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.

IOS midi CC faders?

Anyone have any suggestions?
I was going to purchase a midi cc faderbox for orchestral libraries on Kontakt, but they all seem too big,
or motorized faders (which I don't want). Or shitty cheap small plastic faders like Akai and Korg etc.
Now I'm leaning towards IOS...

What IOS app would you recommend to best send a few faders controlling midi cc's to Kontakt / DAW ?

Comments

  • edited March 2018

    Korg Nanokontrol 1 is a great little controller. Having 4 scenes available on the hardware gets you a lot of control for very little money, you would need to find one that has been used.

    On iOS Lemur can do faders well and you can mess with gravity and other stuff. Apparently it still runs perfectly on the original iPad!

  • to control expression/play styles of virtual instruments in Kontakt (which I don't have) I'd probably use TC-Data.
    There are several 'Midi-Designer' apps that let you build custom fader groups and assign CCs to them, but scaling can be tricky and it's a rather abstract approach.

    TC Data cannot do the fader thing at all, but it allows to assign CCs to various 'screen actions' or gestures that may get you much closer to a playable instrument.
    It's a bit of a learning curve in the beginning and there's few help online - in particular (almost) all videos seem to be about random swipe-tap-swoosh-glitch-noise >:)
    Can you give an example about what's to be controlled ?

  • wimwim
    edited March 2018

    My personal thoughts. ymmv...

    • Sonic Logic is probably the simplest to design control surfaces with. Super easy to get started with.
    • Midi Designer Pro is probably the best mix of power and ease of configuration. A bit on the ugly side IMO, but rock solid.
    • TB Midi Stuff is terrific and I've used it for years, but I cant recommend based on seemingly stalled development.
    • Lemur is super powerful, but a very steep learning curve, and really needs linkage to a PC or Mac to customize control surfaces in any meaningful way.
    • TouchOSC is the longest running and a lot of people use it, but is out in my book because there's no on-device control surface editor

    The thing to keep in mind with any use of iOS as a midi control surface is fader position updates. It's almost never two-way. So, if a fader in the target app is at 80%, but your control surface fader loads at 20%, neither app knows about the difference. There are a few apps like Animoog that have two-way communication, but even that has limitations.

    After years and years of trying to make use of such apps, I just don't see them as a good alternative to hardware. Nothing beats the feel of a real knob or fader. And switching apps on iOS is always a pain. If you have a static setup of apps and can customize a single screen to control all that you normally use, it can be great, but I personally have never reached that point.

  • MIDI Designer Pro 2 fairly easy to make control surfaces pretty quickly once you get the feel.

    I often use an iPhone with Bluetooth MIDI to send cc to the iPad which gives you more touchscreen flexibility.

  • edited March 2018

    Thanks guys - lots of good suggestions.

    @wim - sonic logic 2 is exactly what I am looking for : simple.
    Thanks for the tip.
    ..and as you point out it is super easy. :)

  • Korg nanonkontrol is a beast. I've used one since it came out and the darned thing still works everytime. Korg even updated the awesome editor for 64-bit. I've used many an ios controller, and the nano is a clear winner...

  • I'm buying a Korg NanoKontrol 2, for use with iOS and desktop.

    But I am travelling a lot over the coming month away from home, and would also like an iPad app to try for use as a fader bank with my instruments in Ableton Live 11.

    Has Sonic Logic 2 been surpassed now, and if so, what by? MIDI Designer Pro 2 looks interesting too. Any feedback on these two, or anything newer, would be most welcome.

    I'm particularly interested in something I can not only use on the iPad, but also the iPhone, mostly for faders.

  • @andowrites said:
    I'm buying a Korg NanoKontrol 2, for use with iOS and desktop.

    But I am travelling a lot over the coming month away from home, and would also like an iPad app to try for use as a fader bank with my instruments in Ableton Live 11.

    Has Sonic Logic 2 been surpassed now, and if so, what by? MIDI Designer Pro 2 looks interesting too. Any feedback on these two, or anything newer, would be most welcome.

    I'm particularly interested in something I can not only use on the iPad, but also the iPhone, mostly for faders.

    LK was initially created as a remote live controller. If you have LK, you might give that a try,

  • @espiegel123 said:

    @andowrites said:
    I'm buying a Korg NanoKontrol 2, for use with iOS and desktop.

    But I am travelling a lot over the coming month away from home, and would also like an iPad app to try for use as a fader bank with my instruments in Ableton Live 11.

    Has Sonic Logic 2 been surpassed now, and if so, what by? MIDI Designer Pro 2 looks interesting too. Any feedback on these two, or anything newer, would be most welcome.

    I'm particularly interested in something I can not only use on the iPad, but also the iPhone, mostly for faders.

    LK was initially created as a remote live controller. If you have LK, you might give that a try,

    Oh, I have LK, yes! I'll take a look. I haven't used my iPad for a while, and mostly used LK for its keyboards.

  • edited August 2023

    Well I have a recommendation. I was looking for the same midi fader. I actually fell in love with the 225€ Nuances Controller:
    https://nuancescontroller.fr/?product=nuances-controller-final-order-may-pre-order-batch-copy

    But it’s actually not in a budget range that I can afford. And on top of that always sold out.

    So I looked at alternatives and found this 50£ midi fader by Ann’s Tweed:
    https://annstweed.com/collections/midi-controllers/products/midi-controller-for-hardware-or-software-3-faders-with-din-and-usb-versatile-and-programmable?variant=40208434135230

    I got myself one to have all the electronics with faders and chip in place and built a wooden frame around it so that it comes close to the Nuances midi controller. That worked out pretty well for me. The electronics from Ann’s Tweed are absolutely flawless. The faders are programmable, don’t have any lag, stutter or anything else that would compromise their usability. All in all quality. Also the length is perfect. Not too long and not to short. My orchestra compositions definitely benefit from this nice little tool.

    Here are some pictures:


    This is how it came.


    The inside of it. I pretty much only kept the top plastic panel with the faders and everything attached except for the midi connector. Just stuffed everything into the new wooden frame box in the end.


    I cut this wooden frame much thinner in the end.


    And here the final result. Also added a nice braided usb cable as a finishing touch.
    Lot’s of fun but also lots of fiddling around to make everything fit and look good.

  • In answer to the question "Has Sonic> @andowrites said:

    I'm buying a Korg NanoKontrol 2, for use with iOS and desktop.

    But I am travelling a lot over the coming month away from home, and would also like an iPad app to try for use as a fader bank with my instruments in Ableton Live 11.

    Has Sonic Logic 2 been surpassed now, and if so, what by? MIDI Designer Pro 2 looks interesting too. Any feedback on these two, or anything newer, would be most welcome.

    The newest entry to the field is 4Pockets Surface Builder. It's not as powerful in some ways as MIDI Designer Pro 2, but absolutely has what you need as a "fader bank". The main benefit is it can be used as an AUv3. I would definitely choose it over Sonic Logic.

    TouchOSC is also very good as a standalone app. Keep in mind though that it must be kept in the foreground - it doesn't have a background mode.

    I'm particularly interested in something I can not only use on the iPad, but also the iPhone, mostly for faders.

    @espiegel123 's suggestion of LK is spot on. It may also having the advantage of having full two-way communication - important for keeping things in sync. I don't recall if this is the case though.

    The huge problem with outboard controllers of any kind is they rarely have an easy way of keeping them in sync with what they're controlling. For instance, if you switch from one Live project to another, without full two-way communication, the iOS control surface faders won't reflect the state of the Live project and you're likely to get jumps in values when you start to use the faders.

  • @wim said:
    In answer to the question "Has Sonic> @andowrites said:

    I'm buying a Korg NanoKontrol 2, for use with iOS and desktop.

    But I am travelling a lot over the coming month away from home, and would also like an iPad app to try for use as a fader bank with my instruments in Ableton Live 11.

    Has Sonic Logic 2 been surpassed now, and if so, what by? MIDI Designer Pro 2 looks interesting too. Any feedback on these two, or anything newer, would be most welcome.

    The newest entry to the field is 4Pockets Surface Builder. It's not as powerful in some ways as MIDI Designer Pro 2, but absolutely has what you need as a "fader bank". The main benefit is it can be used as an AUv3. I would definitely choose it over Sonic Logic.

    TouchOSC is also very good as a standalone app. Keep in mind though that it must be kept in the foreground - it doesn't have a background mode.

    I'm particularly interested in something I can not only use on the iPad, but also the iPhone, mostly for faders.

    @espiegel123 's suggestion of LK is spot on. It may also having the advantage of having full two-way communication - important for keeping things in sync. I don't recall if this is the case though.

    The huge problem with outboard controllers of any kind is they rarely have an easy way of keeping them in sync with what they're controlling. For instance, if you switch from one Live project to another, without full two-way communication, the iOS control surface faders won't reflect the state of the Live project and you're likely to get jumps in values when you start to use the faders.

    Thank you so much. All of this is really helpful, and helps me to keep on track.

Sign In or Register to comment.