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.

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Simulating Octatrack features with AU plugins on iPad…

Hello, everyone. This is my first post here, and I hope you’ll forgive me for being an AUM user instead of an Audiobus user. Regardless, I think the gist of my questions is the same:

Anyway I have a Digitakt that I love. I love it’s sound design capabilities and the focus I achieve with its workflow. I also play several instruments. Mostly I route them through an RC-505 in order to loop. However, long sessions of looping have left me wanting for the ability to live-loop, slice, and mangle my loops (whether they’re vocal, guitar, or coming from my iPad), and as a result, I’ve started craving an Octatrack. I think I’d get a lot out of its mixing, effects, it’s multiple inputs and outputs, and its compatibility with the DT (both being in the Elektron ecosystem) but even a used OT is a bit outside my budget.

I also play with Roli Blocks (through my iPad) and recently downloaded AUM, which has been a great solution for switching between sounds on the Noise App and mixing them, as well as sending the audio through my DT via a much cleaner USB connection (as compared to an aux cable > RC505). I also possess a Focusrite 4i4, which, if I understand correctly, means I could route vocals and other instruments into the iPad, and out through the Focusrite, giving me those separate outputs for separate stereo signals. Granted, I’ve had trouble getting AUM to recognize both my DT and the 4i4 simultaneously. Perhaps I need a powered USB Hub…

So my question here is this: what good iPad apps are there which might allow me to recreate the features I desire from the Octatrack? Ideally, I’d love to have a live-loop-sampler which can be synced to and triggered by the Digitakt. It would be fantastic to be able to assign slices to be triggered by the MIDI tracks of the DT, and change parameters such as tuning, distortion, playback (forward VS reverse VS looped) and FX parameters.
Members of the Reddit community were recommending Drambo, which I find very compelling, especially for its “Scene Slider” utility, but the app seems rather more expansive than I require. I don’t need more stock samples, for example. Nor do I see how the internal MIDI sequencing could benefit my use of MPE, which is why I’m hoping instead for a waveform (and/or granular?) live looper to capture audio from Roli and perhaps also from Vocals etc. Nonetheless, I’m open to Drambo (it is only $20), especially considering it can route many other Audio Utilities through its framework.

Anyone tried anything similar before? Does Drambo itself possess good slicing features? If not, which applications have you used in conjunction with Drambo? How is the live-looping on Drambo compared to its sequencer or other apps? Any recommendations would be appreciated.

Comments

  • Drambo would be perfect for you — has unlimited depth—but it’s easy to ignore the complex bits until you need them. Very similar sequencer to Elektron, and it’s easy to customize it to do exactly what you want and ignore features you don’t need. And yes, it has excellent slicing with its Flexi Sampler generator module.

    I like to load Drambo in standalone and load Loopy Pro as an AUV3 to handle some of the sampling/looping duties and use Flexi for slicing .. You can record loops in Drambo’s own samplers but Loopy Pro makes the process more efficient for me.

    There are a few Drambo patches on Patchstorage that replicate some of Octatracks functionality, which could give you a great head start. Plenty of youtube tutorials to get you up and running as well.

  • Drambo is basically an OT on steroids for the iPad.

  • Well, that does it. Just purchased Drambo after your recommendations and watching a video on the internal flexi-sampler. Now i just have to sort the audio routing and hopefully keep my Digitakt connected via USB!

  • wimwim
    edited December 2022

    @Jevins said:
    I also play with Roli Blocks (through my iPad) and recently downloaded AUM, which has been a great solution for switching between sounds on the Noise App and mixing them, as well as sending the audio through my DT via a much cleaner USB connection (as compared to an aux cable > RC505). I also possess a Focusrite 4i4, which, if I understand correctly, means I could route vocals and other instruments into the iPad, and out through the Focusrite, giving me those separate outputs for separate stereo signals. Granted, I’ve had trouble getting AUM to recognize both my DT and the 4i4 simultaneously. Perhaps I need a powered USB Hub…

    Unfortunately even with a hub iOS can only recognize one audio interface at a time. The last one plugged in wins. You can have multiple midi devices on a hub, but multiple audio devices will not work.

  • edited December 2022

    @Jevins welcome aboard. Here’s your Digitakt in Drambo i made for just such an occasion :

    I have a few more videos which cover Drambo 2.0 which follow an Elektron way of working with Drambo as well on my YouTube page. Hope they help and inspire

    👊🏼™️

  • One tip: you can p-lock the record button of some of the recorders/samplers, and sometimes the play button too. This lets you auto-record synced loops, like the Octatrack. I love to feed @giku_beepstreet’s Radio Unit AU into one of these.

  • edited December 2022

    What @wim says about an interface is true, but that’s not a deal breaker by any means. You’ll simply choose one device as your “interface” to get audio in and out of your iPad.

    I know the Digitakt can act as an audio interface, but your 4i4 would probably be the better device to serve this role. You’ll be sacrificing nothing by just plugging your DT first, and then the 4i4 into the usb hub. Now you can run your audio out from your DT into the 4i4 interface.

    I’m not sure of all of the features of the DT as I don’t own one, but you should be able to use all of its midi functions with this setup. Drambo and/or AUM etc. will recognize the 4i4 as the audio interface, and you’ll see the DT present as a MIDI device (in AUM, look at the MIDI matrix).

    However if you want to record audio into the DT, you’ll just unplug both from the hub, then only plug in the DT, if you just have to record a sample or something on the DT.

    Personally, I think the more you use and discover Drambo (and later on, we might talk you into Loopy Pro, which btw, is by the creator and developer of AudioBus), you’ll see less and less use for the DT, unless you’re one of those who just has to have some hands on hardware.

    @Jevins oh and welcome to the Dramboverse!

  • edited December 2022

    Come to think of it, if your 4i4 is a “3rd Gen”4i4 (same interface I have), it is capable of loopback audio, so you might even be able to run audio right back into your DT from the 4i4 without even having it set as the “interface” for the iPad.

    In other words, instead of the “However” portion of my post above. Someone with a DT like @echoopera might be able to confirm this.

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