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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I Scream for Tube Screamers: Nembrini & Blamsoft vs Ibanez - Daveypoo, The Mobile Music Minstrel

Here's my comparison of my Ibanez TS 9 Tube Screamer guitar pedal, Nembrini's Analog Rack Screamer and Blamsoft's DC-9 Overdrive!

Comments

  • I haven't watched yet... SRV would use 2 Tube Screamers in series to get that Texas Scratchy sound for the muted strings. Stevie's guitar tech showed Carlos Santana he would achieve something close to his tones at lower volumes with this trick.

    Some serious guitar tone heads build bunkers for their speaker cabinets to use the full power of a Marshall head for home recording. It's a physical interaction between the speaker cone and the mic that they covet. That conversion to air with all the physical attributes of the speaker cone and it's history. They will prep a new speaker by pumping 100 watts of 100 Hz for hours to get a speaker broken in.

    I'll watch after I get my coffee. The new Overloud product with the Funk and R&B product also has a Tube Screamer in it but it's not AUv3 or IAA. But a YouTube video could compare it if one had the time. I wonder if I can loop-back my iPhone to my iPad and get the Overdrive FX into AUM that way...

    Coffee first.

  • edited May 2020

    ouf.. the hardware wins by a mile.. to my ears..

  • @noob said:
    ouf.. the hardware wins by a mile.. to my ears..

    Definitely lots more gain from the pedal, but as I mention in the video that may be due to the setup...

    I am perfect at my imperfection....

  • McDMcD
    edited May 2020

    @Daveypoo said:

    @noob said:
    ouf.. the hardware wins by a mile.. to my ears..

    We just need an iPad that is delivered as a pedal... anyone from Apple here? iFoot maybe? It just sounds better down there or it prefers feet.

    Maybe if I hang the 9V power charger with a lightning cable I can get closer to the pedal tone.

    I made some aluminum foil touch points for the Stomp box buttons and put the iPad on the ground using the Aleksandar Mlazev Stmp Box apps (Alien Box is my fav) and it definitely sounded better... we're on to something fundamental about guitar FX. But the @Daveypoo plays the peel with his hands so the jury is still spilt and that means "not guilty".

  • OK... coffee and video have been consumed.

    All those tones seem available to me via amp sim selection. I suspect you could have got a similar sound
    just with the BST100. But to get to why guitar players covet the original Tubesceamers you have to play some really loud leads and that's a @flo26 video.

    I hope more synthesists are made aware of the amazing little pedal from Ibanez that has been duplicated, mod'ed and improved dozens of times.

    My fav was the Nembrini since I could hear each string in the chords... it reminder me of the recent demos comparing string gauge and the thinnest strings got the best tone because you could hear every string in the chords. For me the Nembrini improves on the particular TS-9 Dave owns and uses "on the desktop" where it's not working at it's best.

  • So, there are some inherent problems with this video. Firstly, the fact that I'm not running it into a real amplifier is truly a major flaw. You're correct @McD - there's nothing quite like the sound of an electric guitar through an amplifier at volume, so the air and sense of space are lost here.

    Secondly, there's a big problem with the setup I have. I am plugged from my guitar, into the TS9, into the UMC404HD interface, which is coming into apeMatrix. Because my guitar is directly plugged into the TS9, the signal is likely louder going in to the pedal than when it's been processed through the UMC404HD interface, then into the DAW, THEN into either Screamer app. I am convinced that it is the main culprit in the tonal differences of the apps versus the pedal, as well as the gain differences. I couldn't see an easy way around this in my pre-planning, but I decided to go ahead with filming the video anyway. The difference was much clearer to me during editing when I could hear the audio without the distraction of having to narrate.

    But as always, I still think that this video while imperfect, still showed the similarities & differences of each, and I feel like the apps generally captured the "tone" of the TS9's particular style of grit.

    Thanks for the analysis, sir - I do appreciate the in depth and thoughtful feedback!

  • @Daveypoo said:
    Thanks for the analysis, sir - I do appreciate the in depth and thoughtful feedback!

    Are you talking to me? Thoughtful? In depth? I am so confused. It's a solid video for it's intent
    to help someone pick an app and see if it rivals the $100 stomp box. That's a big win. @flo26 used to use his Appolo interface and his Rivera Amp as front ends for his iPad and her stopped do that because it made people wonder if they could ever sound like that... he does have a sweet guitar with really hot picks up but
    we can still see if an Amp Sim or FX app has any cool mojo and that's the point.

    I sure you wish you could play all the instruments better... as do we all. But your work speaks for itself.
    It's even worth stealing.

  • The essential thing about tubescreamers that people often forget is that its a pedal for driving the tubes on a tube amp. Its idea is not to be the distortion so much itself(even tho it does distort some), but to give a gain boost to the signal that distorts the preamp and distorts its by driving its tubes with more gain, and perhaps a little distorted/overdriven signal to begin with. Its also not just for driving the tubes to the point of tons of distortion, but more for a little overdrive to make leads stand out more.

    Its not a tube screamer because it tries to sound like tubes, but because it makes tubes scream ;)

    This i think makes it hard to test and in general get most out of something like ts-9 in ios world. At least it should be tested on amp sim that reacts like real tubes, but i dunno if any are on the level that they could show all potential of tube screamer. Ideally running the signal out of ipad to real tube amp and testing it that way.

  • @ToMess said:
    Ideally running the signal out of ipad to real tube amp and testing it that way.

    Agreed - this would be the best way to test this, however I can't see any guitarist on the gig using their iPad SOLELY as a pedal board, so while sonically it might be the truest test, it may not be the most practical test.

    Yeah, inherent problems about but hopefully I made something mildly educational for you cats and entertaining as well. I'll let my boy @flo26 play all the stellar licks and dial in the meaty tones - I prefer to take the high-level, introductory approach to lessen the damage done by my sloppy, sloppy guitar gyrations.

  • @ToMess said:
    The essential thing about tubescreamers that people often forget is that its a pedal for driving the tubes on a tube amp. Its idea is not to be the distortion so much itself(even tho it does distort some), but to give a gain boost to the signal that distorts the preamp and distorts its by driving its tubes with more gain, and perhaps a little distorted/overdriven signal to begin with. Its also not just for driving the tubes to the point of tons of distortion, but more for a little overdrive to make leads stand out more.

    Its not a tube screamer because it tries to sound like tubes, but because it makes tubes scream ;)

    This i think makes it hard to test and in general get most out of something like ts-9 in ios world. At least it should be tested on amp sim that reacts like real tubes, but i dunno if any are on the level that they could show all potential of tube screamer. Ideally running the signal out of ipad to real tube amp and testing it that way.

    I will add that a TS tends to work best with a mid-scooped amp, such as most non-tweed Fenders. A lot of people try plugging one into a Marshall or more modern high-gain amp and get put off by the mid-fest that can result, especially if they up the drive level on the pedal. This can sound good in a mix, and I know some metal guitarists do this very thing for playing solos, but for playing guitar by itself can be a far cry from what is expected (especially if you are looking for that Texas blues kind of tone).

  • @Daveypoo I’m not familiar with Apematrix so can I just check: do you have the iOS fx placed before the amp sim?

  • When using apeMatrix, you don't have to have things in any specific order since you can route anything to anywhere. That's teh beauty of the matrix-style interface. I tend to organize my AUv3s by force of habit, but it's not NECESSARY. The effect can be either in the slot above or below the plugin it is affecting - it won't make any difference.

    Hope that helps, @TimRussell

  • edited June 2020

    Just thinking that if you put an overdrive effect before an amp sim it will sound different to the other way around (like with real pedals).
    I found this the other day - putting DC-9 before Gain Stage Vintage Clean in Cubasis sounds way better than after.

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