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.

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Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

*SoundFonts*

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Comments

  • Anybody else have any great resources for soundfonts they actually use in BS-16i (or an equivalent iOS program)? Some of those posted above are no longer in the linked DropBox accounts.

    I'm up against it with memory on my 16GB device, so I like to have SF2 files that are around 50MB or less if I can help it. You can always keep the rest in your DB account and import them for specific use.

  • http://www.destructavator.com/7fonts.html

    You can get some decent guitar tones with these soundfonts using Audiobus through an amp modeling package like Ampkit+.

    For bass guitar I've also had good luck running one of the fingered bass soundfonts from Hammersound through different amp models. I think it was called "Bass Fingered" or "fingeredbass", don't remember which.

  • edited April 2014

    @Coloobar, thank you I will investigate that link.

    I'm a guitar player primarily (I tend to assume everyone else is a guitar player b/c I used to be on guitar boards all the time, but that may not be the case!) - point of which being that I can't stand 90% of the synthesized or Soundfont "guitar" impersonations out there. Thumbjam's guitars are one exception to that (samples, I believe), but even then, if I need a guitar part, I'm getting out my guitars!

    BASS guitar, on the other hand, or even synthesized bass notes are something that I do like using synths and Soundfonts for, and that E-Mu Soundfont I linked above has some great ones.

    Edit: Okay, so his Gibson Explorer ones are pretty decent. The tone is less cheesy than they usually turn out, and I liked the power chord option (busted out the intro to Danzig's "Mother" on my lunch hour...haha). Tough to nail realistic strumming and guitar playing characteristics with a keyboard, but if you don't play guitar and need some basic sounds for DAW, these aren't bad.

  • @StormJH1 said:

    @Coloobar, thank you I will investigate that link.

    I'm a guitar player primarily (I tend to assume everyone else is a guitar player b/c I used to be on guitar boards all the time, but that may not be the case!) - point of which being that I can't stand 90% of the synthesized or Soundfont "guitar" impersonations out there. Thumbjam's guitars are one exception to that (samples, I believe), but even then, if I need a guitar part, I'm getting out my guitars!

    BASS guitar, on the other hand, or even synthesized bass notes are something that I do like using synths and Soundfonts for, and that E-Mu Soundfont I linked above has some great ones.

    Edit: Okay, so his Gibson Explorer ones are pretty decent. The tone is less cheesy than they usually turn out, and I liked the power chord option (busted out the intro to Danzig's "Mother" on my lunch hour...haha). Tough to nail realistic strumming and guitar playing characteristics with a keyboard, but if you don't play guitar and need some basic sounds for DAW, these aren't bad.

    True the Gibson soundfonts aren't going to replace the real thing, but a keyboardist might be able to use them as a quick substitute on a demo. Or just me being lazy, as I'm a guitar player too.

  • edited April 2014

    As mentioned by others recently, it would be great if someone who has Guitarded.sf2
    or Orchestrated.sf2
    could uplaod them to Dropbox and provide a link since all of the previous links are now broken.

    Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra is a great open source project rendering orchestral instruments. sso.mattiaswestlund.net

    However, the source files in the above link are not in .sf2 format. You can find people that have converted them elsewhere as individual .sf2 files for each instrument. I did some digging and was able to find someone who stuck the whole instrument library into one big (540+ MB) soundfont called SSO_COMPLETE.sf2. It's really fantastic and available here: http://sarahwallinhuff.com/2013/08/01/my-recent-adventures-in-soundfonts/ I can load it up on my iPad 4 and iPhone 5 with BS-16i, but my son couldn't get it to work on his iPad 3.

    Another great one is the SONiVOX GS250 GM library. This one is also a big BIG (250 meg) file, but it has some of the best general midi sounds I've heard yet. Worked great for me on BS-16i, but again my son also couldn't get this one to work on his iPad 3.

    SGM-V2.01.sf2 (236 megs) is also a really good general midi soundfont.

    For a great general drum kit, look also for SONiVOX Session Drums.sf2 I run all my drum kits through it and it could be the only drum sound set I'll ever need.

    SONiVOX also has a really good Rhodes piano soundfont.

    I don't remember where I got them (may have come from previous links on this thread), but I also really like the following:

    illusion.sf2
    proteus1.sf2
    proteus2.sf2
    proteus3.sf2
    trance.sf2
    village.sf2

    What's lacking from my library are some really nice Hammond organ soundfonts. I haven't been impressed with the ones I've gotten from Hammersound. Also I'm still looking for some nice thick saw lead soundfonts. There's a bunch of people on Ebay that are selling sets of modern keyboard soundfonts that I'm tempted to try.

  • I ran out of space on my free Dropbox account so I had to delete some stuff. I still have the divvied up Sonatina soundfonts, the Bellatrix soundfonts and the Squidfont soundfont (which has the best strings of all of them), so let me know if you need those links.

  • edited April 2014

    Thanks @Coloobar! I will check those out on my home PC later.

    I am not sure what collection the Guitarded and Orchestrated files belong to, but the thread poster recommended them, so I would still like to find them.

    To help out some more (and this may be what PaulB posted too), here is the original link to some extensive orchestra sounds:

    http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1200140

    One note about large zip files - a 200 or 400 MB zip file does NOT necessarily mean that you have one giant .sf2 file. What the guy did in the link above was zip together packs of a bunch of .sf2 files. An .sf2 file can have just one soundfont, or a bunch of them when you open it up in BS-16i. I tested the "Part 3" one in the link above (28 MB zip) and after unzipping with Goodreader, it was actually a bunch of smaller .sf2's for individual sounds, only about a 1MB or so each!

    Moral of the story, if you see a big pack, you can test it on a PC for file size. It may actually be a grouping of much smaller .sf2 file suitable for use in iOS!

    Save the .sf2's you really like in your DropBox account and that way, they don't have to be stored on your phone. You simply use "Open in bs-16i" from either AudioShare or probably even the DropBox app or site itself, since they are already unzipped.

    This is awesome. Thanks to everyone for the help so far, both today and back last year for posting. I like synths and creating your own sounds as well, but this is a $7.99 app that unlocks basically free access to just about any instrument or sound imaginable. What's not to like about that?

  • @paulb and anyone. Happy to host files on my server so long as they're legal and so long as you don't mind me taking too long to respond to requests for changes. :) I have so-called unlimited storage/bandwidth.

    Send me a PM with a link to something you want hosted, I'll grab it and throw a page up somewhere with attribution.

  • @Coloobar Here's a Hammond you may already have, but worth a shot:

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/ffv3lqqttpzxg3f/FreeDrumKits.net - 1115_ROCK_Hammond_Distorted.sf2

    I don't know enough about Hammonds to know what is good or bad!

  • edited April 2014

    @Coloobar Here's a Hammond you may already have, but worth a shot:

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/ffv3lqqttpzxg3f/FreeDrumKits.net - 1115_ROCK_Hammond_Distorted.sf2

    I don't know enough about Hammonds to know what is good or bad!

    Thanks - I'll give that one a shot.

    I tried that Bellatrix Orchestra - very nice! A lot of the instruments (brass especially) I like better than Sonatina.

    Couple of others soundfonts I've tried recently at www.hammersound.com that I really like are:

    Oberheim OB-3 (under organs).

    SoloSynth (under Synth Leads)

    Also the SynthPads sf2 here is pretty sweet (sounds like the intro to Genesis-watcher of the Skies to me): http://pike.kw.nl/browse/files/documents/3rdparty/audio/public/soundfonts/lfenn/futurebeat

  • Hi guys. New to the whole soundfont thing and just got the bs-16i. And now I'm on the search for sf2 files. But came across some with the .soundpack extension. How do I open them on my iPad? Can goodreader handle those too?

  • Well no mention on .soundpack over there.

  • I haven't seen files with that extension. Have you tried unpacking them with SFPack?

  • No 'cause I wanted to do it on my iPad. With no PC or Mac.

  • I don't think there is a way to unpack soundpacks or sfark on the ipad, at least I haven't found one.

  • Ok. Then I'll have to dust off my old laptop :)

  • @yowza said:

    I don't think there is a way to unpack soundpacks or sfark on the ipad, at least I haven't found one.

    I believe yowza is correct. This was investigated in several threads and there are PC only tools to to it (or to assemble soundfonts), but nothing that worked for iPad, at least not gracefully. Still, a TON of options out there as is.

  • @Jakersjaw - anything with the .sf2 format works with no hassle on iPad other sound font extensions need to be unpacked or coverted via PC. Like someone else said there are tons of great soundfonts available with the proper extension. Heck, there's a bunch on just this thread! Since youre new to them I will say that most every font you download will have some great and some crappy sounds mixed in. Some of the better ones available are already in this thread

  • @JMSexton yeah i know there is a ton out there. Just hit one of those sfpack files (not soundpack as I wrote earlier) and wondered how to open them. Found a lot of nice sounds already. Glad I took the plunge into soundfont-world :) learning so much from you guys!!!

  • Hey guys, thanks for sharing great info and sounds. I'm wondering if anybody knows what soundfonts were used in the Artifake Lab's Symphonia vst? I've been trying to extract them but they seem to have been compressed it with synthedit.

  • Maybe I'm not set up in some way I'm unaware of to do Dropbox (I do have it), but the link took me to a page that says the file has been moved or deleted.

  • edited August 2014

    @johnnyboy18 said:

    Hey guys, thanks for sharing great info and sounds. I'm wondering if anybody knows what soundfonts were used in the Artifake Lab's Symphonia vst? I've been trying to extract them but they seem to have been compressed it with synthedit.

    It was Squidfont. I grabbed it for use in Bismark bs-16i. It should be in a post around here somewhere.

    Here we go...

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/m9z60niozv8opbo/squidfont_orchestral.sf2

  • edited August 2014

    Downloaded HQ Orchestral Soundfont Collection v3.0. But loading the SF2 results always in crashing bs-16i. The size of the SF2 (>500mb) seems to be to big. Than I tried to get a single instrument, in this case Steinway D out of it by using "export Soundfont" in Polyphone. But it was not really playable.
    So my question is Polyphone the right choice for it? Don´t have the time to dig to deep into the Soundfont world. But would like to do some basic editing with the right tools (for Mac).

  • @helmutmaria said:

    Downloaded HQ Orchestral Soundfont Collection v3.0. But loading the SF2 results always in crashing bs-16i. The size of the SF2 (>500mb) seems to be to big. Than I tried to get a single instrument, in this case Steinway D out of it by using "export Soundfont" in Polyphone. But it was not really playable.
    So my question is Polyphone the right choice for it? Don´t have the time to dig to deep into the Soundfont world. But would like to do some basic editing with the right tools (for Mac).

    Yea, larger sf's over 100mb are problematic. But I don't want all that on my device anyway. You'd need a desktop player for that I think.

    @Maarten - thanks! Love this thread because there's so many cool resources for my little 7 dollars Bs-16i app! Drums, basses, guitars, synths, pianos, strings....and on and on.

  • @helmutmaria said:

    Downloaded HQ Orchestral Soundfont Collection v3.0. But loading the SF2 results always in crashing bs-16i. The size of the SF2 (>500mb) seems to be to big. Than I tried to get a single instrument, in this case Steinway D out of it by using "export Soundfont" in Polyphone. But it was not really playable.
    So my question is Polyphone the right choice for it? Don´t have the time to dig to deep into the Soundfont world. But would like to do some basic editing with the right tools (for Mac).

    What device are you trying to run it on? I've been able to load/play Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra on my iPad 4 in BS-16i but I'm not sure what else I'd be able to run at the same time.

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