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.
Xequence 2 Update Version 2.4.0
App "Xequence 2"
Developer: Seven Systems Cross-Platform Media Limited
URL: https://apps.apple.com/app/xequence-2/id1464669442
Minimum OS Version: 13.2
Universal: Yes
Price: $15.99
DESCRIPTION:
This app is targeted at digital music production enthusiasts & professionals.
Xequence is a comprehensive, fast & reliable MIDI sequencer, editor, arranger & controller for iPhone & iPad.
Providing a desktop-class editing experience, it is the perfect centerpiece for a hardware studio, or for apps like AUM & Audiobus 3 to create a modular mobile music production environment.
HIGHLIGHTS:
- Efficient & fast User Interface for an amazing editing workflow
- Robust MIDI File Import & Export (notes, controllers, program changes, etc.)
- Extensive support for MPE (In-App Purchase) with per-note expression data editing
- Support for scales everywhere (keyboard, pianoroll, etc.)
- Over 70 included scales in 10 categories
- MIDI Time Stretching in all editors
- Best-in-class MIDI timing and clock output
- Full Ableton Link 3 support
- Full Audiobus 3 support
- MIDI In & Thru with re-channelization & re-routing
- MIDI Sync Master (Clock/Start/Stop/Continue/SPP) to sync other DAWs & sequencers to Xequence, e.g. to use audio tracks, or external drum machines. Several options for compatibility
ARRANGER:
- Unlimited Clips
- Unlimited Tracks
- Unlimited Sub Tracks per Track
- 64 Undo/Redo steps
- Flexible grid
- Per-track non-destructive Swing & MIDI Delay
- Linked Clips / Clones (editing the original changes all copies)
- Powerful clip-based, per-track independent looping
- Program changes
- Selection tools: Marquee/Rectangle, Same Track, Same Instrument, Linked Clips, Invert, etc.
- Editing tools: Create Copy, Create Linked Copy, Unlink, Split, Join, Convert loops to clips, etc.
- Global clipboard, even between projects
- Movement/Trimming Handles at screen edges for efficient editing
PIANOROLL EDITOR:
- 256 Undo/Redo steps
- Scale-awareness ("folding")
- Relative or absolute grid (move by grid increments or snap to nearest grid lines)
- Live MIDI previews of all edits
- Selection tools: Box, Same Note, Same Key, Same Beat Position, Invert, etc.
- Editing tools: Copy, Legato, Quantize, Quantize Ends, Octave +/-, Flip H/V (mirror), Fill clip with selection, etc.
- Smart Draw mode: Touch to create, touch again to delete, drag up/down to transpose, drag left/right to change length
- Global clipboard, even between projects
- Configurable "ghost" overlays
- Note velocities quickly adjustable via a handle, or editable like controllers, see below:
CONTROLLER EDITOR:
- 256 Undo/Redo steps
- Selection tools: Box, Same Beat Position, Invert
- Selection modes: Add & Replace
- Editing tools: Copy, Reduce, Quantize, Compress/Expand, Flip H/V (mirror), Ramp (various curves), Fill clip with selection
- Smart Draw mode
- Note Velocities can be shown as controllers and edited with the same tools
- Configurable vertical grid & value entry
KEYBOARD / CONTROLLER:
- Scale-aware, very playable single or dual keyboards
- Glide support
- Adjustable key width
- Velocity emulation (via vertical position)
- Drum maps and pads, fully editable, 40+ factory maps
- Touch ribbons for live control
- Controllers can be moved by sliding (ribbon), device rotation (up to three axes at once), like a button (sustain pedal, "trance gates"), or by touching the keys at different vertical positions. All highly configurable.
INSTRUMENTS:
- Unlimited Instruments (MIDI configurations for devices / apps)
- Up to 150controller slots per Instrument
- Optional support for (N)RPNs (In-App Purchase)
- Loading & Saving of instruments for re-use in other projects, 40+ factory presets included (In-App Purchase)
- Compatible with virtually ALL apps and class-compliant MIDI interfaces
VARIOUS:
- Audio or MIDI Metronome
- Note chasing (notes play even when playback starts in the middle)
- Controller chasing
- Perfect song looping, no dropouts/jitter at loop points
- Supports any time signature/BPM (fixed per song)
- Includes PolyHymnia, an advanced Generative Music module
- Light and Dark themes
Please report any issues via our website, we provide quick and comprehensive support!
RELEASE NOTES: Version 2.4.0
NEW:
- Instruments: Xequence now comes with over 40 factory instrument (MIDI configuration) templates. More to be included in the future. They can be accessed in the "Factory" folder via the usual "Load" button in the instrument editor (In-App Purchase required).
- Arranger: When opening an editor for a clip with linked clips, the "xx linked" notification now contains a direct "Unlink" button, removing the need for a tedious round-trip to the arranger and back.
- Pianoroll: New "Remove doubles" option in the "Process" menu to remove notes starting at (almost) the same time: Only the longest of all overlapping notes will be kept. Notes with higher velocity will be prefered if in doubt.
- Recording: Prevent double notes: Only keep longer / higher velocity notes (can be disabled in settings).
- Recording: If a newly recorded clip overlaps with existing clips, Xequence will now offer to merge them or move the clip to a new sub-track.
IMPROVEMENTS:
- When Xequence is hosted as an IAA, the host's icon is now shown as an additional tab in the top toolbar and you can switch back to it with a single tap.
- Keyboard: Reorganized and much improved key and scale selector.
- Keyboard: Controller ribbons to be shown can now be selected directly on the keyboard screen (instead of in instrument settings). Also, the limit of 3 controller ribbons has been removed.
- Keyboard: Improved touch handling for better response time and less wonkyness with wild playing styles.
- Keyboard: Much improved key-position-to-controller handling for all 3 modes.
- Drum Pads: Drum maps can now be more efficiently selected via the regular file selector.
- Arranger: Instrument settings for each track's target instrument can now be accessed directly from the track menu.
- Arranger: Mute and Solo buttons are now directly accessible at any vertical zoom level.
- Arranger: Current track is now always drawn taller, providing access to all buttons at any vertical zoom level.
- Arranger: Generally improved dynamic tracklist layout.
- Arranger: Significantly smoother editing under high CPU load.
- Arranger: Tweaked clip previews.
- Arranger: When naming clips, if all selected clips already have the same name, pre-fill the input box with it.
- Toolbars: Added labels to top and keyboard toolbar icons.
- When loading a project that uses 'Xequence Source' and it is not enabled, offer to enable it.
MISCELLANEOUS:
- Timestretching now by default turns itself off again every time the horizontal handles are used; this is probably a rarely used mode and having it unexpectedly enabled probably often gives unexpected results (the old behaviour can be restored in Settings).
- Arranger: Undo / Redo now always preserves which track is selected.
- Various little user interface tweaks to make life more productive.
- MIDI Sync: When recording, the Count-In is now be excluded so that the slaves only start after the Count-In.
FIXES:
- Keyboard: Kill any held notes when changing scales.
- Keyboard: Fix problem with keys sometimes sending the wrong (maximum) velocity when sliding between keys with multiple fingers in dual mode in both manuals simultaneously.
- Controller Editor: Fix existing automation not being deleted when recording new automation via the left-hand ribbon and recording is started while the ribbon is already being touched.
- Recording: Fix rare situation where controller data recorded during count-in could be written one or more bars early.
- Fix rare situation when Xequence's settings could revert to defaults.
Comments
Great sequencer
Awesome!!
Thanks @tja -- manual update will be online shortly!
Thanks for this fantastic - and free - update!
🤗
Thanks for the always wonderfully nitpicky help with beta testing! 😜
The manual has also been updated, and can be found at the usual location both online and as a PDF:
http://seven.systems/xequence2/en/downloads/
Busy times in the gold-plated Seven Systems WHQ skyscraper for sure...
How do I stop Xequence from creating multiple instruments / tracks when I have multi-record on? The auto-created instruments are all linked to the same channel output which is not what I want. I’d like to record individual channels from AUM and send back Xequence tracks to the same midi channels.
Pages 39 and 40 of the PDF about Multitrack Recording and manual configuration could help here.
Online version: http://seven.systems/xequence2/en/manual/#section-11
Normally, once the necessary tracks for each source (MIDI Port + Channel) have been auto-created, they should be re-used the next time you record something (i.e., Xequence should recognize that they're already there). If Xequence keeps creating new tracks for the same source(s), that could be a bug.
Could you maybe share a screenshot of both your Xequence instruments screen and arranger screen so that I can see what might be going on?
@SevenSystems I'm using AUM as host. While new tracks are only created once, the problem is they are being created as subtracks, so they have all the same destination and outgoing midi channel.
Is there a way to do multi-record, where new tracks are created but they are not subtracks, so their outgoing ports/channels are independent?
Not automatically -- you'd have to create the corresponding instruments yourself once, and then go into each track's settings and assign the Multitrack Recording Source manually. Xequence will then re-use these tracks for each multitrack recording the same as if they had been created automatically.
Got it, thanks. How do I stop Xequence from creating new subtracks for recording after creating tracks manually? Because I was trying this approach, but new subtracks kept being created. Is there a setting to disable this? I tried to disable Automatically Manage Tracks but didn't appear to work.
That should not happen. Could you maybe make a short screen recording of it happening?
Wish it could host
And yes, the AUM button has arrived!
🙂👍
I might be extremely limited in my thinking, but that one feature alone makes me happy. Everything else is icing on the cake AFAIC. Thank you 👊
Thanks a lot for the report.
I've found a potential issue that could cause this warning -- are you possibly launching Xequence from another app (Audiobus or AUM), then never actually bringing it to the foreground, then removing it, then launching it again? This would cause an erroneous warning like that. I'll be fixing this in an update shortly.
In the meantime, you should be able to get rid of the warning by ensuring that you bring Xequence to the foreground at least once.
If you can reproduce the crash when receiving MIDI data, I'd be very happy to hear how you did it because it needs to be fixed! 😜
I know the feeling when you tunnel-vision onto one specific issue that drives you crazy... it's all good! 😄
Does this warning also occur if you:
1) Kill (swipe up on the multitasking screen) Xequence
2) Launch Xequence by tapping the home screen icon
3) Kill Xequence again by swiping it up on the multitasking screen
4) Launch Xequence again by tapping the home screen icon
?
OK, thanks! Will be sorted in an update soon.
Haha, thanks for the... compliment I guess! Maybe Steinberg wants to hire some lonely Irish backyard developer to give their MIDI editor a boost 😂
I’d love it if there was just a crappy gm sound set built in, it’d be an even more perfect environment for focusing on composition
OK, maybe I'll add "Offer crappy GM sound set as $3.99 IAP" to the roadmap (focus on "crappy", of course! 😆)
Think it’s pretty simple to integrate with software like BS-16i standalone and map voices to each midi channel within Xequence. Save as a preset and boom… it’s pretty perfect as is.
Definitely, pc ISA sound card crappy for the ultimate in you’ve got to make the music good to get over the bad sounds 😁