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.

Vember Surge is now free and soon to be available as individual VCV Rack modules

This isn't really new news is it was quietly announced a while back but the important bit is that Surge is now totally free and open source. The original developer is one of the founding partners behind the Bitwig DAW and if you're familiar with Bitwig you'll be at home in Surge.

https://surge-synthesizer.github.io/

As the review below points out. Surge is a bit of an ugly duckling in the UI department, but don't let that put you off as it has an incredibly powerful mix of wavetable and FM synthesis chops and a killer FX/Amp section that combine forces to killer effect.

https://www.musicradar.com/reviews/tech/vember-audio-surge-22113

As mentioned in the discussion title it's currently being modularised for VCV Rack but until then you can download versions for Windows, OS X or Linux.

And did I mention - it's free, free, free! :)

Comments

  • Picked it up a few weeks back, 1990,s GUI great sounds.

  • edited May 2019

    Hey, good stuff!
    For me, surge was always the closest to my Nord Lead 3 in the software world, not only because of its sound engine but also because its way of handling modulations.
    With Synthmaster One available on iOS (minus the sample import and patches based on samples), I'm not sure how much this would add to the iOS world today but it's always good to have a wider choice :)

    And VCVRack sounds wonderful.

  • In many way's the architecture is similar to Sugar Bytes Factory but it's far more organic sounding.

    I find all the Sugar Bytes synths have a brittle digital edge that doesn't rub well with me (although in fairness, Factory is capable of some achingly beautiful wavetable based timbres, it's definitely the pick of the Sugar Bytes bunch).

    Really interested in getting my hands on individual Surge modules for use in VCV Rack. The waveshaper is one of the best digital waveshapers I've heard. Pair that with some of VCV's more esoteric FM modules and the recipe certainly seems tasty in my mind's eye. :)

  • I admire the fact that Sugar Bytes committed to the digital sound, as it's a definite aesthetic, but it doesn't quite work me either. Though Factory is tempting.

    Full Bucket are doing some great free synths as well:
    https://www.fullbucket.de/music/modulair.html

  • @cian said:
    I admire the fact that Sugar Bytes committed to the digital sound, as it's a definite aesthetic, but it doesn't quite work me either. Though Factory is tempting.

    Full Bucket are doing some great free synths as well:
    https://www.fullbucket.de/music/modulair.html

    Without Sugar Bytes, Fl Studio and Massive, dubstep wouldn't have evolved to sound the way it does today. :)

    I'm a child of the whole Acid House/Detroit thing of the late 80's (to be more accurate, we were the first wave of Balearic, where house and techno where part of an eclectic mix) but many years later, a friend of mine was promoting a dubstep night in Shoreditch (East London) in the early 00's and I went a few times as it was the first time since acid house that I'd heard something in a club that was totally alien to my musical 'muscle memory'. Where once dubstep had the warmth of Jamaican dub, what I was hearing was cold, digital and aggressive. But as much as I hated it, I loved it too, as I could see around me, a bunch of teenagers that totally owned the music they were listening to. It reminded me of all the scowling soul boys staring on in bemusement whilst I was DJing, sending a bunch of teenagers ballistic to Phuture - Acid Tracks (or some other acid house gem of the era). Up until dubstep, dance music felt like everything was a variation on an 80's rave theme. Even drum&bass evolved out of the hardcore breakbeat tracks of the late 80's rave era. But then came dubstep and that brittle digital aggressive sound, and Sugar Bytes had a perfect design esthetic for those Dubstep producers - the more aliased and brittle the sound, the more those producers loved Sugar Bytes! :)

  • Yeah I'm a little younger I guess. I remember Acid House, but the free party (Spiral Tribe stuff) is the first stuff I remember actively going to. And stuff like Carl Cox I guess, the Rephlex stuff and the breakbeat ardkore stuff that became Jungle/Drum n' bass (never really liked Drum n' bass - too polished).

    I guess for me Dubstep felt like a natural evolution of the Grime, Dancehall and Garage stuff you'd hear on the pirates in North London. Skream, Kode9, all that stuff. I don't even remember hearing much in the way of synthesizers other than a bit of bass (which was probably done in Massive using a preset because it was there).

    Then Skrillex came along... sigh.

  • Agreed. The early dubstep sound definitely came out of grime, dancehall and garage but then it mutated into something digital and totally alien to those early influences.

    Skrillex and sigh sums it up nicely for me.. :)

  • For anyone doubting the capability of this synth... Black Sun Empire have used it on pretty much everything according to these videos...

  • Version 1.7.0 has been released.

    Just installed it - and it’s very nice indeed!

    You can’t beat free either...

    https://surge-synthesizer.github.io/

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