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.
Caustic? Or other 'DAW'?
Is caustic worth getting/ is it compatible with AB? I've had a look and I quite like the look of it!
Been toying with the idea of beatmaker and/or nano studio?
Are there any of these sorts of programs you'd recommend? Also, is there anything about the apps I've already mentioned that I should look out for?
Comments
That depends on your preferences and goals. Are you mostly interested in working with synths and drum machines? Caustic and Nanostudio are very highly recommended. If you want to work with samples and loops, BeatmakerII is as good as it gets, but also has a learning curve.
I'd be happy to answer any questions you have about Caustic. You can start by checking out some of the developer videos/tutorials. This is a massively useful resource - it'd be pretty hard to come away from those without a good idea of whether the app works for you.
https://www.youtube.com/user/CausticApp/videos
Regarding your AudioBus question - yes, it is compatible with AudioBus. This was added in the 3.1 update, along with a whole slew of other things. That's probably most useful for the Input slot, which would be like using Caustic as an instrument to record into another app (like Loopy, AudioShare, or a DAW).
I do not consider Caustic (or NanoStudio, for that matter) to be DAW's. I can very easily how people could consider them to be DAW's, but they are still missing "audio tracks", which means you cannot simply drop recorded material from another app or instrument as a "track" in Caustic. The tracks are actually the different "machines", which are synths, BeatBox (drums), and the Vocoder. This can be layered on top of each other like different "tracks" and you can definitely make full songs in that way, but it is not a true DAW like BeatMaker 2, Multi-Track DAW, Cubasis, or Auria.
Still, if you get used to the slightly "retro" interface (3.1 also introduced skins), Caustic is deceptively powerful. In fact, if you have a computer of pretty much any kind, you can download the full version right now for FREE:
http://www.singlecellsoftware.com/caustic
If I'm being honest, the synthesizers and other sounds within Caustic are good, but not up to the level of many of the better music apps we talk about. What makes Caustic so powerful is the "open source" nature of it - you can get free user created presets into it, paid content, or simply load in your own .wav samples or even SoundFonts using the "Open In" feature. It's universal, compact, and can do just about anything (except recording a guitar track or other audio track, which may still be added as a feature some day).
Worth getting, for sure. The synths are good, not wonderful, but good, and the effects are well crafted (especially the chorus, but also the vinyl sim or the various types of flanger and distortion). It takes a surprisingly small amount of storage space, less than 100 MB vanilla.
It's not a real DAW, though. And, while it is varied enough, don't expect to find the depth you can find in, say, Alchemy, or formidable sounds a la Sunrizer.
Okay everyone, thanks for clearing it all up. I've got a small amount of money to spend and so I'll weight it all up and come back here with any questions I have. Thankyou!
Nice answers Gentlemen.
Yep, all good answers. @JF96, you'll probably get even better answers if you describe what you'd like to accomplish. All three are well worth the scratch and all three will allow you to make completed songs but, they all excel at slightly different things.
Well, if I'm honest I'm looking for the most versatile (vague answer I know) but right now I do composition and write pieces of music using various synth apps and garageband but since joining the forum I have been inspired to maybe try some live looping and and do more of a live thing so if there's anything out there that is right in the middle then let me know!
If you want to control other iOS synths (via midi out and then record the audio) you'll want Beatmaker 2 over Caustic or NanoStudio. Cubasis is another option.
None are really live looping focused but there are people who do synth looping within NanoStudio. http://www.ani-web.com/ is one of them (scroll down a bit)
I know it's more money but unless synth looping is your thing (in which case, NS may be great for you) consider getting a DAW and LoopyHD. Loopy is made for it and it shows.
@syrupcore said:
Yeah, you could go a similar route that I did when 1st producing on iOS and employ a Caustic/LoopyHD combo for starters(via Audiobus). When your ready, you IAA Loopy in BeatmakerII for arranging/embellishing/mixing...etc. Rawk! This path would allow you to take babysteps; getting comfy making music in Caustic, then dropping Caustic loops in LoopyHD for your live stuff(and work out arrangements).
Caustic has a lot of options , but I find it harder to get ideas going because of the way the patterns work. I have to sit down with it more. Nanostudio is very easy for me to get ideas going, but its preset management is awful, even though it's better than it was. However , the developer is focused on a rock solid app and it shows. It's never crashed on me.
I did a recent song on it, then was able to replace some of the synths with sounds sampled into a trg (drum pads in nanostudio) and triggered on the timeline, like back in the reason 2 days. I was then able to export stems into auria through audio share, which although a somewhat laborious process, did work. Nano will be on 2 songs on our new album.
Also, the drum sounds included in nano are limited but it's easy to import your own. On the nanostudio forum there are some cool banks to install.
I'd recommend Beatmaker 2. Most options, best in the sandbox, etc.
+1 on beatmaker2, given you are working with GarageBand already. Beatmaker 2 has solid interaction with best synths that are out there, via IAA and Audiobus. There are killer kits available for the best-on-iOS MPC style drum box (via IAPs), you can build your own drum kits and keyboards, and the editing features (both for the samplers and piano roll) are second to none. Like anything worth doing there is a learning curve, and some find the GUI idiosyncratic, but feature wise, versatility wise it just kills em all. And isn't it still half price at 10$? Man that's a lot of "daw" for the $.
Aaah, if only BM2 wasn't 700+ MB with lots of bad and undeletable samples...
Ya that's an issue, some of the samples suck, (most of the keyboards included suck, which is why I really only started my love affair with BM2 after Audiobus and IAA went live). And yes the footprint is big and with tasty kits added gets even bigger, BM2 on my iPhone is up to about 2.9 GB all in, with projects and all the IAPs worth having. 'Course there's nothing even close on iPhone, and it out-features and out-prices everything like it on iPad. Trade offs are still the order of the day in iOS.
I don't use it anymore but if I was to abandon my loopy looping set up I'd go back to beatmaker 2 in a tick, especially for the audio and both samplers. It may also pay off learning it as beatmaker 3 is apparently in the works which has is gonna be amazing, trust me.
I agree with @mrufino1's statement on Caustic. It IS great and powerful, really. But, for me at least, it is much better to use if I have a more or less clear idea about what I am going to do.
BM 2 is my favorite since a while. I think it provides the "best DAW experience" on an iPhone, despite its UI (I don't have any problems with it, though). It's footprint is an issue, indeed. It takes 5.8GB on my iPhone now
I don't have any issues with BM2's interface. I prefer very large pads and keys as I have difficulty playing when there is too much on a single screen at a time. It takes time to get to know the app and to know where specific functions are located but I prefer that trade-off to smaller pads etc. BM2 is the most feature rich music app on the market but Caustic is fun and everything listed in this thread is worth picking up.