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.
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Any before and after pics/video on the iPad Pro optimization? I’m curious before updating on what looks different
Not sure, but iPad Pro users all seem very happy with it.
audio:
midi
Generally, concept of "track" in NS is derived from Reaper. So you don't have individual track types like "instrument track", "aux track", "group track", .. etc - instead of there is simply track which processes both MIDI and AUDIO. In reaper you can have both audio and midi on same track, which is planned also for NS after audio tracks will be added.
Lets say you put Rozetta Arp on one track and then you use MIDI SEND to sent it's output to 6 other tracks - in this case you will get arpeggiated synths on all those tracks ;-)
It's basically same as routing in AUM or ApeMatrix just you don't see that "matrix" but it's traditional DAW mixer view ..
Native MIDI AU recording is planned feature, but for you you can very easy record MIDIfx output using Blueveek's MIDI route plugin - you just put that plugin on track after MIDIfx you want to record, then you create new track in sequencer and hit "record" - and output of MIDIfx is recorded
check this video:
Sorry about the delay on this one. I'm doubtful about the practicalities; because of the lockdowns Apple put in place in iOS 7 (which is the thing that forced me to migrate Audiobus from my own system over to Inter-App Audio), Audiobus' internal inter-app communication system isn't as optimal as it used to be. Because of that, I dunno how responsive the keys would be; I would expect random jitter, especially under load.
ah interesting, thanks for insight !
What a pity that Apple still complicates work of music app devs, instead of making things more easy for them ..
and does anyone know the iPad Pro keyboard or any QWERTY keyboards work in it now? Thanks
I think I've found a bug using Mozaic and Nanostudio. Curious as to whether anyone else has used Mozaic in NS2 - particularly two instances of the same script?
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Pretty much ditto on every word of that.
Squarp/ AUM/ NS2 PC wish/ Xequence
@dendy : Is Auria Pro not capable of this at this point midi-wise?
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Yeah me too. Just bought a Yamaha MODX as a controller , Sqiarp is next . Just use iOS for recording
@palm: I’m thinking of the same setup except maybe fully loaded Auria Pro instead of NS2. What are the advantages of NS2 over Auria? More streamlined workflow?
What is it about Auria Pro and MIDI AU that you are asking about. It wasn't clear to me?
Wondering if you can do the following with Auria Pro also;
unlimited level of groups (eh you can group tracks, then you can group groups of track, then you can group groups of groups,...) Grouping works simply by selecting tracks you can group and then performing action "group" OR dragging one track over other track
unlimited number of sends (any track can be send to any number of other tracks)
for each send you can define amount(level), PRE or POST fader, invert phase and set panning - so it's not just simple "send" amount knob like in most of DAWs
track is sending audio by default to it's parent track, but you can disable this
track can send output directly to HW output instead of to it's parent track
midi
unlimited number of sends (same like with audio)
by default track is not sending midi to it's parent track, but you can enable it
by default every track receives ALL midi from ALL inputs when it is selected
you can switch it to "receive always", you can choose just one midi input, you can select midi channels to receive and adjust velocity curve
Generally, concept of "track" in NS is derived
In response to myself for anyone on the fence about updating on an iPad Pro. Here’s the before and after on 2017 12.9
I have both and I much prefer the UX and streamlined workflow of NS2. Not to mention Obsidian, it's just a dream synth/sampler! Auria feels like a desktop experience ported to touchscreen. I love the channel strips and PSP/Fabfilter plugins, but the interface has too many long menus and it's just too slow for me to get ideas down quickly. NS2 is snappy and more intuitive imo.
Truth. And still true after what, ~35 years since the first desktop MIDI sequencers appeared? Or 30 years if the A(udio) part of DAW counts most for you; Pro Tools was released in 1989! Users have been questioning UI/UX decisions since then—and helping to improve it by doing so—yet upteen kajillion number one records have been made with it.
#spiritanimal
I mean, the joke/truth was solid by itself but then ¿you also included a link? Marry me.
What if the mini keyboard were 'track aware'? Not just aware of the selected track as far as sending notes to it (the basic bit) but also track aware in the sense that it's aware of any loaded MIDI plugins. On the top of the mini keyboard are tabs to replace the keyboard with the MIDI plugin UI(s). That would mean quick access to a track's "MIDI Generators" (keyboard, AU plugins, internal MIDI plugins...) in one tidy, playable spot.
In my dream world, the main Obsidian keyboard would be updated to also use the 'available anywhere' keyboard so that any plugin related features could magically come along for the ride.
Last I heard, this one is definitely on the upper area(ish) of the (very long) todo list based on @richardyot's original post on the NS2 forum.
So long as we're dreaming aloud here... I'd love if the overview would allow you to drag left/right on it to scrub the playhead position. Particularly when you want to record automation or just work on the mix of a particular section without adjust the loop markers, an easy way to scrub the playhead position without dipping back into the song view has been a dream of mine since before NS1 supported 16 tracks!
Yep. Same for real-time quantize. My hope is that these will eventually end up under (easily accessible) MIDI FX. I wanna record free as a bird and then tighten it up a bit without committing to it. For now, I duplicate the clip, mute the duplicate and quantize the original. Works fine but non-destructive real-time would be friendly like.
MIDI routing is the same for any track type, including tracks with AU MIDI effects.
MIDI routing in NS2 is robust in general. I like Cubasis but it's way beyond that. With groups, you have bi-directional MIDI Bussing. With sends, any individual track can send or receive MIDI from any other track—and any number of them. It doesn't have AUM's awesome (and awesomely simple) MIDI Matrix but considering the types of MIDI connections available per track, I think this would probably work out to be awesomely trainwrecky in practice.
@palm , great answer, thanks!
I'm still not sure what you mean with "midi au routing" ..
you mean just matrix-like visualisation like in AUM/ApeMatrix style ?
Because except of this one you can do any possible midi au routing in NS like in Aum/ApeMatrix .. Yes, visualisation is different topic - actually during development we discussed this with Matt and i think it's still somewhere in his list, obviously visual representation would be nice (although not everybody is aware that thinks regarding routing can go a bit more complicated in NS than in Aum/ApeMatrix, so it will be not easy job to make it clear, straightforward and useable - definitely just simple matrix view will be not enough)
But that is visual representation - if we are talking just about routing itself (ability to sent output from midi FX to other midi FX) there aren't really limits or i'm not aware of any limit, in NS.