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.
Your favorite Custom MIDI Control Surface Apps?
There are a # of apps for iOS that allow the creation of customized MIDI control surfaces. Personally, I use Apollo to connect via bluetooth from my phone to my iPad
Apps I'm aware of offhand: (Is there another app that should be in this list? I know a few more have been abandoned by devs.)
- Lemur - ~$25 - I believe is the only control that you can use "physics" for the controls to interact with one another.
- MIDI Designer [PRO] - ~$25
- TouchOSC - $4.99 - requires Mac/Win editor -http://hexler.net/software/touchosc
- TB MIDI Stuff - $4.99
- [Honorable Mention- Mobmuplat which is FREE but has a steep learning curve w/PD & isn't really 'meant' for this]
Primarily, I'm wondering - WHICH IS YOUR FAVORITE & WHY?
Also, why is there such a great price disparity?
Comments
there's beatsurfer, I'm interested in that one but I wish they would have a sale. it looks like it puts your mind in a different zone
Honestly I don't think any of them are very good. They are either difficult to build templates with, or too limited to be of any real value. Much easier to just get midi controller apps that are already built.
TC-Data, Kokreet Performer, Cascadr, Fugue, Gestrument, HarmonyWiz, Musix Pro, Polyplayground, Xynthesizr, Arpeggio Pro, Fiddlewax Pro, Soundprism Pro, Chordion, Polychord, ChordMapMidi, Geo Synth, Synthcaster, FingertipMIDI, Soundprism Electro, Orphion... maybe not exactly what you asked but all good in a way
I bounce between TouchOSC and Lemur. I find Touch easy to use, but since I actually started learning Lemur, I prefer it. Very flexible, and it has the editor built in.
I would agree with @1P18 apart from MidiDesigner Pro.
I started using it properly recently and its very intuitive yet very flexible.
I've just used it allow a single xy pad to control 16 parameters at a time in Gadget. In fact that's the y axis. The x axis controls an effect in Gadget. It snaps back when you release your finger too. Plus there's an arp button.
There's no off the shelf app that does exactly that. So if you have a specific need or idea - midi designer is great.
For more standard stuff I'd agree with @1P18 - buy one of the prebuilt controller apps. I like MidiMe (4 assignable x-y pads that you can have bounce around or record a path with your finger on). No knobs though.
Oh... And you can try out midi designer with their lite app (may be free?). Then decide if you need / like it.
I like TBMidi Stuff very much.Fills my cheap needs quite good and is very flexible.But the documentation is really bad and doesnt even explain many functions.
While we are on the subject - and not wishing to hijack the thread - does anyone know of a midi controller app which can do an internal LFO other than Lemur (which I can't afford)?
It's on the development map for midi designer. But has been for a few years.
MobMuPlat can do midi control but you'll need of either import a patch or build your own.
I wonder if any of you (like me) are now seriously considering having more midi control due to Auria Pro's new feature set of midi and Fabfilter's Twin 2 being on the horizon.
I've only tried TB MIDI and MIDI Designer Pro. MDPro quickly became my favorite. It was relatively easy for me to learn as a MIDI n00b.
Thanks @Pulinko - MobMuPlat scares me a bit. I used to write computer code a long, long time ago but not sure I wanna make that kind of time commitment
. I suppose I could search for a MIDI cc out LFO patch for MobMuPlat though.
I tried the Midi designer lite back in the days (the one that cost 999$ now^^) but couldn't get over the fact that it uses knobs/faders that i absolutely dislike (and no way to customize).Is it still the same?For 25 bucks i would expect different designs.
I know what you mean about the visuals... its just pixels on the screen, but you really have to get over the appearance. The fader and button design is the same as always. But there are loads of color options so you can go black/gray or at least tone down those default neon colors. :-/
I think the MIDI designer dev said he put the Lite version at $999 so that it is still in the store (allowing current Lite users to upgrade to latest versions). I'm not sure why he doesn't want new users to try out the free version.
Update... can't find one
.
Although I did find this very cool MIDI effects patch by @otemrellik
http://www.otemrellik.com/2014/12/new-mobmuplat-patch-seq-midi-sequencer-with-effects/
Beatsurfing is actually pretty interesting, and in fact I'd probably call it the best custom midi app. It is somewhat limited, in that it's basically pads for notes and sliders for cc input, but with the customization you can come up with some pretty cool stuff.
You can have each pad cycle through a series of notes, and also have them trigger a few other things like telling other pads to reset their cycle, good for rhythmic stuff. You can also customize chords too, so it's not just drums (or leads, or basslines).
I find it good for Gadget's drum machines, and kind of coming up with abstract beats. Well, abstract in that you don't entirely know what's going to be played. Yes, I usually just mash buttons and keyboards when I play.
If you want to go a more measured and calculated route, you can do that too, like in this video:
I ended up going with MIDI Designer, but lord knows it is not an easy platform to get around, nor does it create the prettiest of interfaces.
I've been using Midi Designer 12 and it is not very user friendly, and I've been using midi since mid 80's. It seems very powerful, and it probably is, but I can only get it to do the most simple things. Panic button, note on/note off etc. I am in the process of figuring out how to send program changes to Magellan and how it knows what bank is what. Too much brain sweat for me at one sitting.
I just got scuppered trying to create a patch editor for Circuit using Lemur. Where I was able to create all the controls, get all the messages going back and forth for the individual controls and have it working great....there is one major problem which means i cannot use lemur.
The sysex message size in Lemur is limited to 256 bytes. The size of the sysex coming from Circuit is 350 bytes.
So I am in the market for a new Midi Controller Builder type app thingy. I am a competent programmer for more than 30 years, and competent midi user over 20 years.
Apart from the difference in price, what are the main differences/advantages/disadvantages of Midi Designer Pro and TB Midi Stuff.
I will be building a synth editor which controls over 300 parameters, so there will be a lot of controls using bot normal CC's as well as NRPN's, and I will also need to be able process byte arrays in order to process the sysex. File IO would be good to in order to save patches onto the iPad.
Any input from users of either, or anything else that would do the job would be greatly appreciated.
Midi Designer Pro V2 will be out very soon and promises a slicker look and ease of use. For Sysex, NRPN and 14-bit CC it's pretty much the only viable editor app for iOS.
One thing that's missing for iOS is App/ Midi patch management, hopefully MD Pro 2 will help there also.
The Isotonic Circuit Editor should be a help to Midi-learn the hidden parameters within circuit.
http://d3qk4yk8nq0n55.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/circuit-editor-presentation.jpg
Cheers for the info re MDP
With Lemur I do have it controlling ALL of the parameters in circuit including the Macro definitions and ModMatrix, just cannot send/receive the patch due to sysex limit in Lemur. It works great as long as you want to start from an initialized patch every time
I done a whole lotta work for nuttin'
Now for the age old question,
what does 'soon' mean
I was using TB Midi to make useless 'controllers' that instead used imported images and little LED text slots to tell the fabricated history of Myself, but after two or three templates I started to doubt the value of the endeavour.
@AndyPlankton Have you mailed Lemur guys about this?
I have reached out to them but had no response as yet. They are busy with Skram at the moment, so am not hopeful of anything happening quickly on this if at all.
Their forum has stories of this issue and of other abandoned synth editors due to the same reason. And the documentation is pretty clear on this too. I just wish I had read it end to end before starting
Not sure, but on the app page it says ●●●●● April 2016 News ●●●●●
● MIDI Designer Pro 2 is coming in just a few short weeks.
...and on their site:
2016-04-04 Update—We’re working out some kinks and squashing last-minute bugs. MIDI Designer Pro 2 is coming in the next few weeks!
Are you a C++ programmer?
I use CopperLan to connect all Midi, including iOS via an AL-USB ..
http://images.junostatic.com/full/IS544134-01-01-BIG.jpg
CopperLan has a free SDK that can be used to develop things like Sysex Editors...I'm staggered that no-one has taken up the opportunity.
Geert Bevin is all over it:
I have been in the past yes, now c# .Net
I wrote windows based patch editor and librarians for BassStation and DrumStation way back when but as I no longer use a PC at home I specifically want something that runs on iOS.
If I did still use PC, I would be all over this as well
He he, I was looking for that since yesterday...
Discovering beatsurfing and it looks great !
Problem, it seems an external controller must be connected thru midi din cable...So no direct USB connection, and this is very boring for most modern midi controllers...
I'm wondering if any or none of these apps could control an external midi device, with the kind of functionalities I wrotte here :
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/13390/modstep-with-launchpad-mini#latest
To sum up, I would like to control the colors of the pads, using blinking, using a button as a shift button to double all pads, and...having like sub panels using this method.
I guess it might be more firmware based ? Hopefully I'm wrong...
It would take a lot of work as you would need an app to work as a translator between the launchpad and the device, the controller apps are more designed for creating surfaces rather than translating midi, perhaps MIDI Bridge or MIDI Flow would be better suited to doing this sort of thing for you.
TB MIDI Stuff. I'm using it to build a controller for my Roland Juno-106, first generation midi synth with pain in the ass implementation. TB is great with sysex, doing some seemingly impossibly binary magic. Can't wait to get Modstep/MidiLFOs > TB > Juno going.