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.
New Roli Block
Has Roli corrected the hardware flaws or is this just a chip off of the old Block?
Comments
Who knows - given their poor track record though, definitely wiser not to preorder this and instead to wait til a year or so after they’ve come out and then take a look online to see the levels of customer satisfaction and whether their support has improved. Doesn’t seem any different from the old blocks - did they have a midi port too? Can’t remember, never used anything other than usb c or Bluetooth. Looks basically identical though, which is fine. It’s a great design - just hope the builds are better and their firmware is better.
No MIDI port on original Block
Always thought the Roli stuff seemed kinda cool but their bad track record of no updates and abandoning things made me never want to buy anything from them.
Even the Noise app.
The Noise app was amazing. I picked up a lightpad block and was having a blast...and then they suddenly abandoned Noise completely.
Their desktop stuff is actually quite good as well (Equator makes some really great sounds and the MPE implementation felt cutting edge at the time), but yeah it's hard to give any money to such a poorly managed company.
Also $350 seems high, but they've always been greedy with their pricing (I got mine used).
And don't even get me started on the over-priced gimmick that is the LUMI.
Delighted to see they’re selling the seaboard snapcase again - a mouse ate a fair chunk of my F sharp key when I left it out unprotected.
Agree with all of this. The sounds and UI of Noise is great and it has some cool features. But it seems completely abandoned with no hope for an update, at least from what I’ve seen.
I’m happy with my current midi options anyway so no loss for me. Would love to see them update the Noise app though but I’m not gonna hold my breath.
Hope they will update the all. Got some good sounds on there. Might have to sample them into the quick sampler so the app doesn’t keep crashing on me
Noise was the most overpriced preset player ever. Buying those iaps you could easily run up something similar to what you would have paid for a copy of Equator 2 (which is genuinely amazing) on intro or sale price. Noise packs do have some good sounds in there, but yes, Roli were far too greedy and incompetent.
Please stop continually kicking the ROLI dog. They clearly made some mistakes, that’s why they went bust. Noise was /is a good free app when used with the hardware. It comes with good useable sounds, no one is obliged to buy preset packs. When the SWAM packs arrived they were amazing, unavailable elsewhere and, I imagine, costly to license.
That the reformed company continues to make its unique products should surely be seen as good news for music makers, not a cause for continual negativity? If they do well this time then maybe we will get an updated Noise app.
I had 2 ROLI Seaboard Blocks. My advice is never to assume that portability means they can take any kind of punishment. One of them broke within a few months of taking to band rehearsals. The other one only lives because I treat it like cotton wool (I bought 2 so I could have a 4 octave MPE keyboard at home!). It's a shame, because I like the form factor (other than the lack of a top C). I would be tempted to buy one if they can be snapped together with the old models.
It's OK for people to express negative opinions. Note also that I was not entirely negative, 'Equator 2... Genuinely amazing... Noise... Some good sounds in there.' You can balance it out with your positive opinions, but no need to silence voices expressing an alternative opinion. Let people make up their own minds, maybe? But the OP is asking for opinions and I have given mine and will continue to freely give them here and in other threads. Cheers.
I think the products have always been really good - it's the infrastructure around them that's been a bit shaky (eg. Roli help and support) and will hopefully improve in the new company. Maybe it already has.
I bought a roli lightblock. - the updated version - immediately after playing with noise for about two minutes. Just as I bought an iPad Pro and pencil after ten minutes trying it in store. I hate to use the word but the experience was that ‘magical’. Cringe. And the block made it better with pressure sensitivity - I actually think that was teh best musical experience playing I’ve had outside acoustic instruments. As exciting or more.
I have always had an interest in controllers. I bought an eigenharp early, I was obsessed with leap motion as a concept before that, have a k board and that x y pressure sensitive pad thing - which sat unused. Ease of use was a big thing in roll’s favour. Don’t like any of them for various reasons.
The roli block is the only one I loved. I looked at everything - the Eros touch looks the best mpe controller to me. My take:
I tried Roli stuff in store a lot. For me personally I have issues with seaboards particularly but also the general concept of mpe in piano keyboard layouts. I don’t think it works - I do feel a bit tempted by that wobbly keys keyboard but not really, and no way worth the price. No way. I know I’d find it pointless after half an hour of novelty. I love piano, i feel very confined by grid layouts playing piano type stuff, but for mpe expressivité i think the piano layout is pointless and obsolete and similarly restrictive.
the grid layout or some variation of it, is for me the obvious and best way to go about things. To screw yo what came before and start with what is natural. Another reason I love my iPad. Long before mpe I enjoyed mugician so much.
The material in the seaboards was terrible. Guven it’s an instrument you’re supposed to slide about on it was rubbery and sticky. Really horrible, and did not help you play at all especially when pressing down for pressure. The way it was all one gooey mass when you need precision to play that piano layout — I just instantly knew the block was miles better despite being miles cheaper
I loved my block despite its size. Velocity wasn’t quite good enough but it was great. However, I left it off for a few months and the battery died. Forever. This happens with smaller lithium batteries - all in principle. But I was pretty disgusted. I don’t want something where I know that can happen. I may well not use it for a few months. That instantly made it unbuyable for me. Yiu can’t replace the batteries. Unless they’ve changed that it’s a doorstop. This is t just a roli issue my Apple Pencil died too but then it’s much smaller and I left it for much longer and I convinced the Apple Store ‘geniuses’ (-_-) to replace it
I think the whole Apple trying to be cool (..I mean… personally I always regarded the things that they think are cool as chav-chiq but that’s a whole other thing…), positioning its products as media centers, mp3 players etc rather than what they are whuch are smart phones and PCs, contributed to the culture in which roli tried to dumb down and sell everything as ‘packs’ and weird sequencer modules and stuff whuch are just annoying garbage pail kids pack version of proper apps.
Since then I have really come to believe that the best mpe instrument is my iPad. With apps like velocity kb. The velocity sensing is brilliant. The only difference really is pressure sensitivity but yiu can program that to touch radius or , even better for me, the y axis and play with a tilted screen and it’s the same. Certainly can’t justify buying a piece of hardware as an mpe controller which is expensive and time consuming and made of materials that aren’t perfect either.
I was speaking to bluemangoo about this stuff as something I really hate is this trend of apps now to say they’re mpe and it means they’ve mapped velocity or something to the y axis in keys, that is awful, I mean it’s better than nkthing I suppose, but come on. Make a bit of effort. The whole point of velocity is you hit the same place, it’s a kinetic dimension not a geographical one. It’s bad to play. And velocity kb and some apps I think gb do it so well with screen tapping amplitude why aren’t other apps. It should be universal standard. The same with attempts to implement y axis then for other parameters and at least allow touch radius as an option. This is a big deal for me, as an acoustic musician, and as someone who loves playing with touch,
At one time I was thinking maybe if they brought out a silicone skin yiu could lay it over the iPad and there’d be velocity or pressure through teh distance between your finger and the sensor if someone just added code to recognise as I think that’s how it works. Maybe someone could do this still in an app, I mean if it would just require the code to recognise that distance, and people haven’t so far because the screen type doesn’t allow for it? It’s a bit janky maybe but transparent silicone skin over iPad plus app for this - mozaic? I dunno. Reaching…
I am becoming more skeptical about MPE controllers. I have tried several and I find that they don't provide much incremental benefit over polyphonic aftertouch (even less when poly AT is combined with an expression pedal and/or mod/pitch wheels). I haven't yet heard any music where I've thought, now that's something new that could only have been done with an MPE controller. I will hang onto my KMI K-Board-C which I got for $110 USD, but all the others have been sold.
Any ghost notes with the KMI C?
I have the previous, non-MPE version, which has the occasional ghost note (although sometimes they are happy accidents lol). I just wonder because I assume the fabric underneath is the same.
I have not experienced ghost notes. I connect the C to a CME WIDI U-Host which pairs with my iPad via Bluetooth.
Oh nice, does the pitch pad work well? I read on Amazon from customers who couldn’t get it to work.
The pitch bend button (not wheel) is absolute garbage.
I have a ROLI Seaboard Rise 49 and love it.
I can usually think of things that could be done with them. (Especially as I don’t yet have a keyboard with even channel AT…and I’m not sure how much I’d use that.) But the tougher question is whether there’s anything that I would do with them that I can’t do with gear I already have. 😄
The thing is, once you start bringing in a pitch bend or mod wheel you can't play with 2 hands. And I find it a real pleasure to dig both hands into a nice squidgy seaboard. It's just a really enjoyable playing experience (when I'm not getting stuck notes, which, with my Blocks, happens all too often). MPE is great, it's just a pity that few instrument makers on iOS are making mpe instruments, and the ones that do are often not implementing as fully and as well as plugins like Equator do.
Oh wow 😂
I think part of the problem is that it is more difficult to make MPE "work." You have to understand how to assign the different MPE parameters to the appropriate modulations, layers, or effects. You have to know how to configure the sensitivity and range of each MPE parameter. That's why I think people like MPE controllers that have built-in synths (Osmose) or with custom soft synths (Roli & Equator). Both of these options do all of the "heavy lifting" for you. The only 3rd party app that I've seen support MPE well is GeoShred which has configuration settings for several common MPE controllers and video tutorials too.
Have you tried Animoog Z? Very instantly satisfying with MPE (seaboard block in my case).
I have that app. I'll give it a try.