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.

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Comments

  • edited December 2019

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  • Would love to see a demo vid if possible.

  • @cuezaireekaa said:
    Would love to see a demo vid if possible.

    Me too

  • What would you like to see? I'll try and put something together for you.

  • edited December 2019

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  • edited December 2019

    Looks nice. I don’t mind the lack of AU.

    @AlanC3 I see in the pictures there’s scale quantization. What scales, how many? Custom scales too?

  • edited December 2019

    So AU cannot do multi channel outputs? I thought it could? Maybe the currently ios hosts do not support it?

  • @rafaelollero: I'm putting together some videos that show it in action using the internal synth and will follow those up with some where it's driving a modular system or a couple of CV/Gate synths.

    @musgo: Available scales are Chromatic, Ionian, Aeolian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Locrian, Major Blues, Minor Blues, Diminished, Major Pentatonic, Minor Pentatonic, Spanish, Arabian, Egyptian, Ryukyu, Wholetone, Major Third, Minor Third and Fifth. There's no custom scale editor at the moment.

    @[Deleted User]: AU can support multiple output channels but right now I'm not aware of any hosts that can support anything other than stereo outputs.

    You can find the app's help file at http://www.recurcv.com/help/CVquencerHelp.pdf That might give you a more complete idea of what's in there until I can get the videos done.

  • I got it. Have this thing with sequencers on iPad.

    @AlanC3 I use Hirajoshi a lot. And a little 1octave keyboard to choose the notes won’t hurt anybody - think Patterning 2

  • Video demo with some classic sequences showing various aspects of the step repeat in action:

  • @musgo: I see three variants of Hirajoshi: C-E-F#-G-B, C-Db-F-Gb-Bb and C-D-Eb-G-Ab. If you could tell me which one you prefer I'll add it to the next release. An editor for custom scales is on the list of possible features for future versions.

  • @AlanC3 all of them!!! 😬
    Well, I use the first one: C-E-F#-G-B

    Looking forward the scale editor.

  • @AlanC3 Great sequencer. Nice demo vid. ( should put it on your site 😉 )

    I read the calibration info for using with external hardware. Very helpful and interesting. Thank you.

    I wish I could get this now, but it’ll have to wait till after Christmas.

  • Another video demo: driving a Pittsburgh Modular system using CV/Gate via an Expert Sleepers ES-8 DC-coupled audio interface.

    I suck at making videos... :D

    Plus there's an update currently in review that fixes some problems: alternative scales weren't getting saved/restored or handling note input from a keyboard correctly, Bluetooth MIDI didn't have the proper permissions for iOS 13, there was a slight chance of a crash when changing presets on the internal synth and some other less critical stuff. Oh, and it has the Hirajoshi scale. ;)

  • edited December 2019

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  • no I think you're doing great, actually excellent videos.

    What I didn't got yet is what differs CVquencer from other sequencers.

  • @AlanC3 said:
    Another video demo: driving a Pittsburgh Modular system using CV/Gate via an Expert Sleepers ES-8 DC-coupled audio interface.

    I suck at making videos... :D

    Plus there's an update currently in review that fixes some problems: alternative scales weren't getting saved/restored or handling note input from a keyboard correctly, Bluetooth MIDI didn't have the proper permissions for iOS 13, there was a slight chance of a crash when changing presets on the internal synth and some other less critical stuff. Oh, and it has the Hirajoshi scale. ;)

    Great! Man thats a lot of knobs there.

  • How do you like full Pittsburgh system?

  • @Phil999 CV/Gate on the iPad? ;) The other unique thing is the step repeat sequencing which lets you make each step repeat up to 8 times, plus the individual repeats can be notes, ties to increase the note duration or rests so you can make more complex patterns. Gate length, timing (swing), velocity, modulation, probability and glide time can all be set per step. Plus the four layers can each have different lengths and clock dividers. I'm not sure how unique all of that is, but it's in a (hopefully) easy-to-use interactive form.

    @auxmux The Pittsburgh system sounds good, if a bit overpowering at times. But it's shown me that I'm not a fan of the modular way of doing things: it's too time-consuming, and I like having patch memory (so I can get my sounds back) far too much.

  • thank you @AlanC3 for the explanation. So CVquencer can output Control Voltage directly, with the right audio interface. Indeed this is unique.

  • @Phil999 said:
    thank you @AlanC3 for the explanation. So CVquencer can output Control Voltage directly, with the right audio interface. Indeed this is unique.

    If you have a DC-coupled audio interface that will work with an iOS device (i.e. it's USB class compliant) such as the Expert Sleepers ES-8 or ES-9, most of the MOTU range or some of the PreSonus Studio range, then each of CVquencer's four layers can provide CV, Gate and two additional control voltage outputs (they're mapped to velocity and modulation when using MIDI). It'll do volts/octave or hertz/volt (with s-trigger) so you can control synths like the Korg MS-20 or earlier Yamaha CS models as well as synths that comply with the Eurorack standard.

    If the interface has MIDI (MOTU, PreSonus) and conforms to Apple's CoreMIDI standard then it's possible to get very tight synchronisation (sub 1ms, subject to how the synth performs) between CV/Gate and MIDI.

    You'd also be able to use Expert Sleepers ES-3 via ADAT/Lightpipe from any iOS compatible interface that has the relevant output. There's no support for Expert Sleepers expansion modules for the ES-8 / ES-3 since these use a proprietary multiplexing technique to send multiple channels of audio data over a single stereo pair.

    I think I need to make this much clearer in the app store text and images, but unfortunately I can't change them without doing another release. I'm going to do a video showing the calibration process in action so you can see how quick and easy it is.

  • Here's a video demo of the calibration process using a MOTU UltraLite Mk4 to control a Dreadbox Erebus.

    Watch out for the sound: the video is silent up to the point the sequence first starts playing.

  • For anyone who has bought the app:

    I've received a couple of crash reports that show a problem in the calibration routine shown in the video above. While I've failed to recreate it at the moment, I'm certain that it's caused by running the calibration with the input channel set to 'Off'.

    Unfortunately I can't get a new version out to fix this bug because we're into the App Store Christmas shutdown that runs 23rd December to 27th December.

    If you run into the problem please make sure you have the Input in the Calibration section set to the appropriate channel number, and not 'Off'. If you still see the problem please could you either post here or contact me through the support page on the app's website.

    Thanks, and Happy Christmas.

  • @AlanC3 said:

    Thanks, and Happy Christmas.

    Same to you brother

  • Version 1.0.3 which contains a fix for the calibration problem is now available.

  • Just saw this on Synthtopia. That step repeat implementation is an absolute beauty. Congrats @AlanC3

  • @Phil999 said:
    no I think you're doing great, actually excellent videos.

    What I didn't got yet is what differs CVquencer from other sequencers.

    I haven't tried it yet but two things jump out from the videos. First, that step repeat set up feels very musical. Especially since a given repeat can be a rest or a tie. Second, you can see the other sequence values directly next to the one you're working on (at least that what I think the little colored lines are).

    Much as I love Quantum, definitely wanting to give this a try. Q has more features but something about CVquencer looks like a nice balance between features and immediacy. I'll prolly complicate the whole endevour by using Quantum to remotely MIDI transpose CVquencer because Q has absurdly slow clock divisions like 8/1 and... not make any music worth keeping. :confounded:

    @AlanC3 Just browsing the manual. Nicely put together! One question for you: is it possible to force a rest (instead of a skip) by setting the probability slider to 100?

  • @syrupcore Thanks :)

    Yes, the narrow bars show the notes and repeats on the other layers so you can easily see what you're doing.

    And yes, you could force a rest by setting the probability to maximum, but there's no need: just set each of the repeats in the step to be rests.

    The idea of the repeats came about while I was looking for a way to change the duration of the individual steps. The original intention was to use a piano roll, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense when the sequence is monophonic (which it needs to be for CV/Gate): change the length of a note by dragging it out to the point where it overlaps the next note and what should happen? If you want the longer note then you have to select all the subsequent notes in the sequence and move them. Not something you can quickly do while the sequence is playing. Plus the whole app started to feel too much like a certain other well-known piano roll based sequencer and I really didn't want that...

    So I turned it into a conventional step sequencer with one set of sliders for the notes and a second set for the duration. Then, in some discussions on another forum, I saw ratcheting was something that a lot of people wanted so I added the option to split the notes into individual steps. So you could have a note or a rest with a variable duration or a set of repeats that would fit into the duration of the note. But why stop there with the repeats? Why not give them the ability to play patterns? So I gave it the ability to switch each repeat between a note, a tie to the next repeat or a rest.

    You can use the fact the layers have their own clock dividers to do ratcheting; boring example playing a scale:

    The two layers are playing in sync (16th triplets on layer 1, 8ths on layer 2), and layer 1 is ratcheting some of the notes, but they're not just repeating... ;)

  • Would CVquencer work with something like a Polyend Poly 2 USB/MIDI to CV adapter? I'm assuming it would work fine, but as a MIDI device. Are there trade-offs to this approach? My guess is you end up giving up analog smoothness and are limited to stepped MIDI integer values, but a non-audio device is more flexible for my configurations, since it would decouple the CV controller from the audio stack.

  • @AlanC3 Good stuff. Thank you!

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