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.
My new Vaverite thing
Well, my super cheap M-Vave SMK 25 Bluetooth keyboard for sofa-surf composition showed up on Wednesday, very prompt delivery. Crappily packaged in a single cardboard box, so luckily undamaged, but the unit itself is much better quality than I expected. Solid plastic, wobble free encoders, slippy but solid feeling pads. Pictured here with my 12.9” IPad Pro.
Its price seems to fluctuate and it is important to select shipping from the Frankfurt outpost and not China for the best price if you are in the EU or UK, but it is currently going for £39 (!).
Its internal battery charged up via the supplied USB A to C cable (which can also power it directly), and one of my usual phone chargers in about an hour or so. Bluetooth worked as expected, immediately detected. It has velocity sensitivity, and you can tweak the curve to taste. I’m not a keyboard player, so can’t really comment on the mini keys, but they don’t feel any worse to me than the ones on my Arturia KeyStep. It takes a sustain pedal, but I don’t have one to test with it. It also has a pretty flexible arp, selectable scales and chord modes, buttons to control a DAW, swing…
I got it for spontaneous faff-free, cable-free sofa based noodling and its keys, encoders, and pads combo, internal battery and Bluetooth give me just that.
Very pleased with the purchase.
Comments
Good to know, thanks Svetlovska!
Thanks for mention that. I didn't know it is possible to choose the location from which the goods will be distributed. (Delivery and right arrow). I just bought a smaller version M-VAVE SMK-25mini and I wonder how it will hold up against my AKAI LPK25 MKII.
Good to see it doesn't have a crappy micro-USB connection. It died on my Korg NanoStudio after a few months.
Congrats, enjoy, and hope it inspires
Pretty cool feature list
I got SMK-25 Mini today and I can say I definitely like LPK25 more. There are 2 reasons for that:
1. Keyboard action on SMK is softer than on LPK and I feel less accurate with my play.
2. SMK has 4 velocity curves. That would be a huge advantage but 4th is fixed to max value (127) and 1st-3rd has very strange shape. It is impossible to get 120-127 values which is super annoying especially on dynamic instruments like e.g. electric piano.
I have tried SMK on NumaPlayer simultaneously with LPK and difference was obvious.
Anyway, I will definitely keep SMK bacause it is lightweight, wireless and that's what I was looking for.
I have already reported velocity issue to Cuvave/M-vave support and if they won't respond then maybe it can be solved with some AUv3 plugin I hope.
I’ve got one of those here on the couch and I have the Akai LPK25 MKII in the other room.
I love just being able to flip the power on and having it connected without any cables.
Lately I’ve been holding it with my left hand and playing it on an angle almost like an accordion with my right.
I accidentally had a finger on the pitch bend and then on the MOD slider which is so cool with a Rotating Leslie
speaker effect. Great couch potato tool. It’s easy to flip the range up or down octaves and use it for MIDI input into any DAW.
It’s really sped things up on my StaffPad input over writing with the pencil.
I’ve had it for about 6 months and no problems… seems to be made solidly for an $89 price tag.
I’ve used the knobs for synth tweaking but haven’t really used the PADs yet.
@filo01 Hi filo, I see you are looking for something to adjust the velocity curve of your new keyboard. For this you can try my Mozaic script called CurveMaker.
@McD Did you allready try the SamChillian script with the M-Vave?
Thank you Alfred but after quick look what Mozaic is I'm not sure this is an app I want to work with in my free time (I'm a SW developer)
I found that there is MIDI Tools -Curve app which should do this with nice UI layout and at the same price. Just click or tap, that's it. Do you think Mozaic is a better solution for my simple task?
Just use MIDItools. Use Mozaic for more complex processing and other utilities. MIDItools is great suite of tools.
Thank you. Do you know if MIDi Tools will work also in Loopy Pro? I found only videos for AUM.
@filo01 Well you don't have to program, you can just load scripts made by other people.
I have midi tools, but I was not realy happy with its functionality and adjustability.
After 3-4 hours of playing on ny SMK25-mini I decided to sell it. My major problem is a latency along with softer keys and lower keystroke in comparison with AKAI LPK25 MKII. I know everybody says MIDI latency is negligible but I'm not able to play "straight" on SMK. I'm way more accurate on AKAI LPK25 and ... hard to explain .. I feel also more confident during playing. I ordered CME WiDi UHost and will check it with my AKAI next week. And I am curious about the result.
I have not… yet.
I’ve been considering one of these so this is pretty useful information. But I think I’m still more keen on the Korg Nanokey/Kontrol studio combo.
Apologies to everyone. I should have gone to sleep and not written that post. I was comparing SMK in wireless mode to LPK wired. Totally bad idea and now I'm quite ashamed.
I did a new test today - SMK wireless vs SMK wire. I confirm that latency is negligible on wireless SMK25 Mini.