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Loopy Sync Problem When Using AudioBus
Any advice would be a great help, the attached image is the set-up I'm eventually aiming for.
If I open Sector and Loopy without AudioBus they automatically sync and I can use Sector as the master, Loopy as the slave. All good.
If I connect them both to input slots in AB and only connect an output to the Sector path they stay in sync, but obviously I can't hear Loopy. As soon as I connect an fx or just the system output to Loopy path, the sync connection breaks. If I add an app to the output slot of the Loopy path, again, sync breaks.
I have tried every combination of MIDI routing between Sector and Loopy and I have tried various options with Cubasis (which is where I want to mix and record the Sector and Loopy audio).
Any thoughts on where this is going wrong?
Airplane mode makes no difference.
iOS 7.1.2
Sector 1.0.3
Loopy 1.4.10
AudioBus 2.1.5
Comments
Something to try...
Get the MidiBus app. It cheap as far as I remember.
Sync everything to that.
It's helped me out a fair few times.
@Matt_Fletcher_2000 I am a certified Midiot (© Doug Enterprises), could you gloss quickly over the benefits of Midibus. I guess I'm looking for a magic midi bullet here...
Well I just use it to provide a very resource light midi clock which it seems to reliably send out to just about anything. It also let's you pause or return back to the start of the track - although I've found this to be less reliable.
It also gives some analytics on how the midi clock is running or something. And I think you can use it to send some midi notes and CCs maybe - as an intermediary between other apps? (don't trust me on this though - I don't use it for this. If you need to know I can check later.)
Anyway - great for running as a master clock. And obviously you don't need to hook it to AB which seems to be causing the problems above.
@Matt_Fletcher_2000 Thank you Mister Fletcher. I will have a blind dabble...
In My case loopy does a fine job at midi bossing all the apps around. The one that's a bit shaky is samplr. Itdoes sync but drifts. I don't expect minibus will address that kind of thing? I will give it a try for sure but seems like yet another app stealing ram.
Cheers for the input guys.
@supadom, problem is Sector only slaves via IAA or I would just make Loopy the master.
@matt, I'll give MidiBus a try, thanks.
Edit.
Nah, doesn't work.. Thinking on though, it's not just the clock. What I'd like to do is use the AB panel to start Sector and get Loopy starting at the same time, which just connecting to a common clock won't do...also, as noted above, Sector doesn't give options for slaving to external clock, it just does it automatically through IAA.
The frustrating thing is it works fine until the apps are connected to AudioBus (ie, the sector - loopy links ok but I need to start them from inside Sector) but clearly the AudioBus bit is needed for the connections to the fx and the DAW.
I'll see if MidiBridge does any better.
Just tried with Cubasis using a straight MIDI track. Same behaviour, start/stop Cubasis, Loopy follows, change tempo, Loopy follows. Works fine until you add Loopy to AudioBus, then the MIDI connection stops working.
Enough for today..
Ok, so a few hours have gone by and I've I had to have another crack at solving the problem... And finally got it working.. As ever, it's usually simple, but I'm clueless as to why you need to do this.
Just put Loopy in the input and output slot of AudioBus. It seems as long as you have Loopy in the output slot the sync works.
It's led to quite a nice set up in the end.
Sector into WOW into Cubasis to record the semi-random drum pattern.
Six loops imported into Loopy 1 to 6 to build the track from. They are then played through Turnado and recorded into Loopy 7 to 12.
Next they can be recorded into Cubasis using another AudioBus channel and passed through Effectrix along the way if required. The pic below shows Loopy 7 - 12 through just one fx path. I've been playing around with 7 - 12 each with a different effect on their own Cubasis channel, but unsurprisingly that's a bit much and the audio starts breaking up with that much going on.
SIR! Are you an electrician or a musician?! (Impressive stuff, though
Well done. Sounds cool. I might try it one day.
How are you controlling loopy and the sugar bytes apps ? Just moving between apps? Does it glitch when you change apps?
@JohnnyGoodyear. A bit of both, probably more of the former than the latter.
@Matt_Fletcher - Sector provides the stop/start for Loopy. Loopy sends clock to Electrrix. WOW and Turnado are set up with a patch and adjusted live with the xy pads.
Yes, switching apps is a problem. The audio glitches and when it does, Loopy slips in time. It's very serial, you need build the track rather than perform it all at once. I need to play around with it some more to get it working smoothly. But the I've solved the thing that was bugging me, which was syncing Loopy to start with Sector and finding a way to record the Loops through Turnado.
I could just split the workflow and do all Loopy to Cubasis recording in a different AB patch which may help.
I think the major issue here is Cubasis @xen which will take a fair chunk of ram. Not sure about sector because I don't have it but I often run the three sugar bytes apps, loopy, sunrizer and sampler without any problem with a reasonably good sync. I think the new iPad Air should run your set up in real time, providing they fix ios8. What ios you're running at the mo?
I'm still on iOS7.1.2 with a mini retina.
I agree on the Cubasis front. Is Auria more efficient? I haven't got that yet as I was all about MIDI sequencing before, but with this sort of set-up a good multi track audio solution would do the job.
Regarding the new Air... Probably, but I'm not in the market for a new pad at this point. I have other stuff on the list at the moment.
Auria is even worse than cubasis in terms of ram afaik. I don't use it either. The only daw I ever used is bm2 which is well known for being light on the CPU but probably not worth learning the interface since it's a bit convoluted. Maybe it's a case of starting a new thread asking what is the least heavy daw on ios? Mt daw used to be the lightest but limited in terms of functionality but it got a big update recently so who knows. I haven't been using daws in some time though.
Cheers for the info, for now I'll see what I can do with what I've got and play around with latency settings... I noticed earlier I was still on 256, so I'll see if increasing things has much effect.
So I got myself a brand and spanking new Sector thinking I will slave it to loopy via midibus but the latter can't even see it. Sector on the other hand doesn't have midi clock sources other than IAA slave so I'm stuffed really. Has anything changed since 2014?
In a word - nope.
If you have BM2, I've had success with sync by putting Loopy into BM2 as an IAA track, so perhaps if you put Sector in as another IAA track?
It's interesting because I swear I remember having used loopy as IAA host in the past but it doesn't quite want to link up. This reveals just how ignorant I am in terms of IAA.
The bm2 idea won't help in this instance but is good to know, thanks. Still waiting for the perfect solution.
But you can slave Loopy to Sector. No need for Midibus. Just choose Sector as clock input on Loopy.
I had it going but Loopy keeps loosing connection
@supadom Have you tried Sector's virtual port as destination instead of Loopy's?
Loopy is totally deaf to whatever sector is trying to tell it. It could be that I'm running the old version of loopy. Anyway it seems like there are inconsistencies which make this set up unreliable. To be honest there's nothing in Sector that I would dearly miss. Quit the opposite to what I feel about Samplr. Probably to do with musical style more than anything else.
On Air1 and latest software it works very reliable. AB, Sector, Samplr, Loopy, guitar... I like a lot for jamming.
You're making me very jealous @Peanutcram. I've been experimenting with the set up below and it works fine but sector won't hook up. I'm on air 1 7.1.2 I'm on the latest official version of Loopy. I also have a beta but it causes some conflict that causes latency like audio on the live input. I think I will upgrade to 8 soon but I'm worried that it will make my current rig unstable. I'll probably end up waiting until I get air 2 later in the year.
I'm reading about audio drop outs on IOS 8 all over the place so now is definitely not the right time to update.
I've just tried that setup but Sector (master clock) to Loopy added as first lane. Funny that Loopy still starts and stops the whole thing though Sector should but doesn't. Starting sunrizer takes over the Sector clock inside Loopy. Can't change after. Without Sunrizer it's stable here. Magellan gets double clock for some reason?
Thanks for testing @Peanutcram I just tried it without Sunrizer or Magellan but no change. They both can see each other but ignore each other nonetheless. Both probably too cool for school wanting to do their own thing. Who can blame them. A lot of what sector does can be done with Samplr with the advantage of having several samples running together so no biggie.