feedback here once we have something that's far enough along for testing...
What I like about the manually playable drums in GarageBand in iOS is that some of the kits are quite sensitive to velocity and very subtle performances are possible. This isn't true of all of the kits, but if you find the right ones, some very nice work is possible with them.
I saw a comment from a dev years ago (I believe Jim Audio) that there is substantial jitter in the touch response on iPad screens (relative to MIDi controllers)
if so perhaps a solution could be allow for some kind of MIDI input quantize when playing the pads
Interesting. Is this something that is proven/measured or just a myth?
It was said matter-of-factly by a respectable dev on this forum (I just don’t recall who) but no further discussion on the topic. However I did start to compare finger drumming in GB vs MIDI controller. And subjectively it seemed quantizing the clip was mandatory in the former and optional in the latter.
But there’s always been a comparison in “touch latency” between iOS devices and Android…and then there’s also the introduction of “Pro-motion” display technology on some iPads..it’s conceivable that touch latency/jitter could be affected
I don't think it is so much jitter as that tap detection (as opposed to release detection) is subject to a lot of variables that make it somewhat unreliable for very fine timing. The amount of moisture (for instance) influences touch detection. That is why Loopy uses release by default for loop record start/stop as that is far more precise and reliable. And, yes, he has measured it. It is inherent in the hardware--and irrelevant for most of the hardware's use cases.
I don’t doubt it and just tried the same thing with GB first then Drambo using a Korg PadKontrol. With GB it’s very noticeable, Drambo less so but still there. Both situations with screen tapping would take some massaging to sound right compared to the controller.
It’s good to know. Thanks
We didn't specifically test the jitter, but we did test the round-trip latency, and it's very high for something that would be used for performance: around 40 ms. We tested it by recording with an external mic the sounds of hitting the screen and the time before audio came out. It'd felt high latency to me, so we did the mentioned test with several pieces of software to see if any of them did better, and they didn't.
It's a pretty easy test to do since you just record and audio file and open it up in something like Ocenaudio and measure the distance between the waveform peaks.
Prior to that we'd been considering if maybe somewhere lurking in the gaming APIs there might be something we could find with a lower latency event stream that we could react to.
I bought sitala just recently when it went on sale and it’s been great, however the last 2 days, when I browse samples It doesn’t show the audio files inside the folders. Samples that I used to make kits only 3-4 days ago aren’t there when browsing samples. I’ve tried a restart. I’ve tried to add the location again but they are not showing up for some reason. Not in standalone or as an AU in AUM…
Here’s 2 pics below. One of sitala and one of the files app both of the same folder. They are in the iCloud folder, cause when I go into the files app all 25 kicks in that folder show up. However they do have the “cloud with the down arrow” download button next to them. It Could be user error, but not sure why? I created like 7-8 kits only a few days ago.
I’m wondering if the iOS 15.6 update did anything, I’m still on iOS 15.5 atm. iPad 6.
Also I’m wondering if it may have something with my device settings? (ie Optimize Storage or something) any help would be much appreciated. Cheers.
We are currently working on syncing and browsing iCloud files that aren't saved locally on the device. In fact that feature is already done and will definitely be part of the upcoming release which is scheduled to arrive in two to three weeks. For now unfortunately you need to download the missing files using the Files.app.
Thanks @luzifer That is amazing news, congratulations on getting that to work. I’m super pumped for that update. Loving the app, and excited to see it evolve.
I also updated since then and realized it was not the iOS version.
I redownloaded the files that I was trying to use and they showed up. It’s not too difficult since you can select all, then hit the “More” button at the bottom of files app, and select download, to download the entire folder at once. However that was a step in the process I was hoping To eliminate.
Cheers!
@scotchi @luzifer any chance of getting a desktop update to restore iOS to desktop cross platform (mac-Pc) compatibility? It worked pre (iOS version) update , but after it doesn’t retain the drum kit settings when sending to desktop etc in the cross platform daw.
Nice!!! I was hoping you’d do this.
Are you thinking of supporting browsing by tag as well as folder? I have no idea how straight forward this is to implement but I know lots use tags to organise their samples since samplecrate came out
What DAW are you using specifically?
We'd love to add support for tags. Unfortunately the way Apple supports directory privileges at the moment doesn't allow using Spotlight APIs. We'll dig a little deeper to see if there is another way before giving up though.
MTS (MultiTrackStudio)
Edit: On an iPad I have without the Sitala (for iOS ) update projects can be sent back and forth (from desktop to iOS or vice versa) and retain the drum kit settings. On another iPad with the current Sitala (for iOS) update, it doesn’t.
Ah thanks so much for trying. If you can’t do it I’ll just reorganise my files into folders so no biggie.
@scotchi Great app, very easy to use!
I’ve had a small problem:
I had to restore my Ipad from a backup, and the only thing I had a problem with, was Sitala.
It seems that after the restore, it did not remember it’s sample paths, and so it could not find the samples I had assigned.
Refinding the samples, made everything work again.
The problem showed it self in a Cubasis project.
I hope this is enough info, to troubleshoot.
It’s taken me ages to get round to trying this, but I managed to make an iOS shortcut that copies a file and tags it at the same time, so eg. I can move files to a folder called ‘Kicks’ and tag with ‘Kicks’ at the same time. Best of both worlds and can do all this from samplecrate. Copied files don’t take up any more disk space on iOS so I can leave the original version of each file where it is.
This is then great for Sitala’s amazing file browser. Absolute best thing for me is that all my files are on iCloud, so if I share a song to another device, Sitala finds all the samples instantly and it’s good to go without having to do anything. No transferring presets required or anything like that to keep up with.
Drambo needs to do this @giku_beepstreet 😉
Hello everyone,
Does sitala support stereo samples? I haven't found any info about it.