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.

Akai Fire with iPadOS?

I use FL in my studio and I'm considering the Fire for more hands on control. Anyone know if it works with iOS as a normal midi controller?

Comments

  • it is class compliant ( i believe )

  • @AlmostAnonymous said:
    it is class compliant ( i believe )

    I know that FL has weird mapping issues, which is why Automap never worked with it. Wondering if the Fire actually sends out MIDI or if it's something else.

  • /me points to mozaic scripts thread
    :p

  • Based on this, Looks like it should work as class compliant controller: https://blog.segger.com/decoding-the-akai-fire-part-1/
    I’d either try it in store or order from somewhere where you can easily return it if it does not meet your needs. Definitely expect what is the reality for most of the controllers on iOS: there is very few apps and controllers that would ge supported “out of the box” and even if apps support MIDI mapping, it is very basic and often limited or buggy. Especially with e.g. those step sequencer LED buttons on Fire, you can’t expect they will light up based on what you have in some app. It may work one way: if you use controller to trigger steps, but wont work if you e.g. re-open the project - LEDs wont light up.

  • I’m not an FL user although I adore Sytrus their FM synth (which I have as an individual plugin). But I did purchase an Akai Fire as it’s wonderful to have a midi controller laid out X0X style as a drum programmer. Luckily a provider of control scripts for Ableton (nativeKontrol) did all the heavy lifting of mapping everything to work with Ableton Live as it’s no easy task to attempt it yourself. I reckon to do something similar on iOS that maybe Mozaic won’t be enough, maybe exploring Midi Fire/Streambyter would get you closer, but that would require some deep scripting.

    If you’re an Ableton Live user you could make use of the nativeKontrol toolkit that’s provided with CrossFire to create something bespoke and midi out from Ableton to your iOS device via a laptop. But to get the breadth of the CrossFire workflow working would still require a lot of work.

    All of those options will require a pretty deep knowledge of MIDI and SysEx. But on the plus side they’ll be a ace learning journey even if you don’t get things working exactly as you’d like.

  • One thing that put me off getting it was the fact that buttons aren’t velocity sensitive.

  • I had one and sold it. Good for FL and the cross fire script for ableton was decent enough. I just never found myself using it and had bought it hoping they’d have it working with the iOS app but it never happened

  • edited September 2021

    I strictly use it for it’s core purpose of adding drum hits quickly. I like that it allows me to take my eyes of the screen and lay down the basis of a groove quickly and easily. I tend to write percussion parts with a minimum of two bars, on average four bars and sometimes longer. Crossfire enable you to quickly scan through the bars and you can enter velocity via one of the scroll wheels as you go.

    In truth I can work just as quickly via the computer directly as I’ve been using both trackballs and stylus’s to control my desktop for many years and I can work as quickly as one might with a touch screen. But I’m a huge believer in switching modalities as part of the creative process. Creating a track in Ableton, Bitwig or via Cubasis on iOS all leads you down different creative paths. As does editing via a screen or via tactile interfaces. I did however have to force myself into using CrossFire, as at first I was A LOT slower than using my standard DAW interaction methods or entering patterns via Push 2 or LaunchPad 3 Mk3.

    Controllerism can lead to creative freedoms or creative cul-de-sac’s.

  • I have it but never tried it with iOS. Just hooked it up - all the buttons light up and it’s sending midi note data when I try it in AUM so I guess it could be mapped somehow or maybe some Mozaic wizard could write some useful script for this thing. You can’t play it as a pad-keyboard controller out of the box though as not all the buttons send correct note values to a synth to produce sound. It’s like every other pad makes a sound. However they all send midi data when I try the buttons in AUM mapping mode.
    Don’t know - I never really used this thing on PC as well.

  • Thanks to Moss Graber 's script, I find it the best companion for Bitwig. Really !

  • @jazzmess said:
    Thanks to Moss Graber 's script, I find it the best companion for Bitwig. Really !

    Thanks for that! Didn’t know about it and will try it for sure.
    There’s also this youtuber Warbeats who’s developing a script for Akai Fire for… FL Studio :) Making it a pretty useful controller for live playing I suppose. Might be worth checking out for FL users.

  • Sorry for waking up this old thread. I was searching the forum if someone made use of the Fire with an iPad. Anyway, you guys need to try the Bitwig script of Richie Hawtin that turns the AKAI Fire into a drum machine that is backed by the Bitwig drum rack. I think this is actually the best usage of it. I love the idea using controllers to operate a DAW like a classic hardware instrument. Richie's script that makes the Launch Control XL a frontend for the Bitwig arpeggiator is also really cool.

    Script download (scroll down): https://www.bitwig.com/de/stories/electrically-alive-inside-richie-hawtins-workflow-200/

    Source code: https://github.com/ericahrens/rhbitwig

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