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.
pocketOscilloscope by OSC Audio (Released)
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pocketoscilloscope/id6450971969
Oscilloscope is a Mac/PC and soon to be iOS compatible stereo capable oscilloscope tool for audio nerds.
Complete with RMS/Peak meter and controllable Vertical and Horizontal Offset. As well as separate Voltage and Gain controls, coupled with visual controls like Line Thickness and Rotation for a complete experience.
This tool is great for checking your custom built oscillators, plug-ins, or just visualizing your audio.
Standalone and AUv3
Comments
does it have a host synchronised grid? 1/8 and 1/16 notes?
It’s out:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pocketoscilloscope/id6450971969
Coolio.
I'm wondering why most iOS oscilloscopes and spectrum displays have a similar, limited set of features. They could do so much more!
Nice! Really liked all their effects so far so I’m probably gonna grab this. I know some don’t but I kinda love the cheesy look of the UI.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pocketosc/id6450972460
pocketOSC is a macOS, Windows, and iOS compatible stereo capable oscillator. Designed for VST3, AU, AUv3, and stand-alone use.
Complete with oscilloscope and controllable Wave, Frequency, & Volume. Test all your gear with Sine, Square, Saw, and Noise, oscillators.
Plug-in GUI resizable and automatable parameters designed to recall with your various sessions.
Standalone and AUv3
Considering this just for the drone capability lol looks cool. Big fan of their apps so far. Don’t have BFM yet though.
For 99p I decided to go for it, for exactly the same reason. Going to throw the Moogerfoogers and Baby Audio at it, for starters, and see where we go from there…
I just finished a session with it using mLFO to modulate the volume and frequency, then ran the app into Gong App, various Foogers, ODC, etc. It’s a lot of fun!
I’ve always wanted a dev to make one of those test osc apps as an AUV3 so k was actually pretty excited for this one. Lemme know your thoughts.
Btw, wasn’t there a list posted in one of these threads of all the apps from this dev that are coming to iOS? Feel like there were lots of them
Working with it now, using , yes, Moogerfoogers, mLFO, Gong Amp, Speakers, Dials… great minds, huh?
Going to try to make a whole piece using just the oscillator as the sound source. Yes, there was a long list of apps that can Hainbach published a while back. Searching for Hainbach might do it…
But you must excuse me. I have some random noises to make
Do you have augenx? It's brilliant!
Yes, I do, and yes, it is. I also have the free The Oscillator, and the Oscillator Square/Saw/Triangle apps. Dumb, I know, but I’m just a sucker for very basic noise sources.
Great minds definitely think alike 😎 was wanting to make a drone type track myself using only Pocket Osc, and of course a lot of effects haha. Excited to hear what you come up with
Oh man yes that’s probably a top 10-15 app ever for me. One of those apps where if I had to cull my iOS down drastically, it would stay no matter what. Definitely brilliant.
Well, be careful what you wish for…
“Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.” - Robert Frost
An exercise in maximising a minimum: pocketOSC, a very basic 99p oscillator app, https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/pocketosc/id6450972460, is the only instrument used here. Everything else is FX, and live loop manipulation in AUM.
I used mLFO to ‘sequence’ the frequency of the pocketOSC, and recorded several loops of that as File Players in AUM, switching up the wave forms and using the Moogerfoogers to mess with and filter the white noise option. Then live mixed the resultant loops down into AudioShare. I used Speakers to jazz things up at the output stage, and there’s a Gong Amp in there too.
Video is public domain from Pexels, assembled in CapCut, effected in Glitch Studio, and finished in iMovie.
Oh yeah that’s excellent stuff @Svetlovska and the perfect video footage to accompany it! 🙏
I think Pocket Osc could be a slight sleeper hit for us experimental folks on iOS.
I don't get the point of getting it though if you have, say, augenx. Just cos it's lighter on cpu or something else?
I'm truly curious what the advantage of collecting multiple oscillator sources. Are they different in significant ways? Do the features and UI inspire you in different ways? Are certain apps more appropriate for certain tasks than others? Or, is it just fun to collect stuff?
Please don't take the question judgmentally. I'm sincerely interested.
(BTW, miRack has more oscillators than you can shake a stick at. A patch using any of them as a sound source is super simple to set up.)
@Gavinski @wim I can’t speak for anyone else of course but for me, a simplistic and specialized app/UI and purpose goes a long way. Having a simple droning sound wave to sample into anything or process quickly with any effect inspires me to work differently than patching something myself in MiRack or making a patch in AUGenX.
Also it looks cool having 4 windows of these open and running at once lol
Also @wim this is the only test osc app I own and the only one that’s AU (to my knowledge). I think the Kymatica one is IAA but that’s it. So that also sets it apart for me.
@HotStrange : Sleeper hit? Quite possibly…
@Gavinski @wim. This is how superficial I am. I like that it looks like the Moogerfoogers. And has an oscilloscope. And an audio input (which I haven’t worked out how to use yet.) And it was 99p. If I wanted more flexibility, I have AuGenX. (AUV3, so flexible it is virtually a synth in its own right, not cheap). Or, oh, I dunno… actual synths. Lots and lots of synths. With filters and envelopes and everything. And mirack. And Drambo.
It was just a fun exercise to see what I could do with a single oscillator as my sole instrument. And I found myself getting into it with mLFO which I haven’t really properly used before, which wouldn’t have happened with AUGenX because I know that app, which means I already know how to work with it, so I’d’ve used MIDILFOs instead, and not learned mLFO… I didn’t know Pocket Osc, and so it helped me think a little different, got me reaching for mLFO. I learnt a little more about one of my apps today, and I kept my retired brain active and enquiring and creating.
Before music, instead of music, my thing is literally experimenting with sounds, trying to make sounds and noises and textures I like, and if 99p on a dreary Monday morning is the price of entry to feeling a little creative today, I consider it 99p well spent.
Side note: talking of doing pointless things when we already have a surfeit of tools which could do the job better: you know what would be a really good app? A faithful recreation of a varispeed 3 head stereo reel to reel tape recorder, as in, you could manually flange the sound by touching the reels (which RE1 tape machine sort-of emulates already), mess with speeds, make ‘tape loops’ edited, ‘sellotaped to a board’ and reassembled with a razor block analogy, run the loops round an external pivot point of arbitrary length, switch off the erase head for sound on sound, incorporate tape characteristic emulations …
You could include basic quality of life improvements over the original arduous physical processes, of course, like, say, being able to duplicate multiple copies of a length of tape, and include innovations like Hainbach’s Destruction Loops, where a virtual blade could progressively degrade the tape… of course, you can do all these things easier in a DAW or with a tape delay app, but something which let you emulate not just the end result but the work flow of musique concrete, do virtual tape assembly composition a la Stockhausen or Schaeffer and so on, would really be something in encouraging the ‘think different’ approach…
@Svetlovska Your video popped up in my YT feed this evening, and it’s great stuff. Am now contemplating shelling out the 99p! Though I doubt I’d use it as effectively. Bottom line is if it ends up gathering dust it’s no huge loss.
So far I’ve not felt any urge for this dev’s apps, this might be different. After all, KQ Unotone is one of my faves, and that used to be dirt cheap (it was £1.79 when I got it, I think - not sure now - KQ did announce price rises a while back). If you’ve not tried it, and if it’s still cheap, its worth giving it a whirl - you can lose an afternoon just fiddling with the thing and saving patches.
@Gavinski Sometimes something is just inspiring and sparks something new. Could be a simple app, could be twanging a ruler on a table, discovering a pan lid that sounds amazing, whatever. At this price point it’s worth a punt. For AUgenX I’d have to be sure I’d use it a fair bit to justify the price, which is why I haven’t shelled for it (yet).
Thanks for taking the time to answer @Svetlovska and @HotStrange. I get where you're coming from. Enjoy! 😎
Same, and @bygjohn - fair points ladies and gents!
I’ve been warming up to this Devs apps lately. SumFX is great, albeit with some UI quirks. And this app is actually a lot of fun and looks cool. I definitely didn’t need it but as @Svetlovska said, fun and inspiring for $.99? Why not.
KQ Unotone is amazing as well as I’m sure it’s well worth whatever it sells for now. All of their apps are, imo.
AUGenX is an all time contender for me but it’s definitely niche so I understand why someone wouldn’t want to buy it.
for some reason, when I enter a frequency, using the keyboard instead of dialing it in, adjusting the volume reverts freq to previous value…
DUDE, WHAT!
That's great, I really enjoyed that video.
By design, pocketOSC is really a testing tool, it started out as a project to help me build stomp boxes and such, but I'm really glad to hear it's being used in different ways!
Funny enough, I ended up using it as an instrument accidentally in the update video. I'll have to make sure I add some more musical tools when I add in more functions for testing. I hope you enjoy!
What’s new in v1.1
Try the new update, we released it pretty recently. Manual insert wasn't dialed in yet. The controls and everything should be smoother too.
Thank you! That's really appreciated. We'll keep improving as we go so be sure to share whatever you'd like to see 🤘
We're working on an update right now actually! What kind of features are you looking for in an oscilloscope?
Thanks again 🙏🙏 Stay tuned for some really cool stuff if you liked everything so far!
No, but that can be looked into! Interesting idea. If you have any examples of say hardware that does what you're looking for, that'd be great to dial it in.
Thanks for asking!
Let's start easy: