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.

Well-optimized, lightweight, stable, bread and butter AUv3 synths / effects

Long gone are the days of NanoStudio 1 where you were able to run 16 instances of a good-sounding, heavily optimized Eden synth on an iPhone 4, which had a tenth of the processing power and memory of modern hardware. Add to that 3 OK-sounding insert effects per channel.

So here's the question: What's your favourite AUv3 synth of which you can actually load, say, 20 instances, play a single note on all of them at once, and get no crackles at all (not even during app switching, etc.) with a reasonable buffer size (256 bytes)?

Also welcome: lightweight, good-sounding bread-and-butter effects (Delay, EQ, Saturation, Compressor).

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Comments

  • No idea as I’ve never wanted to run 20 instances of any synth lol

    Lorentz and Phasemaker are pretty much those I go to for a few synths together as they don’t tend to mush the sound up too much. Less is more most of the time :)

  • Try Poison-202 or Lorentz or any of the IceGear AUV3's. KQ Dixie is pretty easy on the CPU as well.

  • Most of Bram Bos Sound makers are easy on the resources, but if you had lots of Ripplemaker running, you would go mad!!! :D

  • There's two reasons I'm asking: first, I've tried so much to make a full production with only AUv3 synths and effects, but no matter which host I used, after at most half an hour, all I got was crashes, freezes and crackles. So maybe I've been using the wrong plugins!

    Second, I still have "AUv3 hosting" somewhere buried deep on my Xequence roadmap. So before I even consider doing that, I want to know if that AUv3 stuff is by now mature enough to warrant inclusion :D

  • That’s one reason why I might use some apps to start a track and then go to another. Without track freezing, my options run out quickly too.

  • I don't need 20 of anything.

    I generally have Animoog and Patterning in Audiobus2 and Zeeon x 1 and/or Tines x2 in AUM with Samplr or sometimes KRonoker.

    The only difference is if I swap out Patterning in lieu of BM3. Which is for drums and some other minor textures.

    I personally make music traditionally.

    Lead, Chords, Bass, Drums, Fx, Optional Vocals.

    For instance, it should fit in 8 tracks in Ableton or Blocs(Launchpad).

    Any more than that I fine with that.

    Any time I try to go larger than life the signal quality is not always there on the iOS platform like on my MacBook.

    I generally like to limit the number of sounds and once and emphasize their attributes.

    I don't think I ever tried loading a massive number of AU in an app.

    But, maybe it is fun to some. Who knows.

  • @RUST( i )K said:
    I don't need 20 of anything.

    I generally have Animoog and Patterning in Audiobus2 and Zeeon x 1 and/or Tines x2 in AUM with Samplr or sometimes KRonoker.

    The only difference is if I swap out Patterning in lieu of BM3. Which is for drums and some other minor textures.

    I personally make music traditionally.

    Lead, Chords, Bass, Drums, Fx, Optional Vocals.

    For instance, it should fit in 8 tracks in Ableton or Blocs(Launchpad).

    Any more than that I fine with that.

    Any time I try to go larger than life the signal quality is not always there on the iOS platform like on my MacBook.

    I generally like to limit the number of sounds and once and emphasize their attributes.

    I don't think I ever tried loading a massive number of AU in an app.

    But, maybe it is fun to some. Who knows.

    Well said, all of it.

  • edited October 2018

    I think complex AU projects can’t be done today on iOS without rendering/freezing midi to audio during the production. With most good sounding AU synths, it’s even needed very often. When making a project in AUM or apeMatrix, it will be CPU limited or I will use BlocsWave in the chain to record all parts as audio. Works well with Audiobus/Xequence by the way. But it can be hard to manage with genres with long evolutive tracks like in some EDM. This is where a DAW with freezing feature is a good tool. But most of them still have some issues freezing some AU, except GarageBand which does it pretty well now. A real-time AU recording though busses in DAW is still a must-have when renderings crashes (especially after some updates, like iOS12...), I think Cubasis does this but not GB. Most AU effects uses CPU more efficiently. I like FAC, DDMF, Audio Damage, Brambos, Blamsoft... all sounds really good and much better than most DAWS built in fxs, in my case they’re essential part of my sound. I’m also mostly minimalistic in tracks/instruments number (from 4 to 10) but not effects use (can be 20 or 30 in a song). So in short if you want to add AUV3 hosting to Xequence it should provide also freezing feature or at least multi-output for recording tracks in AUM :)

  • edited October 2018

    @SevenSystems said:
    There's two reasons I'm asking: first, I've tried so much to make a full production with only AUv3 synths and effects, but no matter which host I used, after at most half an hour, all I got was crashes, freezes and crackles. So maybe I've been using the wrong plugins!

    Second, I still have "AUv3 hosting" somewhere buried deep on my Xequence roadmap. So before I even consider doing that, I want to know if that AUv3 stuff is by now mature enough to warrant inclusion :D

    Full production at comparable quality to laptop/desktop is no where close now without freezing, except for perhaps the most effect light music styles (e.g. classical).

    Without even noticeable effects for normal songs excluding instrument plugins, I would be using 30 or so plugins for mixing e.g. compression, eq, mixing console emulation, tube/tape emulation, spatial placement.

    Then mastering, which I personally usually do separate out of workflow needs anyway, that's 5 to 10 added plugins.

    Yes you need the freezing. I had to do that back in the day, I could if I had to.

    Back to your core question, I went and tested a lot of AU3 synths when I first was exploring this platform, going through presets and watching CPU. On a 2017 iPad regular.

    These were all mostly in the teens or lower when using limited polyphony:
    Ruismaker *****
    Ruismaker FM *****
    Ripplemaker *
    Laplace ****
    Lorentz ***
    Redshrike ****
    Tera *****
    Kauldron *****
    KD Dixie **
    Phasemaker **
    Poison *

    Points = * for sound quality imho. Though no points may simply mean that I didn't easily get good sounds and didn't invest much time tweaking/learning...I've heard worse plugin synths in the early years of them than any of the above.

  • Zero points for Poison 202 ?

  • edited October 2018

    @Turntablist said:
    Zero points for Poison 202 ?

    That would fall into the realm of 'didn't invest much time...' Found similar stuff quite quickly with with Lorentz and stopped exploring it. I'm just trying to add a little more information. I am not sure how else to gauge optimized without more research. 8 bit synth sounds I was able to make with my Atari as a kid were certainly light weight code, but optimized to me implies efficient code to do the job of sounding good I guess.

    And there are a few other AU3 synths I downloaded and saw no use for and didn't even test when I did the above testing after exploring half the presets. Those are not even in my list. But I'm not gonna talk trash when I haven't done more research into their capabilities on my own. I've certainly had the experience of hating all the presets and finding something awesome when I programmed it myself from init (Boss SY-300 for e.g.)

    Poison I at least got thru every preset, saved a few, but then found Lorentz fit that style for me better.

    Oh. Zero..I actually meant to put 1. They turned into bullets when I had the spacing wrong.

  • Poison 202 is extremely well optomised code and a very high quality synth for its low CPU RAM footprint.

  • @Multicellular thanks for that extensive list!

    @Turntablist Poison-202 is also one of my favorites in that regard, however preset organization could be better (tags, categories).

  • Yes its well out of date for preset browsing, but the developer only updates it for bugs i think, which is fair enough considering our little niche crack in the wider IOS economy, a game nobody ever hears of will make more money than a well made AU Synth !

  • Versatile and lightweight: Lorentz and Viking Synth - also see https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/26994/au3-instruments-with-low-cpu

  • Viking, Kauldron, Redshrike, Phasemaker

  • Some great synth recommendations here, thanks!

    Now about the effects: For reverb, it doesn't matter so much as you'd typically have only 2 or 3 of them in Auxes anyway.

    But what about the other "bread and butter" FX: Delay (with filter), EQ, Distortion / Overdrive, Bitcrusher, Compressor (with reduction meter!).

    Any recommendations for good low CPU and reasonable quality ones there?

  • I kinda like the Virsyn AudioEffx thing as a bread-n-butter fx unit. It doesn't do 'everything' but it does a lot.
    Being able to re-order the effects chain adds to the fun and it's quite easy on the CPU too.

  • edited October 2018

    Reverb: Audio Damage eos2, blamsoft reverb
    Delay: Audio Damage Dubstation2, Brambos Kosmonaut
    Eq: DDMF 6144, directional EQ
    Comp: DDMF NYC compressor, FAC Maxima (and Transient)
    Modulation: FAC chorus, DLYM, Audio Damage QuatroMod
    Distorsion: Audio Damage Grind
    Bitcrusher: blamsoft resampler, Shaper smart audio destroyer
    Analog emulation saturation: RX950, Lo fly dirt
    Gate effect: Brambos Perforator, Audio Damage Pumphouse, FAC Envolver (this one does so much more!!)
    Filter: Audio Damage Filterstation2
    Stereo widener: Haaze
    Various creative effects: Audio Damage Replicant 2, Discord 4, TC Helicon VoiceRack FX
    Maximizer: FAC Maxima, DDMF No Limit

  • Asking about EQ? Let me tell you about ProQ-2. I expected the AU version to sound great (and it does). But I have been so surprised by how well-optimized it is. Very little CPU usage, even with the gorgeous graphical interface and live waveform. I’m sure I could use as many instances as I need, but haven’t pushed it yet. Others have posted tests with 50+ instances running.

    I can’t wait to see the other FabFilter plug-ins go AUv3

  • @Samu @Janosax @Hmtx some great recommendations there! Will filter further by universal apps, and then report back :)

  • oh, right. ProQ-2 is iPad only at the moment. I haven't heard if it will go universal/ iPhone.

    But still pretty amazing that it can be a "bread-and-butter" EQ while also being the icing on the cake.

  • edited October 2018

    @SevenSystems said:
    @Samu @Janosax @Hmtx some great recommendations there! Will filter further by universal apps, and then report back :)

    I can easily use 20 of all mentioned above plugins on my 7 Plus. In my experience, CPU is much more problematic with AU synths: Model D, Zeeon, Unique, Volt... all sound very very good but two or three instances and you’re done. I’ve to try some Icegear stuff.

  • are we talking iPhone only? Maybe edit the thread title if so.

    I keep thinking of iPad options, top on my list there is Sunrizer synth.

  • edited October 2018

    @Hmtx said:
    are we talking iPhone only? Maybe edit the thread title if so.

    I keep thinking of iPad options, top on my list there is Sunrizer synth.

    I think @SevenSystems search for universal AU’s. All apps I’ve mentioned are universal, I’ve talked about my iPhone 7 Plus only to give an idea about CPU power/usage.

    @SevenSystems said:
    @Samu @Janosax @Hmtx some great recommendations there! Will filter further by universal apps, and then report back :)

  • I myself am mainly looking for universal apps, but I wanted to keep the thread a bit more open... surely this is something that many (most?) iOS producers wonder.

  • edited October 2018

    That's why I'm running multiple iPads...To lower CPU charge, limiting synths on each of them, and never change them (or almost...or I freeze them at some point)
    So each iPad is a 5 synths + effects + sequencer.
    And it's really super stable now with IOS 12.

    For effects, Turnado's the beast I'm using a lot on each iPAd.
    I really like DubStation 2, and all FAC series, all APE series, all AUFX series.
    Recently picked the Degrader from Kervsomething, really wild also :)

  • @SevenSystems said:
    I myself am mainly looking for universal apps, but I wanted to keep the thread a bit more open... surely this is something that many (most?) iOS producers wonder.

    Not really, most of the DAWs have perfectly capable efficient effects built in, the current crop of AU offerings either have to be spectacular (Pro Q2) or just plain different enough (Kosmonaut) to warrant any purchase at all.a

  • Speaking of FX that are wildly different, I’m finding Turnado as an AUv3 significantly more CPU friendly than it was under IAA

  • @zeroG said:
    Versatile and lightweight: Lorentz and Viking Synth - also see https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/26994/au3-instruments-with-low-cpu

    Another vote for both of those.

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