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.

I would like to ask some Egoist questions before I make the purchase

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Comments

  • edited November 2014

    Ah, press and hold briefly. Like a fool I tried press and even double tap. You win this round Sugar Bytes.

  • Been playing more.

    It's good for getting some nice rhythmic phrases from interesting input samples.

    The drums help a lot because they let you hear immediately how a phrase might sound in a track.

    The bass, I must say, is annoying me a bit. I find the pop up menus fiddly and laggy and it's difficult to know what each mean. I also find that because it's fiddly and requires brainpower to work out which pitch offsets will keep your Bassline in the chosen key of your track/samples, the tendency is to stay on the root note throughout the Bassline. This produces quite a monotonous hard techno Bassline every time which takes quite lot of effort to get away from.

    My other main gripe while attempting to make a full song is the fact that, assuming you need to play at a resolution of 16ths - you only ever have a pattern of 1 bar length to play with. Again this seems to drive me down a very repeative route. Patterns are scarce (you only have 16) so making a single 4 bar phrase will take a quarter of your patterns and also requires you to use the parts editor. It would be great if, like step poly arp, you could have at least 2 bars in a pattern (or more by scrolling) eg like Auxy.

    So it's good if you want to make repetative stuff (nothing wrong with that), and it's probably good for making a few lead phrases to use elsewhere. But I am finding it has limitations and I wish you could lock the bass area to a specific key/scale.

  • edited November 2014

    I guess that's the thing with any new app - you start off excited with the possibilities, and then after a few days start discovering the limitations.

    I agree with most of the negative comments - fiddly buttons, too-short patterns, awkward note editor for the bass section etc. but because overall it's such a fun, creative experience, I'm happy to work around them.

    As I'm a tweak and record live kinda guy it's easier for me to live with, but I can see how it'd be harder to accept the limitations if I built songs up in the app itself and recorded the whole sequence.

    The drums in this sound better than any of my other apps so they'll get a lot if use, and the bass works for acidy stuff. The sampler will get the most use from me though, I'll be manually overdubbing short samples sequences onto previously recorded tracks, and in this area the app excels.

  • Another minor gripe (or maybe just user error)-on the bass and beats, you cannot change them between patterns? +1 for being able to change the sample with every new pattern, but if I want a modular kit on pattern 1 and an electro kit on pattern 2 I'm SOL? If I can't import new kits, I'd like maximum flexibility in programming different sounds across patterns, especially with the bass which can get very sameish in the 303 type sounds.

  • I think you can change the bass synth settings per pattern.

  • Maybe I'm mistaken then. I tried making a track across 4 patterns, but it seemed like changing the bass or drum kits on one pattern changed them for all patterns. Like I said, it might just be user error. You could make different changes to cutoff etc. for different patterns, but kit changes appear to be universal.

  • I might be wrong. But I recall changing the bass synth settings in a new pattern, and returning to the old pattern threw up the old bass settings.

    You're probably right on the drums though.

  • Just tried this one. Pretty good if you're into adding vocals/guitar. I personally run the guitar through iphone with tone stack.
    Audiobus preset 'Egoist 1': http://preset.audiob.us/tGUyhjiqkHh4DYl

  • @ChrisG EgoiSt:iOS, a coincidence? ;)

    @Accent said:

    Maybe I'm mistaken then. I tried making a track across 4 patterns, but it seemed like changing the bass or drum kits on one pattern changed them for all patterns. Like I said, it might just be user error. You could make different changes to cutoff etc. for different patterns, but kit changes appear to be universal.

    I just had to check but drums are independent, all editable parameters should be unless there's an option to lock the drums. Anyway I agree about the slicer issues, could be more intuitive but great tips contained herein. :)

  • @monzo said:

    The drums in this sound better than any of my other apps so they'll get a lot if use, and the bass works for acidy stuff. The sampler will get the most use from me though, I'll be manually overdubbing short samples sequences onto previously recorded tracks, and in this area the app excels.

    Can anybody else chime in on this? - I've been thinking of getting the Bilboa gadget - I love the sequencing environent in Gadget for both drums and synth. Seems like there's some good sounds in Bilboa for drums. But this comment above intrigues me ... Maybe I would pay an extra 10$ & get Egoist if someone can convince me this would be better for making beats and have as many if not more good stock drum sounds than Bilboa? I have Abu Dubai sampler already and I don't find myself using that too much - so I'm not sure if the sample slicing feature of Egoist would hold my interest (although I'm sure I could have some fun with it for a while)

    Think another member asked a similar question - but if anybody cares to comment on Egoist vs. Abu Dubai and Bilboa that would be great...

  • @Halftone I don't like the drum sounds personally. They seem to lack hi fq and the result is always pasty. They're kind of ok in the mix until you directly compare it to dm1, electribe and most of others. The editability (at least decay) is not there, you only get volume and pitch and accent with attenuation knob. It is definitely great to have drums and bass in one place but no kudos for sound quality from me. I don't have the korg samplers so can't comment.
    If you get Egoist it is because it is a funky little package that can get things going very quickly and almost definitely will get you sound differently to Gadget. They bothe have limitations but are workable.
    For me the purchase was a non brainer but I do like everything SB has produced so far and use it regularily, plus I haven't bought an app in about 3 months. I don't have gadget anymore because I just stopped using it which almost definitely happened because the clock sync with Bm2 or loopy (my faves) was lousy. The clock between egoist and those 2 above is close to perfect which opens up your possibilities considerably. Gadget unfortunately remained a closed environment.

  • edited November 2014

    I have Abu Dhabi/Gadget and the range of drum sounds and recorded sound quality in Egoist is better than the Korg, plus the sample editing and live tweaking is far superior. I'll still use Gadget for some drum and synth combos, and it's keyboard step editor is much better than the bass note input in Egoist.

    Neither is perfect, or better than the other. Like all my apps they don't do everything you want them to so you have to work with a combo of apps to achieve the best results.

    Buy both, they're not that expensive, and the fun you'll have will justify the cost.

  • I've tried loading drums into the sampler the using the drum sequencer for percussion as it's only 3 tracks. I like some of the samples, haven't gone through them all but then i'm just listening on headphones. Sample import would be most welcome and i'll just add a +1 to all the other stuff mentioned.

    Also time divisions on each part, could have 16ths on the drums, 8th triplets on the bass etc to create longer phrases. 16 patterns is fine but a few ore banks would be good although i thought the idea was to use PCs to change presets like Reaktor but as it is it's a god little phrase sequencer for getting ideas going.

  • @supadom said:

    Just tried this one. Pretty good if you're into adding vocals/guitar. I personally run the guitar through iphone with tone stack.
    Audiobus preset 'Egoist 1': http://preset.audiob.us/tGUyhjiqkHh4DYl

    Would like to see a video of this :) Looks good, hafta say....

  • If you're just talking (stock) drums, Gadget (w/those IAP samplers) maybe wins out, since it has more diverse selection and more flexible sequencing. More boom bap and soul/funk sounds in those Gadget samplers (RawCutz offers good stuff in there), which is welcome divergence from EDMish hegemony.

    When it comes to comparing the Abu and Egoist slicers, Abu has advantage with transient detection, while Abu has edge on sample importing.

  • Personally I wouldn't buy Egoist as a drum
    machine.

    For starters you can only have kick, snare and hats. That seems pretty limiting to me. You also have much less tweaking control on the drums than say gadget, DM1 or iMPC Pro.

    I'm not an expert on the quality of the drum samples, but they sound ok to me. But nothing hugely different to things like figure, iMPC, IMachine, Gadget etc etc.

    To me, Gadget is a fully fledged 'studio' app (DAW-like only missing audio tracks).

    Egoist is more of a groove box with an emphasis on sample mashing (which makes it pretty unique).

    I wouldn't put them in the same category personally.

  • edited November 2014

    ^ +1 What @Matt_Fletcher_2000 and @parallaxobject said.

  • Didn't mean to imply same category - I realize that. Think I'm gonna get Bilboa for now and wait for Xmas for Egoist. Glad everyone seems to be enjoying it - I look forward to reading more reviews/tips on Egoist until then. (Love this forum for that!)

  • @parallaxobject said:

    If you're just talking (stock) drums, Gadget (w/those IAP samplers) maybe wins out, since it has more diverse selection and more flexible sequencing. More boom bap and soul/funk sounds in those Gadget samplers (RawCutz offers good stuff in there), which is welcome divergence from EDMish hegemony.

    When it comes to comparing the Abu and Egoist slicers, Abu has advantage with transient detection, while Abu has edge on sample importing.

    abu has transient detection?

    and thanks for the informed info about the drum samples, really appreciate it.

  • Oops, other way around. +1 for Egoist transient detection, +1 Abu for importing.

  • Will also add that the Gadget samplers are better for tapping out beats.

  • @parallaxobject said:

    Will also add that the Gadget samplers are better for tapping out beats.

    Not for me, the latency in Gadget on my ipad 2 is atrocious, I can only use the step editor. That's probably the most impressive thing about Egoist, how they've made it perform so well on older devices. I have zero latency in Egoist, even when it's in an AB chain with GarageBand.

    I would use Egoist as a drum machine for some tracks, but not all. Actually I like the fact there are only 3 concurrent sounds, it gives a cleaner, more defined beat and makes me think about how I'm going to overdub.

    Like anything it depends on the sound you're after for a particular track. I don't use Gadget much for drums as I don't have Bilboa, though I might give the standard kits another go alongside Egoist.

    I think there's a case for owning Gadget and Egoist, and also Samplr as a performance tool.

  • Does Egoist record from IAA into the slicer?

  • Not really feeling this atm. The slicer is fun but the whole work flow is awkward and it's far too fiddly to use some of the controls which are tiny. I ended up deleted it unfortunately, hopefully there will be an update to make it more use able.

  • edited November 2014

    @Monzo have you tried changing the latency setting in Gadgets external
    IOS app settings.

    If you don't do that, the latency will be bad. Although I'm not sure how it copes on an iPad 2.

  • @Matt_Fletcher_2000 said:

    @Monzo have you tried changing the latency setting in Gadgets external
    IOS app settings.

    If you don't do that, the latency will be bad. Although I'm not sure how it copes on an iPad 2.

    Thanks for the tip Matt, I hadn't checked the settings but just looked and it's on the lowest 'safest' setting. I like Gadget but there's a lot of latency on the iPad 2. The step editor's good though so I usually work with that.

  • So try it on the other, not safe setting. That should make it more responsive.

  • The standard latency setting on my iPad 2 has it working without any real noticeable latency.

  • Oh ok, I'll try that - I thought the 'safest' setting would be the least CPU intensive.

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