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I'm generally happy with the sound coming from my iPad, and only notice the difference when I switch to synths on Logic, which does sound bigger and richer.
However, I haven't got Elasticdrums, Geoshred, iDensity, Blocs, Turnado etc. etc. etc. on the Mac so for that reason it'll always be a special thing. And I can compose while I'm on the toilet. You can't do that with a red hot MacBook Pro on your knees.
I've been monitoring the app store using a number of different analytic services for a few years now...
One thing that holds true across all app categories is that a low barrier to entry (ie: cost) and recurring revenue through in-app purchases is usually the best strategy.
I'm not sure how that would work for your plugins..?
Perhaps in-app preset expansions?
I've heard this a few times here and I also found Turnado by far the most challenging to make sound good, but I'm inclined to believe that the overall 'underlying' sound quality of their audio apps would be uniform, so I've assumed that it's more to do with the difficulty level here as well as extreme presets. I've put a lot of time into learning Turnado's individual effects parameters in depth (presets are all useless for actual purposes) and they do feel a lot higher quality than they gave a first impression of.
As you say, this difficulty level in use is juxtaposed by the significantly higher possibilities for performance of this effects app, compared to others.
Cheers, good to have a good grasp of these things.
To follow this, as their apps are all multi platform, do we know if Sugar Bytes quality on iOS is the same as on desktop? I would have expected so and they seem highly regarded on desktop, so it presents an interesting quandary to me whether the iOS versions are inferior or whether people are just accepting of an average sound quality all round in exchange for interesting creative possibilities.
In the more general topic area, I've read the discussion about synth sound quality (which is fascinating!) and I'm curious as to how these issues affect audio/sample processing. The synth sounds I do use are very smooth and rounded to 'melt' into the mix, so I expect that the upper regions are not too thick with overtones. Most of my work is processing live and sampled audio and this material is primarily ethnic overtone instruments and contemporary instruments performed in an overtone centric manner. Is sample based music effected by the same bag of issues as synth sounds, or does it have its own separate set of challenges?
As long as you play your recordings back at (nearly) the same pitch it was recorded in you should be safe. The ADC will have taken care of the aliasing-prone frequency range. But you can reintroduce the issue by pitching up or down in the box.
Interesting and useful to know. Thanks.
I've noticed even in Melodyne that shifting overtone instruments around can have very noticeably unfavourable results.
What about fine tune dials? Is that any better or worse than shifting in intervals? A lot of the instruments aren't tuned to any given note so I use these quite a lot. I can also go the other way and fine tune the synths, manually tune my actual instruments, but it'd have to be different for each different ethnic instrument. Should this way get distinctly favourable results?
pitch shifting/timestretching is a very special thing in digital processing
It depends almost entirely on highly sophisticated algorithms, in most cases sold by a few hidden 'providers' to other developers or even large corporations.
(check out the license notes in an app's information)
In any case: artifacts in this domain are a magnitude above filter or tube emulation.
All very good observations. Yes I agree IOS can be extremely efficient but I also did a lot of recordings on my Fostex Model250 Mixer/recorder four track and it was both an efficient and a very creative time. I've yet to equal that output on IOS! If I get my act together one day who knows! I've been toying with the idea of getting my Fostex out again and all my gear just for FUN...just put the dolby C noise reduction on and record..that should clean it up a bit. Just loved the visceral organic excitement of layering , bouncing combining. Then my brother would master the songs on his pc in Peak and UA plugins
One of the interesting things about the early Korg digital synths is that the sample waveforms were multi-sampled with progressively less data the higher up the frequency spectrum you go. In other words, the lower to mid frequencies had a higher fidelity or faithfulness of the full presence of harmonic content, but as you went from mid frequencies to high, the sample length was shorter and as a result and by definition missed out a lot of the higher frequency additional harmonic content. By the time you get to the very highest octaves, the wave complexity was not all that far from almost the fundamental waveform, whilst the duration (and hence the data contained) was much shorter.
However, I think that musing over aliasing is not where one should be looking. Oh, well, there's also one thing while we're on the topic, and that is the idea of crossover distortion, whereby waveforms (which may have been mathematically processed, or even just added) have miscalculation errors aggregating at or near the zero crossing level due to rounding (and the same thing occurs in the analogue domain, where transistor output stages might not have accurate (or at all) compensation for the base junction levels (usually using pairs of diodes to bias the levels above the cutoff) and this gives a crossover error in much the same way). This is detectable as audible distortion, where the total harmonic distortion is higher coming out than it was going in. But anyway, as I say, I don't think that's where one should be looking.
Where one could benefit from looking is the difference between an ideal 'on paper' envelope shape, and the (accidental, or on purpose) deviation from what people think an envelope shape should be. In particular, an imperceptibly short duration or 'dwell' as the envelope attack reaches peak, just hanging around up there a microscopically short while, instead of rushing straight down again the moment peak triggers the second stage of the envelope sequence (for an envelope generator is a form of sequencer when you think about it). There's differences in linearity (similar to a gamma adjust in visual terms) of both the envelope contour and also the amplitude response, or both, and there's also this fudging of what happens at the peak of attack, and meanwhile the user just looks at the envelope shape printed on the box of the synth and assumes they're all the same. They're not, and it is my belief that this is where the majority of the mystical difference between 'fat and ballsy' and 'thin and weedy' lies.
Edit: inserted a missing close parenthesis - otherwise everything you read for the rest of the day would still be in that quiet voice.
@OscarSouth Are you referring to the reverbs and more traditional effects in Turnado? If so, yes. They are sub par to my ears. But anything that swirls and flutters in the stereo field is gold.
Oh yeah for sure. It's realm is 'special effects'; I'd not use anything in it's box for any remotely 'traditional' purpose (even delays), but for catching attention or making sounds into new sounds (difficulty being holding onto the musicality of the original sound) in a performative way, it's fantastic. Although it can also be crazy, I find WOW is a lot more useful in a practical way. Really nice distortions too (which I believe are 4x oversampled, something relating to the discussion going on here!).
I recently bought Turnado and WOW2 for use in Auria. At first, I thought they were nearly horrible. The fx to my ears were way too abrasive and over the top. Destructive and grating. I almost decided to do a refund.
Then I read some posts about how to tone them down. Went in and dialed down a few parameters and started really getting into both. I wondered they the presets were so over-the-top, but it kind of makes sense... in that you can quickly go to the extreme, and tell exactly what each preset it headed.... then dial back to parts you don't want and leave the weirdness that you dig.
Decided to keep them.
Similar to my own experience. Took me a lot of study (more than your average iOS app) to get to grips with them properly, and I've got a lot further to go before mastering them. Even Egoist (by far the easiest of their apps to get into) has a huge amount of depth to explore in order to get the best out of it.
The difference between Sugar Bytes and a lot of other iOS stuff for me (at least in functionality) is probably the same kind of things as for Fabfilter (although I don't own any of these) - these apps are fully featured tools which function at the level of and 'feel' like the level that you'd expect of competitive pro-audio plugins. That's why I'd actually be pretty surprised if their sound quality (in technical terms) wasn't on a par with the other 'pro-grade', pro-(for iOS)-priced apps available.
Flip side is that the 'translation' from desktop plugins which you'd pretty much always just automate or control via MIDI, has left them with less than ideal interfaces for iOS (aside from Egoist which works fine here). Their depth of MIDI implementation and integration with Auria is more than good enough to remedy that for performance or production though.
The single effect thing is where it falls short for me. Loading it as a single delay or reverb or anything really almost always sounds inferior to a stand alone effect to my ears. But also have one to think doing that is entirely misusing it!
I've always assumed Turdnado's lower per-effect fidelity to be a consequence of SB hyper hyper optimizing everything so that you could run 8 effects at once, some of them of the very DSP heavy variety, as well as having the ability to smoothly transition effects parameters via LFOs or manually. Thinking it's easier to play connect the dots with fewer dots.
To my ears, SB apps sound like magic. I think Turnado goes some way toward questioning the absolute value of fidelity.
@syrupcore I'm constantly amazed at how little processing power Turnado uses. With constant limit pushing we get a very intuitive feel of what our machines can handle, and all of Sugar Bytes stuff feels very light in processing power, even when compared to some much more singular purposed apps.
I do also use individual dedicated effects for specific/conventional purposes too, and I find that most of the controls given in Turnado aren't really suitable for normal usage anyway. With only 4 parameters and a few variable options per effect, most being dedicated to crazy sound mangling or otherwise novelty purposes, I don't feel like it gives enough fine control for delicate sound processing. I'm still getting to grips fully with it's almost infinite potential for dynamic modulation and it feels more and more like they're all specifically designed to be modulated rather than carefully tuned. It's a very different mentality to not think in terms of how parameters should be set, but how they should be moving!
@skiphunt, was that thread here in this forum on taming Turnado? I want to like it but it is extremely over the top for most of my applications, i wanna b able to do more mild glitching hehe
What I decided I liked about it... and I haven't seen the thread about taming Turnado (I didn't own it then so I didn't bother, but I'm going to search it and see if there are any tricks I've missed)... anyway, what I liked about it was that I could start with a very simple and basic composition of basic piano, etc. Something that wasn't too complex, simple, but passable collection of notes... then, start messing with it in Turnado or WOW and end up with something completely different, but still had the basic composition.
I'm still experimenting with it and like that I can automate my parameter changes in Auria Pro. But, I'll admit I've still got ways to go before I can honestly say I've got them tamed. Any other tips or tricks in this arena would be much appreciated.
Very this! This is Turnado's mojo making sweet spot for me.
+1000.
I once new a person who thought they would play better leads with a$3000 vintage Strat over his Squire.
He there fore thought the Squire was limiting how good he actually sounded.
I suggested that he show me his "skills" on my Martin acoustic.
He declined saying that it would not accurately show what he was talking about.
That is all from me on this matter. Take what you want from it.
If by this you mean that iOS is perfectly cool a mundo for making great music and it's a persons skill that makes the main difference, then I could not agree more
I remember reading an interview with Steve Vai once, where he said he wanted a new Strat for an album he was working on. He walked into a Guitar Center full expecting to pay $3000 for a new guitar, but after trying a bunch it was a Squire he liked the sound of the best.
I like synths with that "in your face" dynamic response, the illusion of a huge sonic frequency spectrum, fat oscillators, silky filters and there are big differences. The synths we don't like that much, don't really sound bad, but more flat, uninspiring and boring.
Incidentally, talking about crossover distortion (and noticed while I was screenshotting some stuff I want to put together in LumaFusion to try out), here's a well known iOS app doing a sinewave - spot the glitch at the zero point.
@u0421793 interesting that it has the defect on the positive slope but not the negative slope.
The guitar analogies are, of course, largely true (its such a cliche for a reason).
However, although you could do most jobs with a 20 fret £200 passive Squier VMJ and it'd sound great, you're simply not going to be able to cover such a great range of timbral and practical applications as a £1000 24 feet Yamaha TRB5 with active pickups and piezo saddle transducers. You'll be able to get the job done and sound great under almost any stylistic requirement, but you'll have less options available for doing so
You're also going to be able to set the Yamaha up marginally better because of the fine quality of the craftsmanship, which although a small difference will make the experience of playing it slightly more enjoyable and effortless. You're going to have access to a much larger frequency range, not just because of the extra 10 semitones of range the instrument will give you, but because the active pickups and piezo transducers will give a much (much) more full representation of the instruments sound than the extremely mod focussed jazz configuration pickups (which still sound great and are pretty versatile, but don't give you access to those extreme lows or upper harmonic content). The piezo will give you a very different (much wider and flatter) frequency response and allow you to use the instrument musically in ways which are impossible with only magnetic pickups. Of course this extra range and extended tonal variety at your disposal is only useful if you've studied how to use it.
If you're talking about creativity or solo performance techniques then it's another story. There's no question that the Jazz will sound great, but it'll severely limit the possibilities available to you and everything mentioned above will be of the highest significance. However, these limitations will only present themselves if you dedicate a decade or so to study and practise of the instrument.
This was very specifically addressed to bass guitars, but I'm sure that the logic here can apply to any field where craft and art cross over and highly specific tools are utilised. Point being that these minutia of differences are at the same time negligible and of absolute, utmost importance ..
.. and that this guitar analogy is a cliche along the lines of other 'abbreviated logic' such as "less is more". There's actually truth in there, but it's so watered down that it's almost misleading.
@OscarSouth > £1000 24 feet Yamaha TRB5 with active pickups and piezo saddle transducers.
You'd also need to get arm extensions to play one of these
Lmao Mr Tickle plays guitar
Do you actually have to use your 'feet'?
Or Inspector Gadget
Seriously though @OscarSouth this was a good way of getting the point across that extra expense and 'quality' is not always all hype and fluff, for those that know how to use a particular thing properly then the extra expense can be worthwhile, which goes back to one of the OP's points......@Skiphunt felt they wouldn't get the most out of FabFilter because of their own perceived lack of experience.....
@Skiphunt, I suggest that perhaps you knew enough about using EQ that you were able to perceive the difference ?
Another point, just because something is newer, or more up-to-date does not automatically make it better.......hence why some of the older iOS apps still stand up to, and in some cases still reign over newer ones.
Would the clock in the Palace of Westminster (aka Big Ben) be better if it were updated to new technology and have OLED screens displaying the time ?
Yes there are differences between the outputs of apps, but I would call them exactly that, differences, not better or worse.
Beg to differ
Although I do use my feet too.. to control my iOS devices!!
I like elephants they are incredibly intelligent...........
You know how elephants when given the chance and a loaded paint brush can create some interesting pictures sometimes even art, well recently a partcularly loud musically talented pachyderm was given an iPad pro fully loaded with Auria pro and all top flight apps to see what he could produce. At first he cautiously approached the strange shiny object but lo upon closer inspection he simply stomped on the device rendering it into a singly fused piece of sheet metal thus ending his musical career