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IMPC pro 2 or BM3?
Advice requested: Having considered and rejected a move back to (Apple) laptop following wise words on this forum, my next big investment in apps down the line will likely be aimed at leveraging the ease of sampling noises from my small collection of hardware into my iPad where AUM and Cubase will remain my primary recording & mastering apps, for an iPad only solution. (Despite getting momentarily distracted by the MPC Live, which thanks to its battery, hard disc option etc looks more capable for sofa based noodling than the new MPC One).
I make unstructured, some might say unmusical noise mangled dark ambient tracks, so I’m not focused on a beats forward, EDM style process, but tentative explorations with BeatHawk have shown me possibilities re the relative ease of sampling to/editing on/recording with pads from both external and internal sources.
Do either of the two apps above offer more than Beathawk in terms of sampling ease, both for pitched sounds and beats, and/or integration into an AUM sample twisting workflow? Are there any other candidates I should consider? Something with immediacy rather than menu diving preferred. As an ancillary: recommendations for a suitable companion, a small, tweakable pad ‘n knobs controller for such apps? I really do much more away from my old school hardware than with it, so everything needs to be small, light, battery or usb powered. Thanks!
Comments
Easy. BM3
+1
@Imhodef @Gravitas : thanks. If you happen to know, what would you say BM3 brings that the Akai or BeatHawk apps don’t? Newbie question, I have never used BM3 or IMPC.
choose the one that is the most stable and has the least amount of bugs... You don't want crashes of having to reboot the app everytime...
BM3 is much more capable than any iMPC so far, but its interface is something of an acquired taste and may or may not meet your idea of “immediacy.”
I make music something like what you describe, and I use the Nanostudio 2 sampler, Slate. It’s not as capable as BM3, but it’s much better than an iMPC and I feel more at home with its UI/UX.
If you’ve been using Beathawk as an AUv3 hosted in AUM, be aware that none of the above apps will work like that; they serve as hosts rather than plug-ins, so they can’t be hosted in AUM. There are some other AUv3 sampler plug-ins, but I have no experience with them to relate.
@SlowwFloww - true, but not mission critical for me as I only record at home, never perform, and have time. Plus, saving often
. Do you think one of these is crashier then? I notice that the Akai app doesn’t seem to get much love, despite the MPC hardware looking very cool.
@Shabudua : ah, that’s important info. Yes, I have been using BeatHawk as an AUV3 in AUM, quite successfully. I also have Nanostudio (got it in the Black Friday sale), but I haven’t got to grips with it yet. So: Slate is an option then? Hadn’t really thought of that. Btw do you have a link to your music? I’d be interested to hear what you are achieving with the Slate thing.
Speaking purely from a personal perspective, I’d stay with AUM and beathawk. If you’re missing anything in terms of sampling, I’d add another auv3 such as reslice Or EG pulse before thinking of switching DAWs.
Aum is the best environment for recording your external gear, especially when you are midi clock syncing and using AUMS genius sync quantum to record loops of exact bar lengths to make using them elsewhere dead easy.
The best thing about AUM is making it work for you in your way. It’s like a DIY groovebox where you get to choose all the elements.
If you need a traditional DAW you already have one.
If you are happy using AUM and Cubasis, there’s no need to look at bm3 or impc2.
FWIW I have BM3 and iMPC 1 (Both currently uninstalled!) — AUM is in a whole different category of attention to detail and just plain reliability.
I can't comment on iMPC. As a sampler, I find BM3 in a totally different class from BeatHawk (which I also use). BM3's time stretching seems much better to me than BeatHawk's.
BM3 has great slicing options and a few ways to make use of sliced samples.
It has a lot of flexibility in creating sampled instruments.
I started using it with gen latest release and find it stable. My understanding is that it is pretty stable for most.
There are a lot of videos showing you how to use it.
BM3 is sooooo much deeper than BeatHawk (which is great at what it does).
BM3’s sampler is what stopped me bothering with Ableton Live. It’s amazing.
It is. The BM3 sampler is the best on iOS.
Unfortunately I (personally) find the rest of the app to be fairly mediocre.
I’d happily pay the same price BM3 is for an auv3 version of just the sampler.
Some people absolutely love BM3 and I think the style of music you make plays a large part in that.
I use mainly synths and when I sample it is often to chop up my own loops so I prefer a host that makes 95% of my music easier. I can live with an inferior sampler running in a host I prefer.
Also, I Prefer auv3s to internal samplers these days. I really like Ns2s slate and obsidian but prefer to be able to use my sampler in any host.
Those that have different priorities to me will clearly disagree.
The sampling function of BM3 for certain.
I started with iMPC Pro (not iMPC Pro 2)
as my first sampler on the iOS platform.
I wasn't impressed.
The lack of support especially.
I almost stopped using the iOS platform at that point.
I got BM3 and Gadget and that's when I started to take iOS platform seriously.
BM3 as a sampler and as a DAW, brilliant for
sketching out ideas for exporting out to an iOS DAW
or desktop DAW as stems and completing
full pieces within itself entirely.
As you can route sample channels into another channel
for recording, you can get deep on the textures
and beat slicing and then adding effects etc, etc.
Even if you were to use BM3 as standalone sampler
with it being triggered via midi I would still recommend it.
I think impc 2 for iPhone is decent to bring a sample, chop it to pads, and make a loop to export. Doing any deep work is annoying. But I also bought it on sale. It has envelopes and fx per pad.
BM3 is way ahead of it, though I probably haven’t learned the interface well enough.
You get used to it, and then it’s pretty fast and easy. FWIW I also found iOS GarageBand super frustrating at the beginning, and now it’s second nature. Apart from working with (AU fox anyway. That’s still ridiculous in GB.
I don’t like BM3’s timeline much though. It’s serviceable at best, but it does at least share all the same samples with the other views.
In the OP, you mention that you will stick with AUM and Cubasis for your composing and arranging. So it sounds like what you mostly need is a) A great sampler, and b) Something to play those samples on pads.
BM3 is the best sampler on iOS, and if you just take that part of the workflow, it can't be beat. People differ over how effective it is for the rest of the production process, but I think just about anyone who has uses it appreciates the sampler. Its also pretty effective at getting those samples out to work with other apps.
That leaves pad triggering. BM3 is great at that too, but as others have mentioned, doesn't have the multiple instance capability in AUM and Cubasis you might want. Who knows, you might end up liking BM3 as a DAW. However if not, there are other pad based apps such as DigiStix and EG Pulse that you could load up with samples from BM3.
Or you could use DigiStix and EG Pulse without BM3. They both have sampling ability, pad controls, and sequencers. The samplers aren't as capable as BM3's but they are both plenty good for many purposes. BM3 tops the list as a sampler, but either of these two is a great alternative if your other DAW needs are already met by AUM and Cubasis.
Sorry, can't comment on impc as I don't have it.
Yes, the timeline is the one thing that is getting at me.
@wim : thanks, useful insights. You are correct it is ‘excellent sampler/playing from pads’ I’m looking for primarily, multiple instances of the sampling app host not so much. I find at present I am using copy and paste in Cubasis to drop individual snippets of a longer Audio loop already transferred from an AUM session on an adjacent audio track in the DAW onto a fresh track, as a kind of kludged ‘sampler’, one sound at a time, as the whole mix plays in real time, but this is a restrictive and time consuming way of working. It would be much more efficient to be able to move seamlessly back and forth between ‘launchpad’ style drop ins, one shots and loops and a regular timeline recording within the project itself. As an interface launchpad running within AUM for example is cool, but I find the process of pulling samples into it in the first place too many steps away from the spontaneity of a track running ‘live’ that I might want to resample from on the fly to make it work. Currently, I find that I like the way BeatHawk lets me toggle between pitches and hits quickly and seamlessly, and it turned out to be easier to sample my external gear into it and assign it to a BeatHawk pad than I thought it would be before I tried it. In fact, I could live with this, as I have it already, and maybe it is all I need, but it seems that BM3 has some secret sauce as a sampler that BeatHawk lacks? Or is this just talking AAS (app acquisition syndrome?)
No, definitely BM3's sampler is light-years more capable than Beathawk's. The question is whether you need all that power and whether it's worth it to bring in a heavyweight like BM3 when you already have DAWs that are working for you.
I suggest giving EG Pulse and DigiStix a look. They sound like they could be a fit.
@wim : okay, I’ll check them out. Btw, in case I do veer towards BM3, can one at least load up a single instance of it IAA style inside AUM? I only need a single instance, but if it can’t work within AUM, that’s an automatic no no.
Others can comment better than I, but I believe so. I do recommend starting up BM3 standalone before AUM or Audiobus, then adding it. I know for sure that you need to do that with Audiobus.
Huh: EG Pulse - Just checked it on the store. how did I miss that coming out? That looks very interesting... I need to hit YouTube and research further. Thanks for the heads up guys.
Here's a couple of links. I don't recall a lot of discussion about the sampling part. I think maybe that came later? I forget.
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/34497/eg-pulse-elliottgarage-new-au3-drum-machine-available-right-now-on-app-store
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/34497/eg-pulse-elliottgarage-new-au3-drum-machine-pre-order-available-right-now/p8
It might not be a good fit, but it's more Beathawkish than BM3 in some ways.
@Svetlovska
You can load up BM3 into AUM as an IAA.
You can also load up AUM or AB3 ports into
BM3 so that you can sample synths etc, etc.
Here's BM3 with AUM port loaded up
which then can routed internally to
either a sample bank or audio track.
This is my stripped down template for when I'm using AUM
to route audio from my external interface and synths etc.
Exactly the same thing can be done with AB3.
@Gravitas : hi, thanks for that, very educational! Yup, it’s the whole ‘sampling of weird noises I’m making in AUM with a ton of FX’ vibe I’m going for, and your example set ups show me that I should be able to do it. Good news. Though that EG Pulse also looks v cool, especially a vid I just saw which shows it being used inside AUM in an FX slot to sample direct from another AU... definitely food for thought both ways here.
@Svetlovska
Glad to assist.
I gotta say that BM3's various modes for playing slices from pads makes it so flexible. And jamming out patterns and snippets is pretty seamless even if another DAW ends up being where one mixes and does final compositing.
Pulse has some nice features, but it isn't in the same league.
What wasn't obvious to me at first is that when you slice an audio file, you can play those slices from pads without doing "slice to pad" to export individual slices to pads. This lets you have overlapping slices or trigger playback from a slice point and have playback continue past the next loop's start point if you hold the key down and set the mode correctly.
And it's time-stretching is great.
It can also export sliced loops for Apple Loops and BeatHawk.
@espiegel123 : excellent detail, thanks . It’s these specific user insights into the differences that are helping.
BM3 Lives.
I have BM3 for iPad. But there's no iPhone version, and I would like something similar on my iPad. What would be the best choice for this? I've been looking at IMPC Pro 2 for iPhone, rather than Beatmaker 2. Is there any sense in going this route?
Zenbeats.
/DMfan🇸🇪