Loopy Pro: Create music, your way.
What is Loopy Pro? — Loopy Pro is a powerful, flexible, and intuitive live looper, sampler, clip launcher and DAW for iPhone and iPad. At its core, it allows you to record and layer sounds in real-time to create complex musical arrangements. But it doesn’t stop there—Loopy Pro offers advanced tools to customize your workflow, build dynamic performance setups, and create a seamless connection between instruments, effects, and external gear.
Use it for live looping, sequencing, arranging, mixing, and much more. Whether you're a live performer, a producer, or just experimenting with sound, Loopy Pro helps you take control of your creative process.
Download on the App StoreLoopy Pro is your all-in-one musical toolkit. Try it for free today.
App concept/idea for live performance
This forum has generated some incredible ideas over the last several years. While I don't post often, I have been an avid reader for some time now on this forum.
Being a worship musician playing keyboards and sound designing along with sketching out iOS app ideas as a hobby, I have for years now been considering a sketch concept for a live performance app somewhat Mainstage like. I know the limitations and positives of the IOS platform fairly well vs other hardware/software platforms.
Both AUM and Audiobus are amazing tools but curious as to other ideas or wishes that performing musicians have for live functionality and "instrument hosting" within apps.
I am wrestling with a short list of items to consider such as:
1. Seamless control functionality within one primary app via midi controller.
2. Stability while multiple apps in background or loaded for a "set"
3. Ability to rarely go back to using screen in a live set if controller functions are capable of proper midi messaging (cc).
4. App hosting with limited storage capacity in iPad.
This is very much early stage idea generation but expected others more talented than I might have some additional thoughts around the topic.
Comments
I have probably sounded like a broken record that some developer is going to crack the code on a live performance app that takes advantage of iOS mobility and convenience but solves the problem of fiddling with the touch screen so that the performer appears to be checking email or something. Many of your ideas are good ones. The solutions aren't hard to imagine if you understand the problem...
I haven't been following the progress of AudioBus 3; but would it come close to what you are proposing? It would be cool if AudioBus 3 would incorporate the looping function of Masterpiece; built in. It would also have to be compatible with AU, IAA along with good MIDI control. Maybe @Sebastian or @Michael could weigh in?
I'd say that you can confidently do all that with AB and AUM.
What can be improved by putting them all in one app is stability 'out of the box' (often got to debug with AB/AUM), ease of boot up process and effiency with system resources. Challenges are to implement solutions that do the jobs of Audiobus Remote and AUM's recording functions that are more useful than what's already existing (they are very useful).
One thing I've found is that AU on iOS seems pretty stable in use. IAA on the other hand is a nightmare of issues.
I think the bigger problem is that there isn't consistency with how Apple has developed iOS or how developers have implemented it in their apps.
List of Problematic Areas
Hardware and effects latency timing so that everything you're playing is in sync. AUM attempts to address this but there is room for further improvement. Depending upon your setup this may not be an issue.
IAA app launch/close some do so correctly from within an IAA host and others do not.
IAA host sync this is the ability to have the IAA app follow the tempo and transport controls of the IAA host app correctly. Many IAA apps do not have IAA host sync.
IAA state saving available for some Audiobus apps but not all. AUM does not have this capability.
MIDI settings are a mix of implementations which can make getting them connected problematic. Being able to receive/send clock, specify which channels, create or receive virtual ports.
MIDI App Control settings: Which MIDI notes/controls do what in the app? Different setups for different MIDI controllers/apps. How can you save these settings?
Being able to record MIDI in a host app, AUM and Audiobus don't do this. Some DAWs such as Cubasis and Auria Pro do. Since Mainstage is not a DAW either, this might fall outside of the OP's original scope of functionality.
An AU app's presets are not always available in other AU host apps. Not all AU host apps provide full access to AU MIDI functionality.
Audiobus does not support AU. AUM supports AU.
Mixing, panning, and bussing functions allow you to control the volumes, mixes, and effects. Audiobus is more limited in this respect than AUM. AUM has some ability to control these features via MIDI.
I think currently the safest route to go for a live performance app would be using AU apps hosted in AUM. You can create setups with all of the appropriate apps, levels, bussing, hardware connections, MIDI routing and save them. There is definitely room for adding more MIDI control to AUM such as using MIDI to change to a different setup. You would also have to see how much delay there is when switching between setups in AUM.
With AUM and Audiobus there is room for further improvement in managing presets. A better file system and tags would allow you to more easily manage and use MIDI to switch between setups. There can definitely be advantages to combining both AUM and Audiobus together but does make it a more complicated setup.
I think we're more likely to see improvements to iOS, Audiobus, AUM, and the apps of developers to facilitate live play rather than having a third party come forward to resolve the issues.
A practical solution would be to research setups you can use which will be stable with the hardware you want to play them with. If there are areas which are problematic, I would encourage you to lobby developers to add the missing functionality. I would think there'd be many worship musicians in a similar boat so perhaps collectively you could identify viable solutions and problem areas which could then be forwarded onto developers.
If you develop workflow templates and presets, these could then be shared among worship musicians so that everyone isn't having to independently reinvent the wheel.
Yeah gotta agree with much of what @InfoCheck has said. Sometimes I've found myself leaning back towards Auria Pro as a solution for some of these issues, then finding more issues, such as lack of Link.
Seems there really is no tight solution on iOS as yet, but I do remember the early days of PC and Mac software. Those early days were also a nightmare of incompatibilities and problems waiting to happen. I can only have faith that it all comes together at some stage.
In the mean time, I see iOS as an ideal live tool with small discrete setups. Possibly better with multiple iPads as a better solution to complex one iPad setups.