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.

Dreaming of a Polyend Tracker/Renoise-style app...

and, really, just posting to maybe wish it into the world. SunVox is a beast, but not optimized for iPad in any real way - it has a janky/cumbersome interface and workflow, particular re: its modular effects/engines and scattered menus. VividTracker also has interface/workflow issues, while Nanoloop and SidTracker64 are aimed firmly at the chiptune niche. Given the Polyend's popularity, a well-designed, equivalent, robust app tracker would probably be a must-buy for many of us - particularly those who grew up on D&B and Aphex records.

Bonus: Bluetooth QWERTY keyboards are cheap as chips and the iPad CCK works comfortably with the wired variants most of us already have, so controller buy-in would be minimal, as well.

I'm probably going to just drop $75 on Renoise for now, but the iPad really is my preferred platform for electronic stuff. If a Polyend killer arrived on the scene, I'd scoop it up. I assume I'm not alone here?

Comments

  • Why not Drambo? Also, can't sunvox be controlled via Bluetooth keyboard? I've heard it has but never tried it myself.

  • edited May 2022

    I've tried to get down with SunVox's tracker for years, including work with a QWERTY keyboard. It's decent, but boy is it cluttered. As I said, it's more of an iPad port than an app specifically made for the platform.

    Unless I've been using it completely wrong, Drambo isn't a tracker?

  • edited May 2022

    Drambo is a tracker in the same way that the Elektron OctaTrack is a Tracker. Their roots derived from Trackers.

    I think you should deep dive into Drambo. It’s pure Zen and i do love my PolyEnd Tracker.

  • edited May 2022

    @mambonassau
    Unless I've been using it completely wrong, Drambo isn't a tracker?

    @echoopera said:
    Drambo is a tracker in the same way that the Elektron OctaTrack is a Tracker. Their roots derived from Trackers.

    I think you should deep dive into Drambo. It’s pure Zen and i do love my PolyEnd Tracker.

    ^^^ what @echoopera said ... Drambo is basically tracker just rotated 90 degrees anti-clockwise :-) ...


    (rows here are like columns on tracker)

    Even Polyend tracker has mode where playback goes not from top to bottom but from left to right ..

  • I doubt anything which does come along will be as good as Sunvox. :)

    I know what you mean about the ipad version, touch isn't best for trackers and Apple is actively preventing the ipad from truly rivalling a desktop because it wants your money for a Mac...This problem is just as much down to the OS I think.

    Sunvox does work best with a keyboard and mouse. But the workflow of going from working on desktop and then pushing it over wifi to ipad for tweaking as an AUv3 is very flexible. The timeline is great too.

    Anything missing from the workflow you should suggest in the Sunvox forum as it's in active development and might be considered :)

  • Even though I prefer to use a keyboard with trackers SunVox works incredibly well on touch when enabling the navigation arrows in the pattern editor.

    And there's absolutely nothing stopping me from using SunVox as an AUv3 inside Drambo :sunglasses:

    I miss 'finger-painting' waveform on the fly so SunVox to the rescue inside Drambo...
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/va7mk7byi6f4x9t/draw.mp4?dl=0
    (It's an old beta of Drambo being in use).

    Cheers!

  • I've been looking at M8 hardware tracker, looks nice but as usual very expensive. Wish this was open source then building a hardware version would be much cheaper. :)
    It's possible for someone (with the skills) to build a new ui or app with sunvox.dll. I wish someone made a similar app wrapper for sunvox like M8 to go on Pi.
    I plan on building a Pi based sunvox hardware unit sometime but would be nice to have a more minimal ui option like M8.

  • Good news is that it seems Renoise is getting or has Pi support?
    https://cdm.link/2022/03/renoise-tracker-better-supports-mac-windows-link-and-get-ready-diyers-raspi/

    That means a nice custom Renoise hardware box is potentially quite affordable :)

  • @Carnbot said:
    I've been looking at M8 hardware tracker, looks nice but as usual very expensive. Wish this was open source then building a hardware version would be much cheaper. :)
    It's possible for someone (with the skills) to build a new ui or app with sunvox.dll. I wish someone made a similar app wrapper for sunvox like M8 to go on Pi.
    I plan on building a Pi based sunvox hardware unit sometime but would be nice to have a more minimal ui option like M8.

    It is open source. Haven’t tried it but apparently you just need a teensy board and a computer like a Pi.

    https://github.com/DirtyWave/M8HeadlessFirmware

  • edited May 2022

    @FordTimeLord said:

    @Carnbot said:
    I've been looking at M8 hardware tracker, looks nice but as usual very expensive. Wish this was open source then building a hardware version would be much cheaper. :)
    It's possible for someone (with the skills) to build a new ui or app with sunvox.dll. I wish someone made a similar app wrapper for sunvox like M8 to go on Pi.
    I plan on building a Pi based sunvox hardware unit sometime but would be nice to have a more minimal ui option like M8.

    It is open source. Haven’t tried it but apparently you just need a teensy board and a computer like a Pi.

    https://github.com/DirtyWave/M8HeadlessFirmware

    ah that's interesting thanks, might be looking into that then :)

    Yeah, looks good... will have a go and make something out of M8 probably, unfortunately the headless version still needs to be connected to a Mac or PC to run as the gui is run with Touchdesigner. I guess this also stops people from selling hardware clones of M8 easily...

    edit: ok this is more like it https://github.com/marcora/m8c-gamepi43 yes this version runs on Pi

  • edited May 2022

    @Carnbot said:

    @FordTimeLord said:

    @Carnbot said:
    I've been looking at M8 hardware tracker, looks nice but as usual very expensive. Wish this was open source then building a hardware version would be much cheaper. :)
    It's possible for someone (with the skills) to build a new ui or app with sunvox.dll. I wish someone made a similar app wrapper for sunvox like M8 to go on Pi.
    I plan on building a Pi based sunvox hardware unit sometime but would be nice to have a more minimal ui option like M8.

    It is open source. Haven’t tried it but apparently you just need a teensy board and a computer like a Pi.

    https://github.com/DirtyWave/M8HeadlessFirmware

    ah that's interesting thanks, might be looking into that then :)

    Yeah, looks good... will have a go and make something out of M8 probably, unfortunately the headless version still needs to be connected to a Mac or PC to run as the gui is run with Touchdesigner. I guess this also stops people from selling hardware clones of M8 easily...

    edit: ok this is more like it https://github.com/marcora/m8c-gamepi43 yes this version runs on Pi

    Fun (probably more kinds of builds on the warmplace.ru site):

    https://www.warmplace.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?p=12700&sid=a1a8149c016c50cc74609c2ba9879f7b#p12700

    And there’s this

    https://bcacciaaudio.com/2021/08/26/raspberry-pi-4-music-cyberdeck/

    SunVox is the Emperor

  • Yeah there are some nice sunvox custom builds around, I will make one at some point.
    I'm going with an M8 build first though as it will be a lot cheaper and easier to create something portable. :)

  • ok wow. The Teensy 4.1 is impressive with the M8. sounds great and is very deep. I have it running plugged into Windows in chrome and will build a Pi based module for it. Controlling it via wireless gamepad is a lot of fun.

    It would be great if iOS supported webAudio because then it would easily run via iphones and ipads....
    But yes this would also be really nice as an AUv3 because the compact gui is built for small screens.
    I guess it could happen one day. :)

  • @Carnbot said:
    ok wow. The Teensy 4.1 is impressive with the M8. sounds great and is very deep. I have it running plugged into Windows in chrome and will build a Pi based module for it. Controlling it via wireless gamepad is a lot of fun.

    It would be great if iOS supported webAudio because then it would easily run via iphones and ipads....
    But yes this would also be really nice as an AUv3 because the compact gui is built for small screens.
    I guess it could happen one day. :)

    Any way you could share a photo of your build?

  • @Littlewoodg said:

    @Carnbot said:
    ok wow. The Teensy 4.1 is impressive with the M8. sounds great and is very deep. I have it running plugged into Windows in chrome and will build a Pi based module for it. Controlling it via wireless gamepad is a lot of fun.

    It would be great if iOS supported webAudio because then it would easily run via iphones and ipads....
    But yes this would also be really nice as an AUv3 because the compact gui is built for small screens.
    I guess it could happen one day. :)

    Any way you could share a photo of your build?

    At the moment it's not even a build. Literally just the Teensy board plugged into a laptop via usb, that's all you need to run it. A microSD for song files, instruments and samples. Will 3D print an enclosure for the Teensy and get a pi 3 or 4 to host the display and connectivity when they come back in stock to make it more like the original M8 build.
    I've also got it running with an 10 year old netbook with Linux on it, and it works great with that too :)

  • @Carnbot said:

    @Littlewoodg said:

    @Carnbot said:
    ok wow. The Teensy 4.1 is impressive with the M8. sounds great and is very deep. I have it running plugged into Windows in chrome and will build a Pi based module for it. Controlling it via wireless gamepad is a lot of fun.

    It would be great if iOS supported webAudio because then it would easily run via iphones and ipads....
    But yes this would also be really nice as an AUv3 because the compact gui is built for small screens.
    I guess it could happen one day. :)

    Any way you could share a photo of your build?

    At the moment it's not even a build. Literally just the Teensy board plugged into a laptop via usb, that's all you need to run it. A microSD for song files, instruments and samples. Will 3D print an enclosure for the Teensy and get a pi 3 or 4 to host the display and connectivity when they come back in stock to make it more like the original M8 build.
    I've also got it running with an 10 year old netbook with Linux on it, and it works great with that too :)

    Sweet
    Keep the updates coming

  • @Carnbot said:

    @Littlewoodg said:

    @Carnbot said:
    ok wow. The Teensy 4.1 is impressive with the M8. sounds great and is very deep. I have it running plugged into Windows in chrome and will build a Pi based module for it. Controlling it via wireless gamepad is a lot of fun.

    It would be great if iOS supported webAudio because then it would easily run via iphones and ipads....
    But yes this would also be really nice as an AUv3 because the compact gui is built for small screens.
    I guess it could happen one day. :)

    Any way you could share a photo of your build?

    At the moment it's not even a build. Literally just the Teensy board plugged into a laptop via usb, that's all you need to run it. A microSD for song files, instruments and samples. Will 3D print an enclosure for the Teensy and get a pi 3 or 4 to host the display and connectivity when they come back in stock to make it more like the original M8 build.
    I've also got it running with an 10 year old netbook with Linux on it, and it works great with that too :)

    Nice one! Was it straightforward to set up?

  • @FordTimeLord said:

    Nice one! Was it straightforward to set up?

    Very easy if you just use it with Windows or Mac, a bit trickier for Linux and Raspberry Pi but really not that difficult, just takes a bit of tinkering. The synth and sequencer is really good, there's a learning curve but it feels rewarding to learn. I will definitely finish building it when I get a Pi :)

  • @Carnbot said:

    @FordTimeLord said:

    Nice one! Was it straightforward to set up?

    Very easy if you just use it with Windows or Mac, a bit trickier for Linux and Raspberry Pi but really not that difficult, just takes a bit of tinkering. The synth and sequencer is really good, there's a learning curve but it feels rewarding to learn. I will definitely finish building it when I get a Pi :)

    Sounds good to me, just ordered a teensy board :smile: 👍

  • @FordTimeLord said:

    @Carnbot said:

    @FordTimeLord said:

    Nice one! Was it straightforward to set up?

    Very easy if you just use it with Windows or Mac, a bit trickier for Linux and Raspberry Pi but really not that difficult, just takes a bit of tinkering. The synth and sequencer is really good, there's a learning curve but it feels rewarding to learn. I will definitely finish building it when I get a Pi :)

    Sounds good to me, just ordered a teensy board :smile: 👍

    Great, yeah I was planning on using it mainly sequencing AUM, but the built in synth and sampler is so good that I'm just using standalone for now, importing loads of samples from ipad on to the SD card.

    Being able to push the interface though a browser like Chrome is brilliant because it opens up such cross platform playability without having to do any setup, I hope that this function does become available in iOS eventually.

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