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.
Drambo vs. Ableton live :
I’ve yet to really plunge the depths of the great Drambo and I’m trying to decide between really digging in vs finally learning Ableton. Thoughts? Has anyone here besides echopera learned both?
Comments
Use Drambo to sequence Ableton synths. Ableton is really great.
Agreed, sequencing with Drambo is the best. Live is great, most because of Max for Live, but nothing beats the immediacy of Drambo.
I've used Ableton for almost 8 years though I'm switching over to Bitwig, but I'll always keep Ableton around.
Ableton can record audio tracks!
The latest Ableton betas can load AUv3s, but getting midi out of them is hard. Otherwise, Drambo would be my permanent sequencer inside Ableton.
I’m a Bitwig user, too. Did you find any way to use Drambo and Bitwig?
Best solution I've found is to use Drambo as an external sequencer on the iPad connected to my M1 over Bluetooth midi, synced using Ableton Link.
While Drambo does work standalone on M1, it's not the same using it with a mouse. If you want to use Drambo for audio with Bitwig, one option is to use Blackhole by Existential Audio.
I will say that Drambo as AUv3 works pretty well in Ableton beta, so hopefully Bitwig will add support in the future as well.
Ableton unfortunately doesn't support midi with individual channels for VSTs, and they are not making any effort to add support for midi AU. I emailed support when the 11.2 beta started and they said it was not in scope and they are only focused on audio.
It's one of the reasons, I started to use Bitwig more. Midi channels and filtering are supported out of the box. Very much like AUM. Plus lots of other stuff.
Yeah agree that midi and Ableton is a bit annoying. But that works out ok for me and why the iPad + Ableton works really well as a combo. I do all my midi performance via ipad and record audio into Ableton tracks.
Then I arrange in Ableton with all audio, no midi. By the time I want to work in a DAW, I don't want to be messing with midi anyway
Yeah, I agree with that, as well. I prefer audio when arranging.
I mostly bothered by it as a limitation / flaw that Ableton should have fixed long ago. I think it's actually stifled midi VSTs from taking off because Ableton have such a huge part of the market. Maschine for example as a sequencer is fantastic but can't be used internally.
Ableton works well when using external midi, though there are workarounds using max devices for midi mapping / modulation, but Bitwig has these out of the box.
Also, as an alternative AUM like environment, I'm enjoying Gig Performer as well, since it also supports Link. I go and back forth with that Bitwig depending on the need.
How is Bitwig for audio?. I’ve never tried it, watched a few videos and it looks amazing.
Just as well as Ableton. I haven't found any major difference there.
@exhopera: We’ll, I’ve certainly learned something today .. and that is that Drambo is a more capable sequencer than Ableton which frankly
, surprises me .
I actually agree with @ehehehe . Despite the fact I am such a Drambo fan I would literally fight for it
I have to say that any comparison with Ableton is a bit far stretched. It’s two completely different worlds. Drambo is fun and there might be crazy things you won’t be able to do anywhere else, but still Ableton is a monster compared to Drambo when it comes to feature richness, compatibility with hardware, resilience for live payback, overall “completeness” for modern music production etc etc. Ableton is used in top studios all over the world, on nearly every stage on performances of top musicians etc etc… While Ableton is the leader in first league, Drambo is a very popular player, but only among the community of amateur players.
@skrat Well said
Seconded.
I never said Drambo was better at sequencing than Ableton. I just suggested you use it as a sequencer for Ableton. I love Ableton and Bitwig.
Yeah, exactly, the comparison was more Bitwig and Ableton, than saying that Drambo was comparable or better than Ableton. It's complimentary.
@echoopera : Ok, thanks for clarifying . Seems like SO many former Ableton users like Bitwig better. Do you use them both? What are your thoughts there?
Ableton lite and Drambo is a pretty good combo tbh.
Also, I barely use my Mac/Ableton since last Drambo update. Not saying it’s better, just seem to work quicker with it these days.
I tried Bitwig once on the Mac, and deleted it as soon as I saw it was a Java app, with utterly non-standard UI.
That's a shame, as I hear great things about it. I know it doesn't bother other people nearly as much, so don't take it as any kind of judgment. Other than that I hate Java apps
I had been a Java dev for many years and Bitwig’s UI is definitely not a typical Java UI. AFAIK they developed their own vector based widget set. That‘s why it scales so well. But that could have been done in any language with vector graphics. I think they’ve chosen Java for portability reasons.
Usually all multi-platform applications more or less break the native UI standards. Doesn’t Ableton also have a non-native UI except the dialogs? Virtually all plugins also break platform native UI standards, don‘t they? I find Bitwig’s UI has a great UX, is very logical and fluent to use and this is what is important. The rest is personal taste and I don’t want to debate about that. I personally don’t like the grey boredom in Ableton.
Bitwig‘s UI has so many nice usability features, for instance that it allows to enter note values in all fields that contain a frequency. The help system is really the best I’ve ever seen - you can even interact with the UI elements in the help screens and try instantly what you‘ve learned while still being in the help screen.
Why is Drambo better to Live or even LK when it comes to sequencing?
Although I love Drambo a lot, from my point of view the sequencer is the weakest part of it (Midi Scene size can't be shorter than 1 bar,Midi clip can't have arbitrary length, Only 1 midi out only , 16 midi tracks max, no follow actions, no piano roll layout, no midi import and export, ...)
What am I missing that make Drambo sequencer superior to others sequencers ?
Do you think it's worth upgrading from V10 to 11?
I've got a decent upgrade offer, but the extra FX though interesting, wouldn't really be worth the extra cost and the current plugin folder bug worries me...but AUV3 support could swing it.
As @auxmux said immediacy. Editing velocity/offset is very fast.
Step components, auto-extend while recording, touch, excellent probability and cycle conditions, elektron-style p-locking.
Ableton has a piano roll, and even Max devices don’t do all this. And I have really searched for them.
Off topic, but I’m finally getting a new macbook after 11 years (6 of which were not spent making music at all let alone on an iPad). It’s arriving any day.
What is the main way people connect their iPad to their desktop DAW for such a purpose? Im finding a surprising lack of info on the web about this.
IDAM? Studiomux? Any good tutorials you can link to?
I would like to use the iPad to sequence inside of DAWs and be able to record the MIDI (ie using generative MIDI apps, Dranbo etc) as well as use some of the iOS synths both IAA and AUv3 (hopefully with no perceptible latency).
Yes, exactly this. The hands on approach and quick editing of steps is much more immediate than creating clips. I have a push and it's not as fast as using Drambo. It's the same reason people like sequencing with opz or other hardware. There is a different type of immediacy there.
@Jeezs LK does do some things better than Drambo. Native Launchpad support for example. So, it's a reasonable alternative to Drambo or even Push. It has follow and clip actions which Drambo doesn't, but step, probability and automation editing are faster in Drambo in my experience. I definitely enjoy and recommend both.
@monz0id A few reasons to upgrade to v11 for Ableton: 1) probability editing in piano roll 2) MPE support 3) support for AUv3 is in development for 11.2.
Thanks for the reply! Yeah the probability looks good - is AUv3 support only currently in Beta?
Yes, only in beta right now.
Ah...ok, thanks for that...I'll pause for now then!