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.

OT: sonicLab's Cosmosf plugin for MacOS and Windows

By popular demand, I'm starting this thread about Cosmosf Saturn8.1, which I just started using and know practically nothing about. After watching Hainbach's Fundamental demo, I visited sonicLab's web site, and Cosmosf appealed to me much more

To answer some initial questions, yes, there's a 63-page manual whose download location I've already forgotten, so I'm attaching a copy to this post.

Yes, there are tutorials, which I've downloaded here and am working through them now, though with limited time. The first video was truly helpful, as he walks you through the interface's most basic functions. The plugin seems reasonable enough to work through, but its some of its buttons' functions are un-obvious, so it helped to watch where he clicked. For example, when loading a preset. That first tutorial uses Logic Pro, and I've tried it in both REAPER and Logic. Logic provides its own way to select presets, but then the preset display doesn't match what's displayed on the plugin's interface. The interface's elements are so small and there's no re-sizing so that I have to change my computer's resolution to use the plugin. I normally use my 16" MBP's raw mode (3072x1920), which not many people use I don't think. At 2048x1280, UI elements are small, but OK. These are all small quirks that are easy enough to get used to.

The plugin isn't cheap, and it uses iLok with a limit of two concurrent activations, but since I already have iLok (under protest), that wasn't a big deal for me.

Most importantly, clicking through a few presets, doing stuff from the first tutorial, and just trying things out on the interface gave some really good sounds, so I'm confident it's worth the price. It will be interesting to see what it does under live MIDI control and how it will mangle user samples.

Comments

  • Great, thank you so much for the pdf!
    I've never used iLock before but heard some bad things about it. But for this app I will give it a try.

  • Some reason the link isn’t working to the app

    @blipson said:
    By popular demand, I'm starting this thread about Cosmosf Saturn8.1, which I just started using and know practically nothing about. After watching Hainbach's Fundamental demo, I visited sonicLab's web site, and Cosmosf appealed to me much more

    To answer some initial questions, yes, there's a 63-page manual whose download location I've already forgotten, so I'm attaching a copy to this post.

    Yes, there are tutorials, which I've downloaded here and am working through them now, though with limited time. The first video was truly helpful, as he walks you through the interface's most basic functions. The app seems reasonable enough to work through, but its some of its buttons' functions are un-obvious, so it helped to watch where he clicked. For example, when loading a preset. That first tutorial uses Logic Pro, and I've tried it in both REAPER and Logic. Logic provides its own way to select presets, but then the preset display doesn't match what's displayed on the plugin's interface. The interface's elements are so small and there's no re-sizing so that I have to change my computer's resolution to use the plugin. I normally use my 16" MBP's raw mode (3072x1920), which not many people use I don't think. At 2048x1280, UI elements are small, but OK. These are all small quirks that are easy enough to get used to.

    The plugin isn't cheap, and it uses iLok with a limit of two concurrent activations, but since I already have iLok (under protest), that wasn't a big deal for me.

    Most importantly, clicking through a few presets, doing stuff from the first tutorial, and just trying things out on the interface gave some really good sounds, so I'm confident it's worth the price. It will be interesting to see what it does under live MIDI control and how it will mangle user samples.

  • @iOSTRAKON said:
    Some reason the link isn’t working to the app

    I fixed it.

  • @Jonny8 said:
    I've never used iLock before but heard some bad things about it.

    Yeah, that damn iLok. I installed it under protest due to another must-use app discussed in another thread here, so I figured wtf. Functionally, it feels the same as authentication systems for other apps I own, but that are managed in-house. I just hope none of those bad things happen to me.

  • Looks interesting. I have to say though that I find deliberately obfuscating language off-putting.

    It reminds me vaguely of Mazetools Soniface: several synthesis engines arranged in a virtual space.

  • This app is beastly expensive. Even by desktop standards. I'll be curious to find if you guys think it is worth it.

  • Thank you

    Is this an app or just for desktop?

    @blipson said:

    @iOSTRAKON said:
    Some reason the link isn’t working to the app

    I fixed it.

  • Just desktop, it should have an ‘OT’ in the title really @blipson

  • I was confused since app was mentioned a few times plus it was in Gen App section

    @Gavinski said:
    Just desktop, it should have an ‘OT’ in the title really @blipson

  • edited June 2020

    OK, by popular demand, I've cleaned things up a bit.

    Working through tutorial #2, I must say this plugin's UI feels tailor-made for an iPad.

  • Been reading the pdf for a bit. Not so easy without access to the actual software. I think I need to learn more...much much more...in general :smile:

  • minor comment: instead of resizing the display to make the UI usable you can make use of the built in screen magnifier. works very well.

  • edited June 2020

    CosmosF does look like a ridiculous amount of fun. I think I’m more tempted by the fx version (for processing live input), but I’ll probably end up with one or both eventually.

    @blipson How’s the performance on your machine? Does it seem resource hungry?

  • @wellingtonCres said:
    minor comment: instead of resizing the display to make the UI usable you can make use of the built in screen magnifier. works very well.

    Yes, that looks super-useful, thanks, not just for Cosmosf, but other audio apps that have non-resizable interfaces. I really hate that, though I expect smooth zoom in some of these apps and plugins has implementation issues. On the other hand, all my Arturia plugins/standalones have discrete zoom, where you can choose one of six levels of interface size. All my Native Instruments stuff has been mothballed for a long time because they're microscopic and non-adjustable. MacOS's zoom/magnify has been around for years, but now it finally seems practical to use.

    @ohwell said:
    @blipson How’s the performance on your machine? Does it seem resource hungry?

    On my new, maxed-out, MacBook Pro 16" 2.4GHz, 8-core, i9, 32GB, running Cosmosf in REAPER and hitting play on a stock patch, Activity Monitor is showing 65-80% usage, with the average looking to be about 70%. When I hit stop, CPU goes to 25%. When I close the plugin's interface, CPU is 17%. When I remove the track entirely, CPU is 5%. I'd call that resource-hungry, but I haven't experienced any CPU issues running Cosmosf by itself.

  • @ohwell said:
    @blipson How’s the performance on your machine? Does it seem resource hungry?

    On my new, maxed-out, MacBook Pro 16" 2.4GHz, 8-core, i9, 32GB, running Cosmosf in REAPER and hitting play on a stock patch, Activity Monitor is showing 65-80% usage, with the average looking to be about 70%. When I hit stop, CPU goes to 25%. When I close the plugin's interface, CPU is 17%. When I remove the track entirely, CPU is 5%. I'd call that resource-hungry, but I haven't experienced any CPU issues running Cosmosf by itself.

    Ooch, sounds like that would utterly murder my wobbly mpb 13” 2016! 😂

  • @ohwell said:

    @ohwell said:
    @blipson How’s the performance on your machine? Does it seem resource hungry?

    On my new, maxed-out, MacBook Pro 16" 2.4GHz, 8-core, i9, 32GB, running Cosmosf in REAPER and hitting play on a stock patch, Activity Monitor is showing 65-80% usage, with the average looking to be about 70%. When I hit stop, CPU goes to 25%. When I close the plugin's interface, CPU is 17%. When I remove the track entirely, CPU is 5%. I'd call that resource-hungry, but I haven't experienced any CPU issues running Cosmosf by itself.

    Ooch, sounds like that would utterly murder my wobbly mpb 13” 2016! 😂

    And yet, isn't the app like 7 years old so that the dev must have been using it on older generation computers without much problem?

  • Yikes, that heavy. We're definitely not going to be seeing that on ios any time in the next five years or so then, 😂. I've got a slightly bad feeling actually that they might not do a great job with making the Fundamental interface ios friendly, but certainly hope I am wrong.

  • @blipson said:

    @ohwell said:

    @ohwell said:
    @blipson How’s the performance on your machine? Does it seem resource hungry?

    On my new, maxed-out, MacBook Pro 16" 2.4GHz, 8-core, i9, 32GB, running Cosmosf in REAPER and hitting play on a stock patch, Activity Monitor is showing 65-80% usage, with the average looking to be about 70%. When I hit stop, CPU goes to 25%. When I close the plugin's interface, CPU is 17%. When I remove the track entirely, CPU is 5%. I'd call that resource-hungry, but I haven't experienced any CPU issues running Cosmosf by itself.

    Ooch, sounds like that would utterly murder my wobbly mpb 13” 2016! 😂

    And yet, isn't the app like 7 years old so that the dev must have been using it on older generation computers without much problem?

    Yes, I would think so too. In my mbp 13” ’s case the problem is that it’s really a glorified ultrabook. Lots of older gen desktops, or more powerful laptops perform much better with resource hungry plugins.

  • I have CosmosF Saturn since V5 or earlier. (this just reminded me to upgrade to 8.1)
    I tried to get into it, but it never took hold on anything musical
    It does pretty amazing things, but never seemed I could get much out of it apart from "noodling"
    Hainbach app would be a KILLER partner to run together with CosmosF.

    I think iLoks can be run without a physical iLok - surprised that they went down this path.
    If that helps....

  • OK, wait a minute: I'm an idiot. Apparently, the "% CPU" column in MacOS's Activity Monitor means the percent of current CPU usage that a particular app is taking up. It does not mean total system CPU load. When I'm running the DAW, then of course, 70% of user CPU load is from the DAW, but overall user CPU load is 5% with Cosmosf running. Unplug Cosmosf, and user CPU load goes to 3%, so I guess Cosmos costs about 2% of CPU load. System CPU load stays around 1% through all of this. Quitting REAPER, user CPU usage goes to 0.5%.

    I got suspicious when my computer wasn't getting hot even though I thought CPU was loaded over 70%.

  • Here's a quick demo of the MIDI module. Whatever else Cosmosf might be good for, I plan to use it mostly with layered percussion kits that I configure with what you see in the photo. I've also got a hardware Pulsar-23 going, but no audio interface to record it in the DAW.

  • Just wondering how the ppl who got this are feeling about it after more tinkering. Like it? Worth the money?

  • Aaagh. Reading about this is painful. I really want it. It's like being a kid but xmas is still a few months away...This will definitely be the first thing I'll buy for my new mbp.

  • I’m very tempted but I seriously don’t know if I want to go down that rabbit hole hahaha

  • I like it fine:

  • @blipson Very nice!!! Would you care to tell us a little bit more about your process?

  • Really like this, sounds superb. Yes, definitely tell us more. Does it take long to learn how to get decent stuff out of it?

  • Thanks for listening and the comments! I posted a photo and about the technical execution in the Sound Cloud info. To summarize that here: I tweaked one of the 127 presets and got something I liked primarily by changing the modulation (LineGens and LFOs). Then I changed the sound generator to the sampler and loaded different samples from SOMA's contest collection to compare their sounds until an arrangement/progression of contrasting timbres suggested itself. They're all from SOMA's Dvina 2-string bow/pluck instrument. I have my own Dvina, but I'm not very good at bowing, so I didn't play it myself, and the contest required using a 50% proportion of the public samples anyway. I plugged each of the 21 Dvina samples into its own instance of that same Cosmosf patch (whose settings you can kind of see in the screenshot), and got 8 contrasting ones that sounded cool and could make a good progression when mixed live. I run all instances simultaneously with the faders down, then "play" the faders for 3 minutes or less, which is the contest limit. I did a bunch of takes until I started to get a feel for ways to shape it, then I kept one of the takes I liked and overdubbed live accompaniment from a SOMA Pulsar-23 (my current fave), trying many takes and tweaking the Pulsar-23 patch until I got an accompaniment I could live with.

    Not a single performance ever went the way I planned, and not all accidents are happy ones to my ears, but this was all about live performance with an experimental edge because that fits the SOMA Labs vibe and also one of the things I like to do.

    For learning Cosmosf, it's easy enough to work from the many presets to get good things going with lots of ways to vary and tweak it before really knowing comprehensively how things will go and being able to more fully predict and control the results. It's crucial to work through his five demo videos, which aren't very long, so I'd repeatedly watch, then pause, then do, then compare with the manual's description, then rewind, then repeat--a good 10-15 hour effort, which is mostly fun if you're the type of person to buy Cosmosf in the first place. English isn't the dev's first language, making the manual kind of ambiguous in crucial places, but combining the manual with the videos makes things OK. I edited my PDF of the manual a little bit for more natural English if anyone wants that.

  • I really like how the piece moves and twists. Interesting stuff! I think I'll go through the manual again over the weekend. And the videos. Please feel free to share any other interesting stuff you get out of this.

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