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.
Apesoft IVCS3 - Wow! Need some IAP recommendations and where are the presets in AU?
IVCS3
This was probably the last synthesizer emulation I bought and I’m really impressed so far!
What a great sounding synth! Ideal for some ambient and atmospheric or experimental music! 🎶👍
There are some IAPs available and I’m curious which of them you like most or you recommend to buy.
James Edward Cosby
JEC 2018 Bank A
JEC 2018 Bank B
Essential and recommend EMS
Lala - Sonic Pleasures
Synapsid - Under the Dust
One more question:
Load it as an AU I couldn’t find the presets. In Cubasis own presetlist I couldn’t find any factorypreset too.
Did I miss something? I like to use multiple instances in a project.
Anyway, I think IVCS3 is a great playground for experimental stuff and it sounds great. May not so easy to understand in the beginning so I start with some ready presets. It’s a lot of fun fiddling around... 🎶
Thanks a lot for your feedback!
Comments
If you look you can find PDFs for old manuals/guides and presets for the old VCS3/synthi synths online. I really recommend tracking these down.
Sorry I’m not much help with the AUv3 applications but Digital Jeepney (who has a preset bank in there) has a series of YouTube’s here’s the first of a 5 video series, very well presented and concise.
As far as the presets go my policy is to get them all (especially those made by our forum comrades). Always good to have a wide range of pre-mades in an unfamiliar synth, for reverse engineering study...
@cian
Thanks a lot for the hint! I already found the original manual released 1970 and some other great resources in the internet. Very helpful! 👍
Go here: http://www.pearltrees.com/johnfromberkeley/ivcs3/id14128597
@Littlewoodg
Mostly I prefer good video tutorials more than written manuals. I can understand them faster. Thanks a lot for your advice! 😊
Sadly I start to realize that the IAA is a total different thing as the AU version of the synth. I’m afraid that it will be impossible to play the full iVCS3 Version presets in the AU. Hmm...
Hi> @johnfromberkeley said:
Wow! Great videos and infos there! Love already the iVCS Controller! 👍
What is pearltrees.com? I see it the first time. What about Come in! join pearltree - Install the app?
Thanks a lot for the link @johnfromberkeley ! 😊
Edit: I just read the description from the AppStore so i understand what pearltree is for.
Sorry for asking so quickly... 😎
Are use the free version with no problems.
Pearltrees is basically a bookmark organizer. I used to be a big del.icio.us fan. Now I use pinboard. However, I decided to keep a collection of iOS music links here. This is really only the tip of the iceberg. I figure that there’s about 10 times as many, or even 1,000 times as many equally valuable links related to iOS music and related hardware out there. And hundreds of thousands of related music production links.
You might also like this Pinterest board:
https://pin.it/sway4yofagb7xe
I have fantasized about building a scraper and classifier, but I just don’t have it in me right now.
Thanks again John!
Looks interesting! I think I will create an account (free version) at pearltree. I like the idea having a place where I can share some good resources with other friends!
Your Pinterest link opened a blank page in my browser. May because I’m not a member of Pinterest? I’ve never use it before. The page was asking me to login with my gmail account after accepting i see only a blank page... 😎
Edit:
After shorten your link to your HomePage I saw I was not registered. Now it’s done and I see your content. A lot of cool stuff you collected! 😎
Everything is fine now! 😊
Wish I had 19k disposable cash to buy the EMS Synthi AKS that's on reverb atm. :P ..
iVCS is easily up there among my favorite iOS semi modulars and the real deal is my #1 object of out of touch synth lust. If only Behringer came out with a clone, it'd likely satiate my desire for a eurorack rig.
Did some A/B of the iVCS vs the YT clips AKS and putney this morning, just out of curiosity to see how close they got the sound.. Naturally it's not going to fool anyone by a longshot, but Apesoft did a very commendable job approaching a near facsimile of it - especially nailing the UI. Impressive, considering it was made for 2013-14 iPads.
Been looking for a VST emulation and can't yet find anything as detailed and close as ivcs, but came across this free one that sounds brilliant - just different. Kx-PolyM-CSE
3:10
As for the IAP -- The EMS Essential & Recommended one was a must have for me for the extra functionality,
as I'm more interested in sound design than presets. Haven't bought any others though. Judging by the quality of RedLullaby and JEC free packs, those would be the first I'd personally go for.
Not really sure about the rest ...but if anything, they're all potentially useful for reverse engineering, to help learn how to make this granny sing. It's been an incredibly fun synth to learn and practice on.
No full multiple AU instances so the standalone presets are not available. Certain aspects of iVCS3 are available for multiple AU instances as Instruments: Noise and VCO and Effects: Envelope, Spring Reverb, VCA and VCF.
I second the EMS expansion as all you need. If you want more demos (presets), I think plenty are provided for free. But the real fun is obvious...
Using the the „StreamByter AU Script: Distribute Poly to N Mono“ and 27 instances of various iVCs AU modules i setup a 5 voice polyphonic iVCS synth in AUM - you find the download and description in the original thread somewhere down the page.
The handling for patch editing is quite cumbersome, but feasible
It runs with 34% DSP on an iPad Pro 10.5 BTW
I've been thinking about this synth lately. Talk me in or out of it. Feel free to offer your opinions after having purchased ...
-do you still use it?
-is it just fun to use or do you find it in your finished tunes/works?
-is it worth learning all the idiosyncrasies of this beastie?
@kinkujin I'm prepping to do some videos about iVCS3 - spent the weekend chatting with James Edward Crosby and programming the thing.
It's mind blowing - really. But it is like most apeSoft apps, it's absolutely unforgiving for the faint of heart. What I mean is that this is a recreation of a synth from before synths and synth language was standardized. It doesn't make any connections for you initially - you have to connect the keyboard, program it correctly to have the pitches map to 12 notes per octave, you have to tell the keyboard to both turn the envelope gate off and on with key presses on the keyboard... it's a challenge.
That being said - once over the initial hump, this thing is an absolute BLAST to play. If you understand matrix routing (a la apeMatrix) then this is for you. The sound is deep and rich, and being fully modular it's quite easy to get self-generating patches that will bleep and bloop all night long for you. But once you get a handle on the routing, it really opens up new worlds.
Beyond that, Alessandro has added a number of features that push the original VCS2 architecture even further - his standard "LFO-for-every-knob" thing is fully in place here, but there's a built in sampler (you can use the envelope of the sample to trigger MIDI cc's.... WOW!), a flanger, a delay, a compressor, and then you get not only the whole synth as an AU, but also each individual module as an AU as well so you can build a monster Modular in some host DAW.
Overall this is much more than a synth recreation - this thing is a piece of art and it just keeps giving more and more the deeper you go. I can't recommend this enough - if you're willing to actually dedicate a bit of time to it. Otherwise, it's just another blooper and bleeper....
@Daveypoo Thanks, that's quite the endorsement. I look forward to your videos.
Do folk build an "init" patch that gets them over all those initial hurdles of hooking up the keyboard, etc.?
That's what I've done. James' patches (a number are IAPs) are an excellent starting point. He REALLY pushes the app to get as much as possible out of it, and by deconstructing and reverse-engineering them I've learned a lot.
Don't get me wrong - I've owned this app for a while and have had a ball with just making 1960's space noises. There's still a lot to have fun with as-is - but if you're mildly dedicated you can really get this thing to make some dynamite sounds.
None of the current videos have really resonated with me so I thought I'd offer my own take on it, since a lot of folks seem to like my delivery.
@Daveypoo
Since it's just the two of us talking, I'm gonna say, you haven't steered me wrong yet. I'm getting it.
And since I've gotten so much out of Apematrix, I think I owe it to the dev. Or something like that ...
iVCS3 is one of the IOS groundbreaking synths, Apesoft got a lot of praise for capturing the Synthi's character (from people familiar with the hardware).
Downloading the original manual helps a lot with routing (by patchfield) and understand what the hardware is about. Those connectors are actually resistors - an important difference to most synths' architecture.
I always patch it like the hardware, starting from scratch - for me it's the most challenging (but also very rewarding) virtual analog. Inspiring and full of surprises, too.
Here is one of it's rare appearances in a pop production, Eno tweaking from 0.52 on
I did this and while normally I'd agree with you, I gotta be honest - when the manual started talking about resistance, capacitance and voltages my eyes clouded over. Personally I find electrical engineering and the like extremely boring, so it was hard for me to make heads or tails of the manual of the original Putney VCS3. Hell, even the iVCS3 manual is a bit like a textbook - the best resource honestly was JEC.
I'm hoping that a video or two can demystify the basic stuff and at least allow folks to create a very basic playable patch.
sorry, I'm so used to these item that I didn't even notice...
(started with electronics as a schoolboy)
My 1st 'synth' was an old tube radio of which I fed back the additional speaker out into the record player's input and then turned up volume, which gave really cool blobs and beeps.
The circuit was then refined by whatever capacitors and coils I got my hands on...
Wow, that’s old skool! 👍
And totally naive. There were these connectors available, so let's see what happens...
I had no idea about feedback, let alone what a synthesizer was.
Iirc it could do sweeping tones (as one would expect), but the fun part were the pulsating variants that followed at higher volume.
That was a small radio, so loudness was ok - but the 'sound' impressed me to a degree that it's still present in my memory.
A fairly steep learning curve for most but sonically it's right up there, have had some delightful experiences running Autony & Cality into it.
Indeed - it's reputation is well earned.
This "IAP" would be awesome
Oh man - that would be super sweet. Imagine if you motorized it so that when you applied the internal LFOs the knobs would move.
Ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...
BTW, since you guys enjoy video tutorials... Here's one that I dig
Interestingly enough, the Red Bull Music Academy of all things has some very interesting guest interviews on YouTube with Michael Rother and Manuel Gottsching, among others.