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 Store

Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

In need of a specific spectrum analysis tool...

Hi everyone, I'm neck deep in synthesizing my own drums with Audulus and now I am in need of a spectrum analyzer with a FFT graph. The one catch however is that it needs to import and analyze prerecorded samples, not just real time analysis.

Out of the million or so analysis apps out there I've only found two so far that advertise what I'm looking for: AudioView, which looks great but hasn't been updated in a few years, so no idea if it will even work with ios6. N-Track DAW, within the EQ section there is a FFT graph but the frequency measurement isn't as precise as I would like it to be.

Level 24 looks interesting and I could just import via Audiobus but is the FFT analysis real time only or will it analyze a sample file as well?

So I turn to you, Audiobus forum, for help. Any comments on the above mentioned apps or anything I missed is much appreciated. Thanks!

Comments

  • I don't know of any FFT app that will load in a file, but that's something we're kicking around for a future version of Spectral Eye. For right now, you might want to check out Soundbeam:
    https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/soundbeam/id494982357?mt=8
    Not on the bus, but you can record 15 seconds of audio, and then render the spectrum over time to a video file. The design on Soundbeam is fantastic; really great looking app, and good functionality (and only $2).

    If the goal is to be able to look at the spectrum, and scan how things change over time, this might do the trick.

  • edited May 2013

    EDIT: Sorry, just saw "FFT". Initially read spectral analysis.

    Secretbasedesign (live guitar dev) has one, Sonosaurus (thumbjam dev has one) and n-track has one (although havent had a chance to use last one) First two are both great. First two devs are regulars here and very cool/knowledgeable. Third dev just started posting here and seems responsive (see N-track thread)

  • @SecretBaseDesign: Soundbeam does look good but still not what I'm looking for. If it had AB support then I could work with it but it looks like it's mic input only. I was reading the Spectral Eye thread on this forum a couple of days ago and thought, "That would be perfect, if only it gave the fundamental tone and overtone readouts in Hertz." With that said, I'm still going to download Spectral Eye free version later tonight and give it a spin. Thank you for your suggestion :)

    @gjcyrus: Thank you for your suggestions. The Sonosaurus and n-track ones are real-time only. SecretBaseDesign's Spectral Eye would do the trick, but I don't see any frequency readouts in Hertz (unless I missed something in the screenshots and description). So no luck there, unfortunately.

    I'm leaning towards Level 24 for my analysis needs, as I could re-record a sample via AB and go from there. I'm not going to immediately buy it though so I'm still open to suggestions and recommendations from fellow forum members. Thanks again!

  • Spectral Eye does the entire display in terms of musical pitch (C, C#, ...), and it's entirely visual. Under the hood, the values in Hz are there -- just not exposed. On the horizon is support for off-line analysis (scan through an audio file, and see the frequencies in small windows of time), and a conventional FFT display. I'll put in a text frequency/magnitude display too; it's not much extra work, and if it's useful to some people, it's worth doing.

    Need to drink some more coffee. My list of things-I-gotta-code-up is about a mile long.

  • You don't have time for coffee...

  • There's always time for coffee. I'm a coffee achiever.

  • TonalEnergy Tuner can actually record and replay (looping) from file as well. You can record through Audiobus when TET is in the output slot, or you can import audio via iTunes file sharing (no AudioPaste yet). However, the file analysis is played back looped in realtime, no transport scrubbing or zooming when paused yet. The spectral plot does have grid lines and frequency markings but there are no cursor markers to give you exact info about a peak of interest, and no zooming.

    Just thought I'd point out the relevant limitations, but it might serve your purposes somewhat.

  • And TonalEnergy is a kick-ass tuner. I have four or five other tuners (usually as part of an app like JamUp or GarageBand), but I always use TonalEnergy to tune my guitar. Love the smiley face when in tune.

  • edited May 2013

    Is TonalEnergy universal?

  • Yep, it is universal.

  • Thank you.

  • Thanks for the replies everyone! @sonosaurus and @SecretBaseDesign: Both your apps are so close to what I need but it's important for me to precisely pinpoint frequencies.

    I bought Level.24 late last night and used it for a few hours. So far it has been...meh. The AB implementation is a bit wonky. I can enable record from the AB panel but I can't disable record from the panel. I have to jump back into Level.24 and disable recording from inside the app itself. Input from AB isn't very ideal, as it records about a second or so of dead air before I can trigger the sound to be recorded from Audulus and a few seconds of dead air afterwards while I scramble to jump back into Level.24 to manually disable recording. It's a little better when triggering a sound from Audioshare from the AB panel while in Level.24, but the issue of dead air still remains. Since there is no way to adjust the recording start and end points, this app would have benefited way more with audio copy/paste than AB. Also, the analysis graph decays way too fast for transients, so I have to play a timing game with the freeze button. It would have been a lot better if the graph had decay rate control, or better yet, a static graph (offline analysis), oh well.

    On the plus side, and it's a very important plus, the EQ point (node) pinpoints the frequency and db level on where ever it's placed, so it has that going for it.

    There has to be a better way though. Totalenergy Tuner and Spectral Eye Pro are both on my wishlist and I will happily purchase either app (or both, they're different enough to fill different niches) if they are updated with the features that I'm looking for.

    @sonosaurus: A Node to examine points on the graph would be an incredible addition to an already incredible looking tuner.

    @SecretBaseDesign: What you described for offline analysis is exactly what I was looking for.

  • @Context - Thanks for bringing up good feature requests! I've just been trying to eyeball it but what you propose would def make life easier and accurate. Not to get off topic too much but do you mind me asking your recording workflow? Are you a fan of 24 bit/48 khz recording (not many ppl here are)?

    I tend to dabble in diff genres of music and always have different go to apps for each style but am always trying to more efficiently systemize my creative workflow while keeping end recording fidelity in mind.

    Thnx

  • @gjcyrus - I'm glad I'm not the only one who might find this useful. Offline spectrum analysis would be useful for anyone who is doing additive analysis and resynthesis.

    My recording workflow: Write and arrange with midi first then record the tracks to wav for engineering. Not sure if that answers your question or not.

    I love recording to 24 bit and I look forward to a time when it is more common place in iOS music production. 16 bit is okay in the meantime. It's a wonder what we can already do with what we have now.

  • @Context - Just remembered, have you looked at any of the Fabfilter plugins on Auria? Also, Remaster in the input slot but i cant remember if it has everything you need

  • It doesn't look like Remaster has an analyzer setting. The Fabfilter Pro Q for Auria does have a real time analyzer with release speed settings, but no freeze or hold button. Plus I don't have Auria yet so the whole bundle will cost over 80 bux.
    Thanks for the suggestions just the same though!

  • Thanks mgmg4871, I posted my question in the appropriate thread
    http://forum.audiob.us/discussion/1028/analyzer-is-on-the-bus#Item_2

Sign In or Register to comment.