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.
Cubasis - OMG!
I am a real dabbler and have been tinkering with iOS synths for a couple years.... the synths astound me! But I’ve never really made any noises worth saving.
I had Auria Pro from when it came out and tried to use it to make some soundscapes - but it always left me a tad confused. One thing I always wanted to try was to use the MIDI data from one instrument to create the sound from another. Well - I just took advantage of the recent sale on 2.5 - and What a difference!
Cubasis seems to be really helpful in getting an instrument onto a track an be able to play it, make changes while still in Cubasis! For the noob all this is pretty “revolutionary” and will give my noodling a whole new life. And then copy the MIDI to another track and just change the instrument. How Sweet!
I think Auria May have been a bit too “professional” - a bit stiff feeling, whereas after only a few hours with Cubasis I feel I more in control and have more options to make my own weird stuff.
Cubasis ROCKS for this sound-butcher!
Comments
The Fab Filter fan club will be arriving shortly to dispute your claim.
which of the two has the better time stretching?
Auria Pro by far. Auria Pro even has elastic audio (real time warping) besides “conventional” time stretch.
Pick an app of your choice that suits your personality and tastes and get good at using it. One day when these apps mature, they all would be able to do more or less the same similar to how the desktop DAWs do now. It's just a matter of time and priorities on their roadmaps.
I've tried GB and some FLSM but Cubasis suited me more for my projects. Plus, Cubasis is from a huge company with a successful track record - it's not going anywhere. Cubasis is also the most beautiful DAW app.
youtube.com/MobileMusic
I’ve had Auria Pro since it became a pro, before that really when it first came out. It sounds great the Effects are fantastic but I’ve always had a problem with it freezing up in the middle of a song .
Cubasis has always been super smooth super fast no hiccups for me. The effects have gotten better over the years (I mean Lord they have the Waves plug-ins for Pete’s sake ). The transpose & audio stretch has done what I needed. Love the Delay that synchs with drums so easily, etc. Ya it needs a better file system, but I’ve never met the perfect app (except for ThumbJam). It has become my Go-to DAW this year. But I haven’t deleted Auria yet....
That’s what I meant, I thought Cubasis had elastic audio as well now...no?
Ok so who besides auria has it?
Thanks Connactic
Time warping refers to the ability to adjust audio in the middle of tracks, such as to move individual botched guitar notes onto the beat. Cubasis can stretch audio as a whole, but it doesn't have that granular control.
Auria Pro has everything I ever imagine needing under one roof, so I tried to make it my main workhorse, but have settled into Cubasis as the "80%" solution that least hinders my creativity while still encouraging me to finish songs.
On iOS, only Auria Pro has elastic audio (Cubasis and others also use the same algorythm, Élastique v3, but didn’t go as far as to implement elastic audio or any real time feature for that matter).
I also have a long, sordid history with Auria. I debated Cubasis vs. Auria forever but ended up going with Auria based on the feedback that it's better overall for audio.
This is true - Auria handles audio better.
This was before the release of Auria Pro, and I knew it was coming so I held my breath for all the MIDI functionality. It came. It was disappointing and kept crashing Auria Pro on me left and right. I lost/corrupted the same song over and over again.
Eventually I fell out of love and started using AUM for most everything. I wasn't recording "songs" any more, just making short little jams. I thought that once I had everything sequenced the way I wanted in AUM, I'd record the audio into Auria and away I'd go.
Then I was lucky enough to win a code for Cubasis. That's when I realized I should've bought Cubasis eons ago.
Cubasis is a million times better at handling anything MIDI. This being said, the audio side is remedial compared to Auria Pro.
So now I use both in tandem. I am currently working on an album and have been flying tracks back and forth between Auria & Cubasis and have a decent feel for the strengths of each. I would prefer to have everything in a single DAW, but as time goes by I'm letting go more and more of the idea of having a single sandbox app. As I've said numerous times on the forum here, I tend to view the iPad itself as my sandbox and the apps all work together to get me where I wanted to go.
So yeah - Cubasis for the win. The stupidest part of all of this is that before I went iPad, I used Cubase for AGES on the PC. Why didn't I just go with that to start with!?!?!??!
The main problem with Auria currently is UX, specially for casual users people without previous experience with Desktop DAWs. Rim (Auria’s sole developer) is a genius on the technical side but usually slow to implement usability improvements and design tweaks in a rather complex app.
Cubasis, on the other hand, has a very dedicated team of developers who actually follow this forum and listen to feedback given here: Rim (which sometimes post here as @WaveMachineLabs) will only answer feedback in the Auria forum, which is understandable but a P.R. disaster.
Not surprisingly, Cubasis has been wining the popularity polls in the Audiobus forum and Facebook’s iPad Musician group (another hub for iOS musicians) despite Auria still being the king of iPad DAWs according to Priori Data and App Annie.
I love cubase but Auria is simply deeper. Not only for audio but for MIDI as well (Auria has humanizing, randomizing, quantizing on the fly etc, while cubase and beat maker don’t). I agree with @Daveypoo that it used to be very prone to crashes but not anymore, and yes, it can replace the Desktop (while cubase and beat maker can’t, not without workarounds and a lot of guess work), but Auria is deeper than cubase in the midi side as well. About audio, mixing etc, Auria has 10 centimeter faders when in portrait, not even my Sonar X2 has it!
I still don’t have any favfilters, they are a little heavy for my purse, but the internal effects are high quality, like the ones that come with Sonar but without eye candy. Which fabfilter do you recommmend for a start?
do either cubasis or auria have tempo maps/ automation, and on aurias elastic warping can you mangle pitch and time separately ?
Hmmm - a lot of the Auria pluses that we’re mentioned are sorta lost on me. I think Cb will do me better - but I still own Auria Pro and could bring it up as I advance.
So, as much as people talk about Cubasis having superior MIDI last I checked it only has a resolution of 48 ppq. Auria supposedly has 960ppq I read, but don’t have Auria yet. While fine for most things, I always wondered why free flowing piano never sounded right on MIDI playback in Cubasis, then I learned about the ppq thing. Well it’s getting quantized essentially.
I love Cubasis it’s easy and it works, but you still end up just having to record MIDI instruments as audio anyway for these kinds of things like piano etc. That said It’s still my main DAW if I want to try to write something, but I tend to focus on just jamming in AUM anyway.
I’m loving the new Cubasis update on my Pro, and finally getting it back out for some “100%” Synth One tracks that I definitely don’t need MIDI high resolution for.. It truly is great I’m just pointing out that these more natural flowing sounds still can’t be recorded as MIDI anyway or they get chopped up.
It's a pity he doesn't have a partner to 'outsource' all the interface and workflow stuff...
Auria Pro has professional dsp, but the interface is a pain in the back.
I consider myself an experienced user, so it's in no way related to 'beginners'.
Auria Pro doesn't autodetect and map the tempo of a file "automagically" like Music Memos or Logic Pro X - it does allow for multiple tempos and time signatures inside a given project via tempo track - great for progressive and jazz music btw - but that's about it.
Pitch shifting in Auria Pro is a process - meaning Auria will render the pitched audio on top of the original region; it's no Flex Pitch: it won't autodetect the pitch and give you a piano roll to manipulate it like in Logic. That's why I'm hoping Celemony or Waves realizes the opportunity and step in with either Melodyne or Waves Tune.
Pro Q2 I'd suggest.
thanks for the info TC and all
Every business needs at the least 3 people:
It is difficult for anyone to be all of the above and most are not cut out for them - they can only play one role.
Hmmm. No huckster role.
Most app devs just want to CODE
Yes, Cubasis is good fun and always on top of new musical/audio developments in iOS. They have their finger on the pulse.
Also lots of frequent updates and free upgrades.
To be fair, the first person to (indirectly) mention Auria (taking a stab at it, meaning not part of the fanclub) was poster #2.
Just an observation... 😎
Clever, clever, you edited. But I’ll keep my reply as is as a shield to similar (unedited) concerns...
Yes, I edited my remark to try and bring back the thread to the original subject in a more positive way instead of adding to the tribalism
Very good, Bram! Keep it up!
For me, it doesn’t matter how many features Auria has. The UI is such a dog’s dinner I get Streesed whenever I launch it. It’s less of a touch-screen app and more of a desktop app on a tablet, with far too many little buttons and knobs. And menus, FFS!
I don’t use Cubasis either though. GB for me! It lacks a lot, but is so easy to use, after the initial frustrations that Apple puts in all its pro apps.
Garageband lacks only a mixer, proper exporting (stems! Export MIDI!) and editable automation in comparison to other iOS apps, and the things it does, it does better than the others. If Garageband gets the things it lacks, I see either the competition retiring or Apple increasing the price and rebranding it as Logic Mobile.
I love GarageBand, it’s the only daw i use and nothing comes close in my eyes. It’s just amazing. Every day there’s an update is a good day. I hope to see it mature into logic one day.
As someone who knows both apps I actually can't see the difficulty here - couldn't you just copy and paste the MIDI from one track to another? Or assign a different MIDI instrument to your track?
Cubasis does definitely have some advantages over Auria for MIDI at the moment, namely that it supports MIDI AU plugins, but for basic stuff like assigning instruments surely it's a wash?