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.
What does your sampling workflow look like? (Asking because we are designing an audio editor)
Several customers on this forum mentioned to us that they would like to have an app (or plugin) to facilitate preparing samples for use in their music. They mentioned to us that they need the following features:
- Open audio files
- Select a region to cut
- Crossfade the ends to make a nice loop
- Preview the loop
- Adjust pitch of the loop without changing the speed
- Adjust the speed without changing pitch
- Save or export the loop
I have some questions about this:
- Does this app also need to record audio?
- Is AU3 or standalone app more helpful?
- There are other apps that do this already, aren't there? (I'm thinking of Beat Time) So why do we need a new one?
Comments
Can I request that if you produce a manual that you start with a walkthrough of a simple use case? That way I will at least be able to reproduce something that will motivate me to get further into your app. There are so many app manuals that a simple walkthrough would help enormously.
It seems like Auditor is probably the front runner in this area and I assume will be growing quite a bit.
Yes recording audio would be very useful.
AU would suffice I think - but I think it should have an ‘open in’ button - I’m not even sure if this is the exclusive domain of InterApp.
Perhaps also slide bar/ split screen ready & drag and drop ready.
It could also have transient detection with the ability to zoom in and add a micro fade in and fade out to take out clicks and pops.
The ability to audition segments by tapping on the waveform.
Able to export several selected sections of the sliced sample by tapping on them to highlight them prior to sending.
It would also be good if you could cut a bit out of a sample and then merge the remaining parts.
Maybe a simple sequencer as well with time and beat divisions along with time stretching.
I find Auditor a bit too involved with all its bells and whistles- we don’t get along too well.
I can’t remember all their names but there are a few new sample slice editor apps about to enter the scene from what I was reading on the forum. I do think that there are many ways to skin a cat and that there is room for several in the market- there are many different tastes to satisfy and sample slicing is such a huge part of music making.
It’s all about simplicity and speed of workflow for me.
Hey Blue Mangoo,
I've been diving deep into sampling and synths the past few weeks, and even made a shortcut to sorta speed up my workflow. But one thing I'd love to see in addition is an integrated app that
Back to your questions
1. Recording audio can be nice to do, but since it's for managing samples, I guess it could be secondary? I'm not sure.
2. I'd say AUv3, but can also be used as a standalone. E.g Brusfri. It allows you to import samples into it directly, but it's AUv3 allows the information to be read as the audio passes through. In this case, the user might have to load the audio (which is where drag and drop or "Share" works.
3. It's not so much that we need one...it's just there are bits and pieces in other apps that would be nice as an all in one. There's only so many apps you can open in an iPad before it crashes.
To me a good sampler would not need a good sample editor... how about a good Sampler AU instead?
Auditor does most of what you mention in the OP, and Twistewave does the rest (both are extremely simple to use)
There is very little need for an audio editor of either of their magnitude, competing with either will be hard.
However, a simpler style sample playback plugin (AU) is desperately needed, the features it would need are..
A file browser with preview of "on my ipad"
Loaded in to a waveform view where you can change start and end point/loop points, loop points exposed as automation parameters.
MIDI Triggering - One Shot, ala single drum samples (ignores loop points)
MIDI triggering - Oldschool using simple MIDI note playback, so when you play up the notes not only does the pitch change, but so does the length (no timestretch, uses loop points for sustain)
Attack and Release for fade in and out.
Nothing else, anything else needs to be an IAP because too many people want too many things from a sample olayback device, and beyond the basics (ala simpler) most of it is either buzzword hype or just covered better in a specific plugin design.
Agreed. Seems complicated but not really once you get to know it. I’m curious what it doesn’t do for those that find it missing something.
Delete... Sorry..
i miss something like a iOS global record audio button that let's me toggle record in any view, overlay like the assistive touch button. i don't know if something like this is even possible.
would be great to have such a spontaneous record tool and to be able to process the audio it right away in that audio editor.
Start by looking at the Quick Sampler in Logic Pro X and combine it with some destructive editing tools...
On the iPad Auditor does most of the things needed but I just can't become fully friends with it's UI (Still prefer TwistedWaves UI and it's Universal too).
You could also get inspired by this app...
https://www.ocenaudio.com/features
Cleaning up audio using noise reduction and dynamics processing similar to Apples AUDynamicsProcessor could be handy...
A sample editor would not need to be AU IMO, stand-alone would be fine. I think what would be nice would be an app that could automate all the tedious tasks related to editing samples: automatically trimming silences, normalising, crossfades, loop points etc.
A sample player would be a different proposition entirely.
Serato for iOS.
Simpler for iOS.
Either of these as AUv3 and you’re gold.
Focus on a Performance Sampler as an AUv3 matching features and functionality of either of these would be great.
Why have you never mentioned this before?!
We need it to be ableton.
Auto slicing would be nice, combined with timestretching to quantize the slices.
make it au=win
To be honest, I think that the audio editor territory is pretty well covered between AudioShare, Twisted Wave, and Auditor (which is being pretty actively updated).
What isn’t well covered is something like BeatMaker 3’s sampler as an AU or an AU clip launcher. Even something that just did a fraction of what the BM3 sampler does would be most welcome. Elliot Garage has leaked videos of something coming but it isn’t clear exactly what it is.
For what I really need it is for auditor to go universal or for something similar
I think to really compete, an iOS sample editor needs to be fast. I sample a lot and while I have Auditor, I still do the heavy lifting on desktop (ocenaudio - it's great, eh @Samu) because a mouse and keyboard are fast and precise in a way that touchscreens aren't. At least, they tend not to be when I clumsily smudge and tap at them.
Typical workflow is 2-step, sampling outside of the editor, so that part's not important to me.
I'm focused on one-shots (forever adding to a DIY ROMpler) and this means trimming files down to the absolute bare essentials, often converting to lower sample rates (32 or 14.08k) and making pretty much everything mono. If it's a sustained sound I'll bake in a perfect loop, and if the original sample wasn't in tune (or wasn't a C) I'll want to repitch it to a perfect C. If there's DC I'll remove it. Might do some micro-fades to avoid clicks and/or pops and then finishing up, everything's normalised to -1dB. I run a tight ship.
I highly doubt this is a typical use case, but maybe there are other old school samplists out there...
Yes... yes! i would love an AU that lets me load in a massive wav file and place ranges nondestructively. Any good sampler in my mind shouldn’t need much of an ‘editor’ per se.
Yah maybe a BM3 syled AU instrument sample player where you can choose pads or keys mode and also has an AU fx plugin that shares the same storage that you can use for recording.
My favorites:
TwistedWave for quick standalone edits and AUv3 processing (mainly brusfri) plus uploading
AudioLayer for recording and editing audio inside an AUv3 slot
Here is the audio editor inside “Caustic” For inspiration:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/caustic/id775735447
Ring ring, hello, sampling on the phone, anyone???
if you're going to do something like this then definitely give it the ability to work stand alone in addition to AU if that's where you're headed, also definitely give it the ability to sample, and give it as many sample editing and mangling features you can... The reason that samplist are in dire need of more apps like this is because of the limited way in which most developers approach creating them... sample editors in the hands of sample heavy musicians are more like instruments than not and all you have to do is load up twisted wave or auditor or any of the others and use them to see how different they feel to one another, not unlike how all synths don't feel the same or how all groove boxes don't feel the same..... btw sample editors could really use some more Grooveboxes features within them because Grooveboxes focus on workflow which is the most important thing when it comes to long sample heavy sessions...
if you use allot of samples you'll want:
Agree on all points.
Me too. Excellent list @kobamoto
We have been discussing the clip launcher idea for months but we had difficulty understanding why it needs to be an audio unit plugin and what features it has.
I understand “clip launcher” to mean “Ableton Live”. Or on iOS, “Beatmaker 3”.
What would an AU3 clip launcher look like? You have an instance on each track and of them are linked together, and then you have an 8x8 grid to select which clips are playing? Or is it many clips within a single plugin on a single track? Do they play audio files or MIDI or both?
Basically we don’t want to make another Beatmaker 3, so I am trying to understand what the features are if we make something smaller and simpler.
Something that can do key shift and time-stretch in one plugin like Serato Sample would definitely be welcomed.
Bare minimum, a grid that can launch audio or midi clips, preferably being able to preview audio clips, and the cells can be triggered by midi like a launchpad. Multiout could make it easier to work with than individual tracks and maybe more efficient. Honestly, the clip launching feature of BM3 is a great example. The reason BM3 doesn’t get as much use from me is the fact that it’s just so riddled with bugs and a crash fest and just not dependable for live use