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.

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

OT: Biggest disappointment in hardware

edited January 2022 in Other

So, I was thinking about this lately, could be a fun topic. For what gear you had high expectations, but it didn't deliver?

For me it is the Roland SH-32 synthesizer, I thought it was a phat virtual analog synth, but it sounded weak and thin, no matter what I tried. I also had a MC505 with the weak JV-1080 engine, but that was known from the start.

What is your frustration?

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Comments

  • If you’re talking only hardware, perhaps, but I don’t think an app slamming thread is a good idea.

  • okay, then I delete the app part, no problem!

  • The Korg EA-1 is a cheap piece of garbage.

    The Roland JP-8000 is an expensive piece of garbage.

  • @raabje said:
    okay, then I delete the app part, no problem!

    🙏 👍

  • One man's junk is another's gem. No double entendre's intended ;-)

  • @klownshed said:
    One man's junk is another's gem. No double entendre's intended ;-)

    Yes off course, but when you expect a synth to do lush pads or big bass, and it sounds like chip-tune, something is "off". So from that point of view.

  • Keystep pro. I expected bugs as I was a v early adopter but this thing has just left a sour taste in mouth. It’s better now but the amount of frustration I experienced with it has probably had too much of an impact for the basic improvements to overcome my first impressions. Cannot wait for my Oxi One to show up so I can throw my ksp at a wall lol

  • All of my forays into grooveboxes.

    Yamaha RM1X, Roland MC-808, Yamaha SU700.

    Made one track in total with these guys 🤣

    Almost definitely my stupidity rather than any real fault of the products though...I'm just a DAW guy and struggle with small LCDs and button driven menu diving.

    Again not bashing anyone's products but I bought Jim Pavlov's Groovebox app to remind myself that this workflow isn't for me. Never again

  • edited January 2022

    @ronnieb said:
    Keystep pro. Cannot wait for my Oxi One to show up so I can throw my ksp at a wall lol

    Yes, that is the spirit, you finally get some real joy from it. Or smash it with a hammer, take it to the shooting range...

    I have two more, not my biggest frustration, that was my SH-32, wasted so much time to get proper sound from it. The Zoom Sampletrak ST-224 (the poor mans SP1200). The thing received midi clock, but didn't sync to it, it drifted away in no time from the master clock tempo. As a stand alone unit it felt way too limited. Bummer.

    And the Novation Nocturn controller, with automap. It looked real promising on paper, but it didn't work the way I expected, too much of a hassle in the end. You still have to memorize the function of the knobs.

  • edited January 2022

    My Taylor 310 guitar. Sounds fantastic when eveyone else plays it. Sounds crap when I play it. Obviously faulty ;)

  • @purpan2 said:
    My Taylor 310 guitar. Sounds fantastic when eveyone else plays it. Sounds crap when I play it. Obviously faulty ;)

    Wow. This is a spot-on description of pretty much all my hardware (and software) failures. 😶

  • @ervin said:

    @purpan2 said:
    My Taylor 310 guitar. Sounds fantastic when eveyone else plays it. Sounds crap when I play it. Obviously faulty ;)

    Wow. This is a spot-on description of pretty much all my hardware (and software) failures. 😶

    Did you guys try the customer service?

  • Sp404 MKii...maybe I just don't get it, but it feels really poorly thought out and extremely basic and buggy for how much it costs. Flipped for a profit.

  • edited January 2022

    @Millions said:
    Sp404 MKii...maybe I just don't get it, but it feels really poorly thought out and extremely basic and buggy for how much it costs. Flipped for a profit.

    wow, that thing looks like an oversized Casio pocket calculator....

  • The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • @supadom said:

    @ervin said:

    @purpan2 said:
    My Taylor 310 guitar. Sounds fantastic when eveyone else plays it. Sounds crap when I play it. Obviously faulty ;)

    Wow. This is a spot-on description of pretty much all my hardware (and software) failures. 😶

    Did you guys try the customer service?

    I sure did. But they never improve my skills. The bastards.

  • Apple Pencil. Hear me out.

    Brilliantly subtle and expressive, but the battery life is crap and since I don’t use mine for a couple weeks at a time every time I go to grab it the battery is dead. Then I have to sit there with it on my iPad hoping it comes back from the dead again, because these are known not to.

  • My biggest disappointments were many, many years ago:

    • Jen SX1000 (just sounds boring)
    • Yamaha TX16W (incredibly complicated, kills any form of creativity)
  • edited January 2022

    This guy. That synth engine is absolute shit. Sounds like mediocre free VST plugin. Loved the old good Supernova and hoped they will use same code for oscillators/filters in this "reincarnation" but they don't. Horrible crap.

    SH-32 was pretty bad too :-) Thin and boring. But that is vast majority of Roland VA synths so no big surprise.

  • Some stuff hasn't ended up working with what I want to do, but I can't say I've ever bought anything that seemed "bad" to the point that I'd blame the hardware and not my own subjective opinions. Mostly guitars, amps, and effects pedals--it's a long road to find what works for you, but I wouldn't say the guitars, amps, and effects that haven't worked for me have been "bad."

    I have bought 3 hardware synths in recent years, and I'm currently only using 1 of them, but I also wouldn't want to disparage the two I'm no longer using; they just didn't work for me.

  • @purpan2 said:
    My Taylor 310 guitar. Sounds fantastic when eveyone else plays it. Sounds crap when I play it. Obviously faulty ;)

    Try turning each of the tuning heads in an arbitrary fashion - this should have the effect of ‘randomising’ your music. Just keep playing and turning until you hear something you like 😀👍

  • Oh yes, my biggest disappointment was the EMU XL7Command station. Looks the part. Manual as thick as a camels hoof. Could I get a tune out of it??….. no.

  • @dendy said:
    This guy. That synth engine is absolute shit. Sounds like mediocre free VST plugin. Loved the old good Supernova and hoped they will use same code for oscillators/filters in this "reincarnation" but they don't. Horrible crap.

    SH-32 was pretty bad too :-) Thin and boring. But that is vast majority of Roland VA synths so no big surprise.

    I had mini nova and didn’t like it at all. I made do with circuit for a while but it requires blood sweat and tears to get good sound of it. Of course it’s personal but defo not my cup of tea.

  • edited January 2022

    @robosardine said:
    Oh yes, my biggest disappointment was the EMU XL7Command station. Looks the part. Manual as thick as a camels hoof. Could I get a tune out of it??….. no.

    I have owned that one too for a short time. Strange unit, a beat box combined with the EMU Extreme Lead module. When the short honeymoon period was over I flipped it. It looks more impressive than it actually is. I also didn´t wrote a track with it. There was only one cool thing, the 16 knobs could be used as step sequencer for the rhythm parts.

    @dendy said:
    SH-32 was pretty bad too :-) Thin and boring. But that is vast majority of Roland VA synths so no big surprise.

    yes, so true, Roland have this golden heritage with a lot of analog synths. There digital consumer synth stuff is weak. I think only the JD-800, 990 and the flagship JV synths are pretty good.

  • Never quite got on with the Digitakt. I figured 1gb storage and 64 mb RAM would be plenty, but it turned out to be enough space that I wanted to store a lot of samples and not enough space that I could drop my whole library on. Having to go through a desktop program to add samples was also a chore.

    Overbridge never really panned out for me although I can see the appeal for people with different workflows. The sequencer was good but I kept running into things I missed from the OP-Z. The sound engine was good but I kept going back to Koala. I work with chords so having mono-only tracks got old quick. The master effects were nice but you couldn’t P-Lock their parameters like on the OP-Z.

    Overall there was nothing WRONG with it, but given the level of adoration people have for the DT, I hoped for more. It didn’t jive with me at all.

  • The only piece of gear I bought that I can thoroughly trash is the behringer c1u mic. Noisy little piece of crap and the phantom power never wanted to work, I ended up giving it away for free

  • Every Behringer synth I’ve tried. The Deepmind never clicked with me. I didn’t like the sound or the interface, sold it for a Grandmother. The first Neutron was faulty, got a replacement and never gelled with it. Then the Odyssey. I went through 2 faulty units and finally just sent it back and got a Minibrute 2.

  • I might be in the wrong thread. I want all the hardware that you all find disappointing!

    I also have a load of things that make up the playlist of the bad audio gear YouTube channel.

    I buy it when it’s cheap after everybody else gets disappointed! (I got my Circuit for <£100!) and know what I’m buying.

    The SH-32 is quite sought after now though. They’re going for >£300 if you can find one.

    I find bad hardware far more tolerable than bad apps. I can moan for days about some of the apps I’ve wasted my hard earned cash on!!

  • edited January 2022

    Korg Minilogue. Now I know for the price I shouldn’t complain, but for all the raving about how awesome it was and me being early into synths at the time, it was a dinky thing from the start and I tried for too long to try to force myself to like it. Got plenty of use as MIDI keys for iPad though.

  • Moog Grandmother. As the previous owner of a Moog Rogue, this seemed like the modern evolution of their entry-level instrument. I was so pumped to have something stable and non-wonky…but the Moog sound just is not there. The oscillators, especially the saw doesn’t have the same overdriven creamy bite that the Rogue has. Sadly, the Rogue has fallen beyond repair (it IS 40 years old this year, so that’s fair), and the Grandmother is just collecting dust.

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