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.
Comments
"I wonder why this thread's date isn't updating when people post to it? Nice work on the videeo"
@dj8 May be something to do with the topic?
Looks like the thread has escaped the time tunnel and materialised again, so all back to normality.
@Paulinko said:
Very kind of you to make that video but it shows how yet another app that configures something that should just work right out of the box isn't the solution. There are cuts in the video and it is still takes five minutes to show how to set up sync between three apps.
The place where the settings can be changed is different in every app.
The name of the settings is different in each app.
You need keyboard input to set the BPM.
Interest in the app is almost non-existant.
In my opinion it is not the solution to the sync problem that iOS music apps have.
@Paulinko Actually, I've had the Cumbus app since before I had an IPad. It's one of the first I bought for my iPod. The dev is still producing new apps, but I don't know if any will ever get Audiobus.
@Sebastian Give us something that works in a more elegant fashion and I'm sure we'll all agree with you, but until then, this is the best on offer...
@PaulB said:
I was actually hoping for this thing to be a solution to the problem. Watching the download numbers, the feedback from the community and the adoption from developers I can't help but observe that the problem must have then only existed for about 300 people and about three or four developers. If it were a solution, that is.
Speaking only for myself, the reasons I haven't bought MIDIbus yet are that I'm really broke with the lead up to Christmas and a somewhat unanticipated car expense, and that I have assumed that developers would need time to add MIDIbus compatibility to their apps before the benefits would really show.
Meanwhile, there does appear to be the occasional happy user.
If devs would really need to do that then the video above wouldn't have been possible at all. But it is because it is yet another CoreMIDI wrapper.
Dozens of apps are already 'compatible' with it because it's yet another CoreMIDI app that does something with MIDI that should work without it. The first thing that everybody talking about this needs to admit that MIDI on iOS is broken in so many ways that it's probably safe to say that the solution is not yet another MIDI based app.
The problem with Core MIDI on iOS is that it allows different developers to sing from different songsheets. If the least the MIDIbus library does is to ensure that developers using it are using Core MIDI in a consistent way, then that's a better situation than we have at present. Sure, there are already some apps that 'happen' to be compatible with MIDIbus, but now there's a better chance that more will gravitate to a standardised approach. If, at the end of the day, it works, then I'll take that over the ideal solution that seemingly nobody is working on.
The fundamental problem with CoreMIDI on iOS is its design. It was released in a way that allows every node of a MIDI connection to mess with its own settings. That means all it takes is one CoreMIDI capable app that has implemented CoreMIDI in a more or less broken manner to mess with all the other apps synchronisation.
It's not like we're not working on a solution. We just aren't talking about it yet because we first had to solve a few other things.
Please note that whenever I'm talking about this topic I'm hardly ever saying that MIDI sync needs to be solved. I'm always saying that sync needs to be solved. Because that's a problem that has a real chance of being solved.
I see. Thanks for clarifying.
I'm glad the thread's back up in real time! Thanks,@Sebastian, for weighing in further on this and clarifying what MidiBus does and how it works.
It sounds like MidiBus is working more as a patch than as a truly global midi sync fix. Hopefully AudioBus will take this on soon and integrate a global fix w/ AudioBus! :-)
I need to try MidiBus w/ more apps, but as I mentioned above, it worked well w/ Cassini and Loopy HD, and the set up only takes me about 1 min now that I know the configuration. I couldn't find a way to sync the two apps using VM before using MidiBus (or another 3rd party solution). To me, this is a big improvement. And, a few other people have reported that MidiBus has been a pretty convenient solution for similar VM midi sync issues.
It's no AudioBus, in terms of being a global fix, excellence of design, and level of convenience to use, but it's offering something that's pretty useful, IMO.
I agree with @Sebastian that midi implementation on iOS is very inconsistent. It's often hit or miss to get apps to communicate with each other and there is no standard way to access the controls. While MidiBus might not be the ultimate solution, something that can address some of the issues is better than nothing at all for me.
I don't know if such a thing exists or not but it would be nice to have a database that lists all of the different ways developers have implemented midi in their apps, the benefits, limitations, conflicts associated with their implementation, and then perhaps couple that with an effort to get some feedback from the iOS musician community on what functionality they'd like to see so we can end up with a midi implementation that is more standard, consistent, and practical rather than the current hodgepodge we're dealing with now.
If there's more predictability and consistency, I think the MIDI user base on iOS will expand since what you'll learn on one app MIDI setup can be applied to another rather than the relatively small user base that's willing to take the time to figure out how to navigate the current mess.
@Paulinko said:
With about 500-1000 apps that send or receive MIDI compiling such a list is a huge amount of work. That is if the developers of said apps would be able to tell how their MIDI implementation worked. Not all of them know what they're doing. Having basically managed such a list for Audiobus in the last year - a technology that we fully understand and which we've released in a very controlled manner I can tell you that this is pretty much a full-time job. Also: for Audiobus developers automatically enter what their apps are capable of when they're registering their apps.
Creating such a list for MIDI and keeping it up to date would not be a paid job, so it would rely on volunteer work - by the person compiling the list and of course all involved developers who would need to document the intricacies of the individual implementation in their apps.
You don't need me to tell you how feasible all of this would be.
Yes, MidiBus is 'another midi app' but, being fair, it's offering more than that. It's offering solid clock code to any dev that wants to implement it. The dev has said that the app itself is more of an SDK showcase than anything else. I don't know if it offers a consistent settings experience for end users in those apps but if it doesn't, it should. Open funkbox, admire it's simplicity, send team Synthetic Bits an admiring email and call it the new iOS MIDI settings standard.
@Sebastian said:
Honestly love it when you share opinions like those in this thread @sebastian. I've decided to infer from your comments that you guys are working to solve the sync problem on iOS but are choosing to do so in some way that doesn't rely upon MIDI sync. What's most interesting to me about this speculation is as a long time Loopy user and Loopy Forum member, I've seen @michael say on more than one occasion something along the lines of "MIDI is established and works well. I don't see a need to implement other non-standard sync protocols" in response to requests for WIST. And he's backed that up with one of the best/most consistent MIDI clocks on iOS.
@syrupcore said:
I've seen @michael say on more than one occasion something along the lines of "MIDI is established and works well. I don't see a need to implement other non-standard sync protocols" in response to requests for WIST. And he's backed that up with one of the best/most consistent MIDI clocks on iOS.
Well I'm glad he's changed his mind this new ( BUSSYNC ) sounds very exciting thanks for the clue @Sebastian can't wait !
@syrupcore said:
For the record, I've definitely maintained that opinion in the past, but over the past 12 months or so I've come to believe I was very wrong, and was being naive/ignorant about the whole thing. Doing Audiobus and watching this community develop, and watching the resulting conversations about the current state of sync, has totally changed my mind: It's a mess, right now.
The problem is that MIDI clock technology, which involves sending and receiving regular ticks, is quite difficult to get right. It requires creating a phase lock loop, always a tricky thing to build correctly, and it also requires dealing with some very poorly documented facets of iOS MIDI. And, every developer's doing their own implementation. The result is a million different implementations of clock senders and receivers, each with their own quirks, all interacting with each other resulting in totally unpredictable behaviour, even if some are well-implemented. It's not a good state of affairs right now.
@Michael Is that not what the MIDIbus SDK is aiming to standardise? Genuine question, not trying to make any point here.
Considering some of Sebastian's comments from the AB2 thread, I think that AB is about to take on the challenge of standardizing MIDI sync on iOS.
Although, there's more to midi than sync, and personally I don't mind the idea of having a separate app for MIDI-related tasks, especially if it provides a solution for the many other possibilities that can be done with MIDI information (e.g. MIDIbridge and similar apps)
xml parsing failure
xml parsing failure
Cheers for the insight @michael. I thought I'd ended my post with something along the lines of 'minds change' or some such but looks like I didn't.
Love how well you and Sebastian are describing the problem. Obviously a topic of internal discussion. Making a fella hope!