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.
Comments
Well, first and foremost, I want to say that you do great work and deserve to do whichever way makes the most sense to keep you developing and getting fairly compensated for your great work.
To be clear, my personal sound app purchases are more sound toy purchases. I don’t feel like they are an investment to be owned as many musicians here do. Since Mela is a synth, I likely bought it while it was significantly discounted on sale. If I get $5 worth of fun out of a new audio app purchase during the first month… I consider it worth the money spent… even if I never use the app again. Mela 3 works fantastic, sounds rich, works on iPhone, iPad, and natively on macOS, as well as Logic. I most certainly got more than fair value out of it already!
My initial +1 on the Loopy Pro model was merely about thinking @Michael ‘s Loopy Pro modified subscription model is attractive to this subscription-resistant user. I do understand there are components of it from the developer’s perspective that are not ideal.
Secondly, I’m not absolutely opposed to subscriptions. A few months ago my domains host decided they were not going to include my email accounts with my domain name costs. What they wanted to charge me extra wasn’t reasonable, so I moved them to an iCloud Plus account that allows me several custom domain name email accounts within my iCloud account for only $.99/month. This included 50GB of storage too. Now, I’m paying an iCloud subscription.
I think the only way I’d pay an audio app subscription on iOS/macOS would be if I was paying one reasonable subscription that included ALL of a given developer’s apps. Not for one app only. Developers who have lots of apps that I love, and consistently release new apps and regularly maintain the ones I already have, would be developers who I could be persuaded to pay some monthly subscription for everything in their library of released apps.
Audio Processors:
Amp Envelope, Chorus, Compressor, Distortion, Filter, Flanger, FM Operator, Level, Noise Oscillator, Panner, Phaser, Stereo Delay, VA Oscillator
MIDI Processors:
Arpeggiator, Chord, Control Change, Mono, Note Echo, Note Length, Note Range, Scale, Strummer, Transposer, Velocity,
Modulators:
Envelope Follower, Envelope Generator, LFO, Macro, MIDI Source, Random
Pitch Processors
Fixed Pitch, Glide, Relative Pitch
Utilities:
Logger, Meter, Oscilloscope, Panic
There are 38 modules at the moment but of course, the list will grow with updates.
I wouldn't say it's quite far out, but that depends on how one defines far out. Sometimes some features just naturally come together very fast because of the other building blocks that were implemented before it. I imagine that's how it will happen all of a sudden. Once there are a few other components implemented adding an NFM-style module might not be too difficult, but there these other components might take a bit of time. Like polyphony, module grouping and a few more things.
Go Mela! 😊
I understand. Thanks for the detailed response, I appreciate your feedback.
Thanks for the response, looking forward to it either way 🙏
The Crossgrade to Mela 4 bundle is finally available: https://apps.apple.com/app-bundle/crossgrade-to-mela-4/id1687278264
And I’ve migrated the site and the Artist Preset downloads, for both Mela 3 and 4, are no longer pointing to iCloud.
Thanks for the bundle but there must be an error because it is more expensive than Mela4 alone (and of course I already own Mela3 and also Mela2)
I have all the Mela's. Upgraded to 3 on release day. The bundle is double to sale price. Just fyi.
No matter. I bought the cheaper option which is still a pretty good price if you are going to get good use out of it.
I tried to explain how this works in my blog post:
"All prices mentioned here are in US dollars for simplicity. The full price of Mela 4 is $30. But you can get it for an intro price of $15 until May 19. There’s also the Crossgrade to Mela 4 app bundle priced at $30. This allows you to purchase both Mela 3 and Mela 4 for the full price of Mela 4. If you already own Mela 3 which you have bought at full price then you can use App Store’s complete-the-bundle feature and purchase Mela 4 for $10 (= $30 - $20). Note that, if you bought Mela 3 on sale it might be cheaper to purchase Mela 4 using the intro price rather than via the bundle. For example, if you bought Mela 3 during the Black Friday sale, you would have paid $10 for it. This means, using the bundle it will cost you [the bundle price] - [Mela 3 Black Friday price] = $30 - $10 = $20. I have no control over how the complete-the-bundle pricing is calculated, this is all done by the App Store." more at https://nikolozi.com/blog/mela-4/.
So based on the above, if you bought Mela 3 on release day which was $5 then complete-the-bundle would work out to be $30-$5 = $25. Which is more expensive than the intro price yes. So it's better to get it at the intro price (as explained in the blog post). During the intro period, it's only cheaper to use the bundle if you had bought Mela 3 at the full price of $20.
But once the intro price sale ends and Mela 4 goes to its normal price of $30, then if you had bought Mela 3 at any price then it will always be cheaper to use the bundle.
Again, this is how App Store does the bundle pricing, if I could control the bundle price calculation I would make it a $10 upgrade price to all owners of Mela 3. But the way it works now users who paid the full price get the best deal. The second best deal is the intro price. Hope this clears up any confusion.
Thanks for the explanation it's perfectly clear now.
Congratulations on the release @Nikolozi! It made me revisit Mela 1 and 2, which I got when they were free last year, just to test out if I want to buy mela 4. Strangely I was only able to re-download mela 1 from the purchased list in the App Store. Is it possible that you removed mela 2 permanently? Anyway, think I will buy your new version soon
I knew how the app store pricing worked but had not remembered the bargain I got on v3 release day. Still don't get how the pricing nearly doubles but that's on Apple. Thanks for the explanation.
OK, a quick story time. Up until last year, I was operating my business as a company entity. But the fees associated with running a company, like accounting services, various insurances, company registration fees etc, were an adding to be a lot of money. Additionally, I had to do all sorts of reporting annually and quarterly. It was taken up a lot of time too.
I decided to switch back to a solo developer business structure. The one issue with that was Apple couldn’t convert my company developer account into a solo developer one. This meant I needed to create a new developer account and then transfer the apps from the company’s account to the solo one. The issue with that was that certain apps can’t be transferred due to technical limitations (i.e. if an app is using certain APIs/ Frameworks). I was able to transfer all my synth apps except for Mela 1 and 2. That meant I couldn’t offer upgrade pricing via bundle to the existing Mela users. Like I had done for using going from v1 to v2.
In order not to make Mela users feel like they were being taken advantage of I offered Mela 3 at an intro price that would have been equivalent to the bundle upgrade price, the price was $5. That's why Mela 3 was so cheap at launch. Additionally, I made Mela 1 and Mela 2 free to anyone who was interested in testing them out knowing that I would have had to remove them from the App Store at the end of the financial year (which is June 30 for Australia).
Now removing them didn't mean owners of Mela 1 and 2 couldn't access them. They could re-download it anytime as long as the company's Apple developer account wasn't expired. The account expired in March which is why you can no longer download Mela 2 from your purchases list. Interestingly, at some point, Apple lifted some technical limitations for transferring apps, and Mela 1 qualified for a transfer, and I was able to transfer it to my solo developer account. But Mela 2 didn't qualify. All this text to explain why Mela 1 is downloadable and Mela 2 is not. But I'm happy to provide any Mela 2 user with a Mela 3 promo code, to get around this limitation.
That makes sense @Nikolozi, thank you for explaining! Apple makes the life of developers very hard sometimes… And it’s sad to see a beautiful app go that you worked on so hard. As I got mela 2 for free I don’t want any promo code, but hope to buy 3 or 4 soon 😎 They are beautiful synths.
I appreciate that as a dev this guy take time to explain it is really nice.
Definitely. God, Apple are such a pain in the arse! So glad I am not a dev 😂
Thank you all. I reckon transparency is important, keeps everyone happy.
I think YouTubers have their fair share of troubles 🤣
Oh yes... Lol
Thanks for giving Mela a try, I appreciate the support and am glad you like the approach I'm taking.
I agree, I think there's a lot of opportunity there for improvement and adding clarity. The 4.0 was getting too big and I had to constantly pull myself away from some details and postpone some decisions and UI tweaking for the 4.x updates. Otherwise I would never end up shipping
Happy to hear that. I've been trying to make modularity more approachable, not just for others but for me also. I would like to look at a patch and get a rough idea of what's going. Obviously, a simple and straightforward UI with complex capabilities is hard to achieve, but the goal is there and let's see where it goes.
Yes! Has to work great on all 3 platforms
Yes modulation should be per voice on the same instrument lane, but might not be per voice across lanes. This is because instrument lanes (most likely) will have independent voices from each other. These ideas are still in a rough state and have to do a lot of experimenting.
As mentioned before feel free to add suggestions or vote on them here https://nikolozi.com/mela/feedback
@Nikolozi As you mention support for 3 platforms, would you share in what exactly you are programming Mela 4?
Just as a hint to which language / environment is well suited for this 😅🤗
Thanks!
It's all done in Xcode. Audio processing is in C++, application state in Swift, UI in SwiftUI and some Objective-C as a glue between Swift and C++. I use MacCatalyst to make it work on Mac, but there are some Mac-specific customisations. But probably will drop MacCatalyst in favour of SwiftUI for Mac at some point, due to various bugs with MacCatalyst. I don't use JUCE or any other audio frameworks. I just implement things from scratch as I find I have full control over more things.
As a developer for 25 years (not ios though) highly appreciate this approach 👍 In most cases when something crashes on me it is third party library so trying to avoid them as much as possible ..
Great many thanks 🤗
🧡
yes when you mix together modules from various authors it tends starting look like circus
)) .. but plugins from same author have usually visually pleasant unified look .. like Audible Instruments, Bogaudio, Impromptu for light color scheme, or Lindenberg, LifeFormModular, Geodesics for dark schemes - when you look at modules collections from those that on it's own is very nice,unified and even multiple modules on one line doesn't look like mess .. i was thinking something like that for Mela .. especially when you give some background texture (or at least color) to module which is different from whole viewport of plugin it gives to module feeling of "mass" , felling that module is something "physical" you can grab with fingers - not just few lines put together ..
Glad I’m not the only one that has trouble with Tera Pro. It’s an amazing sounding app and I’m glad I got it. But I usually get annoyed when making a synth from scratch. I probably just need to watch some videos on it though.
I like Melas interface a lot. I guess it just clicks with me more.
odulation, please. This is a feature you can find in Madrona Labs Aalto.
I am joining the party. Great sounding synth with a lots of modulation but UI again drags it down .. It's not completely bad, but simply i need fight with myself to use it where for exampe in BS i am constantly in the flow, i literally developed "muscle memory" after a very short period of using it
Me too I don’t feel right with the Mela GUI , even if it is a very good app this is mainly why I don’t bought it. If the price go on sale I will buy it just to support the dev but not to use it.
BS is very easy to use no doubt. It really feels like a “masterpiece” if that makes sense. Not sure it’ll pass Mela for me, but it’s a very close #2 I think.
A solution should be to have the option to have a choice between 2 or 3 GUI colors and texture as with some apps. For an update I don’t know if it is a big coding work do do that , you don’t need to change size just how it look like , is it possible ?