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AUM: Play short audio files upon receiving specific MIDI signals?

edited July 2020 in Other

Hey guys :smiley:

On my long going quest to transmit some notifications to the myself (regardless of which iOS app is currently open) when pushing buttons on my iRig BlueBoard (and sending custom MIDI using a Mozaic script), I tried the following:

Next idea: using audio! As I'm doing live looping on the streets, and thus I'm not taking advantage of STEREO speakers, I could simply route all the sounds that the audience should hear to the left MONO channel of the main output (which would then go to my portable amp). And then I would have the second (right) MONO channel that I could use for myself only (using earphones) to send me information as audio signals (I could even use this for a metronome that my audience obviously shouldn't hear).

For example, when pressing button A on my BlueBoard, I would send some specific MIDI note (e.g. 33), which would trigger some fancy pre-defined function in my looping app GroupTheLoop, but it would also play a little audio within AUM (like "fancy function XY active") on the right MONO channel to let me know that everything happened as expected (if it would not happen, I would know that I may have used not enough force to tap the BlueBoard's button, or something else didn't work out as expected). This way, I would hear the audio, but my audience would not hear it. Great!

Anyone has an idea how to easily achieve this? And would my idea of splitting the STEREO channel work? Or would it "overload" the left MONO channel somehow with all the recorded looping and live stuff?

Thanks a lot. :smile:

Comments

  • A sampler panned left.

    A single sample assigned to each key you want to trigger with.

  • Ah, nice idea! Do you know a very light weight sampler?

  • Would Chameleon do the trick?

    I always thought that samplers simply let me record one sound, then they would spread them over the keyboard simply by changing the sound's pitch. But obviously there are drum samplers, which would not work that way. :tongue:

  • Chameleon is a great sampler with good midi in and out. Another one to look at is segments.

    Segments has less UI overhead and might be more immediate especially since it sounds like you just want some sort of confirmation “this button has been pressed” beep.

  • Virsyn's AudioLayer is another one.

    Claims to work with lots of samples streamed from disk.

    https://apps.apple.com/us/app/audiolayer/id1381478666

  • Chameleon, EG Pulse, DigiStix, and Drambo could all easily fit the bill. Just record your phrases or whatever, then load them in, assign notes to the pads or equivalent, and then send notes to trigger them. Set them as one-shot - meaning they play through to the end on a single note regardless of whether the note is held down.

    Pulse and DigiStix have the advantage of having "choke groups", meaning that you can assign certain samples to cut each other off if they overlap. So, for instance if you have a phrase "Push the red button you big clumsy lump head" and you press the red button while still being insulted, you don't get "Well it's about time!" overlapping with the previous phrase.

    I don't think Segments would work well for this. You need several phrases. You'd have to record them into one file, then chop them up into slices to play back. You wouldn't have any control over the the notes that trigger the slices other than re-recording the whole set and slicing again.

    With a drum style app you have the most flexibility. You can freely change out samples, don't even have to record them in the app (though you can), you have the ability to change which notes are used, and you have choke groups.

  • _ki_ki
    edited July 2020

    Or - you can simply use AUMs fileplayer.

    I just loaded a drum hit, set the file players sync and loop to ‚off’, routed AUMs keyboard to midi-control and setup the file-players ‚play enable‘ to start on note 36, no toggle. Setup that way, the sound plays as long as the note is active.

    In your BlueBoard case this could even be just the notes send to GroupTheLoop. The note-off should be send with a delay as the file player immediately stops at the note-off.

    ——

    Ahhh , i just noticed a big drawback. This only works if AUMs timeline is running.

  • If I understand correctly, @josh83 wants to have more than one phrase, triggered by different notes or cc messages. If so, an AUM channel and file player for each phrase would become cumbersome quickly.

  • :) I didn‘t state that it’s an optimal solution :)

    I just wanted to add it as a quirky work-around as nobody else mentioned it - was meant like saying ‚you could do this in Drambo‘ . I was amused that my scatterbrained idea it worked at all, that i just had to post it.

    And maybe someone with a simpler use-case can really use that idea. For the fun of it, i build a small drumkit with kick, snare and hats using file-players in AUM. Ok for slow rhythms but breaks when played faster

  • edited July 2020

    Thanks for all your suggestions, guys.

    I think it's time now to buy Chameleon, as I asked for a Tunebridge-like app for MIDI some weeks ago already and Chameleon was recommended back then, too.

    @wim: You say:

    With a drum style app you have the most flexibility. You can freely change out samples, don't even have to record them in the app (though you can), you have the ability to change which notes are used, and you have choke groups.

    Is it easily possible to change out samples in Chameleon, too? Or is there any unexpected hurdle?

    And will I be able to run different AUv3 instances of Chameleon? So for example I can run one instance for my audio notifications as described above, and another one for playing a MIDI piano?

  • @josh83 said:
    Thanks for all your suggestions, guys.

    I think it's time now to buy Chameleon, as I asked for a Tunebridge-like app for MIDI some weeks ago already and Chameleon was recommended back then, too.

    If one app will cover two use-cases then that's a good fit. B)

    @wim: You say:

    With a drum style app you have the most flexibility. You can freely change out samples, don't even have to record them in the app (though you can), you have the ability to change which notes are used, and you have choke groups.

    Is it easily possible to change out samples in Chameleon, too? Or is there any unexpected hurdle?

    I'm sure it is possible and I doubt there are unexpected hurdles. I don't have that app though to confirm.

    And will I be able to run different AUv3 instances of Chameleon? So for example I can run one instance for my audio notifications as described above, and another one for playing a MIDI piano?

    Yes.

  • @_ki said:
    :) I didn‘t state that it’s an optimal solution :)

    I just wanted to add it as a quirky work-around as nobody else mentioned it - was meant like saying ‚you could do this in Drambo‘ . I was amused that my scatterbrained idea it worked at all, that i just had to post it.

    And maybe someone with a simpler use-case can really use that idea. For the fun of it, i build a small drumkit with kick, snare and hats using file-players in AUM. Ok for slow rhythms but breaks when played faster

    Yep. Always good to get all the options out there. There's no telling the ideas it might trigger or who else it might help. 👍🏼

  • @_ki said:
    Or - you can simply use AUMs fileplayer.

    I just loaded a drum hit, set the file players sync and loop to ‚off’, routed AUMs keyboard to midi-control and setup the file-players ‚play enable‘ to start on note 36, no toggle. Setup that way, the sound plays as long as the note is active.

    In your BlueBoard case this could even be just the notes send to GroupTheLoop. The note-off should be send with a delay as the file player immediately stops at the note-off.

    ——

    Ahhh , i just noticed a big drawback. This only works if AUMs timeline is running.

    Did not know that. Cheers

  • I bought Chameleon and it works well for my purposes!

    I describe how it works in the README on GitHub: https://github.com/jmuheim/mozaic-blueboard#giving-audio-feedback

    For the records I also post a screenshot here:

  • What a bummer: it seems that Chameleon cannot hold more than 34 audio files per preset! Although the ones I use are sooo very small in size.

    This is pretty frustrating. Anyone knowing another sampler without such a limitation?

  • Drambo has a lightweight multisampler. Easy as pie to use. Can store 127 x 4 samples :)

    @josh83 said:
    What a bummer: it seems that Chameleon cannot hold more than 34 audio files per preset! Although the ones I use are sooo very small in size.

    This is pretty frustrating. Anyone knowing another sampler without such a limitation?

  • Thank you! Pretty expensive though. :neutral:

  • @josh83 said:
    Thank you! Pretty expensive though. :neutral:

    If you’re like me you’ll no longer need to buy as many new apps after owning this one haha ;) It wasn’t until recently that IOS finally got a few nice multisamplers with AudioLayer, Chameleon, and Drambo.

    An inexpensive alternative I haven’t seen mentioned is SunVox. It has a very competent multisample player. It’s also lightweight, and AUv3. However, there is a small learning curve to importing and setting up midi.

    If you have Thumbjam, that can also load user samples - whole key range with velocity layers too. IAA only though.

  • Thank you, @aleyas. I currently help myself by simply using several presets in Chameleon. As soon as I know better what I really need, I might buy one of your mentioned samplers.

  • Best of luck with your endeavors @josh83 🤘🏼

  • There’s obviously Audiolayer. But Virsyn sale just went Away a week ago.

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