What is the best/ quickest/ easiest way to edit and arrange audio on a timeline?

wim

@robosardine said:
The one that appeals to me most at the moment as I look through them all is the Audio Evolution Mobile one. This seems to hold a consensus of appeal to its users, and Tim Webb at Disccord certainly seems to like it.

Yeh, I keep hearing that AEM excels at audio. It never clicked with me as a DAW, but I'm interested in taking another look for audio now too.

topaz

No idea, I’m using cb3

Poppadocrock

In koala after you open settings menu In upper right, scroll to bottom it says Ableton Live Lite. Cheers.

jwmmakerofmusic

@OnfraySin said:
Any DAW, like NS2

NS2 has a decent sampler and audio editor, but it does not have audio track support yet. It's my DAW of choice for 90% of my tasks, but the other 10% of my tasks involves editing audio (recording vocals, etc). That's where Cubasis 3 comes in mate.

Now if only Matt (BlipInteractive) can get us the audio tracks IAP we're desperately waiting for.

robosardine

Yes my imagination has been running into overtime thinking about how far my hopes could escalate 😛

An under the water-level heap of clips - each time you tap and hold on one everything else stops - it plays as you audition it. You drag your choices of clip one on top of the other then them all up to the timeline marker ‘listen to them placed here?’ message pops up. I press yes. ’Listen to them in looped rotation with the bar before and the bar after playing?’ I press yes again. I press stop when the one I want to settle on comes around again. ‘Confirm selection?’ I press yes once more and the chosen clip appears in the desired place.

Each track has the ability to slice and rearrange the audio of an area selected by your marker placement - a bit like Blocs Wave.

It’s an AUv3 so there is the ability to give up to eight tracks you select a separate out.

rs2000

@robosardine said:
Yes my imagination has been running into overtime thinking about how far my hopes could escalate 😛

An under the water-level heap of clips - each time you tap and hold on one everything else stops - it plays as you audition it. You drag your choices of clip one on top of the other then them all up to the timeline marker ‘listen to them placed here?’ message pops up. I press yes. ’Listen to them in looped rotation with the bar before and the bar after playing?’ I press yes again. I press stop when the one I want to settle on comes around again. ‘Confirm selection?’ I press yes once more and the chosen clip appears in the desired place.

Each track has the ability to slice and rearrange the audio of an area selected by your marker placement - a bit like Blocs Wave.

It’s an AUv3 so there is the ability to give up to eight tracks you select a separate out.

Audio Evolution has adjustable grid and snapping plus a "BPM from selection" feature that is another helpful goodie for cutting in line with any beat you throw at it.
If the jam session musicians' timing is good, you can select a large area, if it drifts apart, you select a smaller area, then extract the bpm, set and enable grid snapping and cut with grid support. AEM as a DAW is not everyone's ticket but as a multitrack audio editor, it's a workhorse.
Time stretching quality is not too bad either.

robosardine

@rs2000 said:

@robosardine said:
Yes my imagination has been running into overtime thinking about how far my hopes could escalate 😛

An under the water-level heap of clips - each time you tap and hold on one everything else stops - it plays as you audition it. You drag your choices of clip one on top of the other then them all up to the timeline marker ‘listen to them placed here?’ message pops up. I press yes. ’Listen to them in looped rotation with the bar before and the bar after playing?’ I press yes again. I press stop when the one I want to settle on comes around again. ‘Confirm selection?’ I press yes once more and the chosen clip appears in the desired place.

Each track has the ability to slice and rearrange the audio of an area selected by your marker placement - a bit like Blocs Wave.

It’s an AUv3 so there is the ability to give up to eight tracks you select a separate out.

Audio Evolution has adjustable grid and snapping plus a "BPM from selection" feature that is another helpful goodie for cutting in line with any beat you throw at it.
If the jam session musicians' timing is good, you can select a large area, if it drifts apart, you select a smaller area, then extract the bpm, set and enable grid snapping and cut with grid support. AEM as a DAW is not everyone's ticket but as a multitrack audio editor, it's a workhorse.
Time stretching quality is not too bad either.

Thanks - I think I might well give this one a go 😀

banalytic

is there any app like auditor or multitrack daw that has automation curves for pan and volume?
i don‘t need something „big“ like cubasis or auria.

Simon

"What is the best/ quickest/ easiest way to edit and arrange audio on a timeline?"

Apple's free GarageBand?

Obo

@Telefunky said:
I record practically the same way and my tool of choice is a vintage DAW (Saw Studio) on PC.
For my workflow it's the ultimate in ease and precision.

The closest app in IOS is Ferrite (which targets podcasts). It can't loop a selection in DAW style but you can partly fake this manually by hitting 'back' which jumps back to the previous section. Once you get familiar with Ferrite's touch reaction, it's very smooth and precise in snipping and moving segments.
It also can do AU parameter automation and has unlimited undo.

Do you know about this app by the same dev? If so, is there an advantage to iferrite at all? I really dig everything this dev has put out but skipped over iferrite thinking Hokusai is more what I was after...

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hokusai-audio-editor/id432079746

auxmux

I ultimately went with Cubasis 2 to pull together an EP back in March, based on jams / tracks from AUM. It was actually a great experience, because I didn't think about midi or recording anything. It was solely to arrange and organize audio into tracks, edit, and mix, and semi-master. Originally, I was thinking about Zen Beats, but the interface didn't gel for me.

DAW workflow doesn't "work" for me on the iPad at all, I always prefer AUM or Drambo, so this was a good way to splitting duties between apps.

Telefunky

Yes, I also have Hokusai (since it was released), but never got along with it.
It may be my personal „mode of operation“ that makes IOS audio editing so uncomfortable for me... most of the time not using time/beat grids at all while playing and recording.
So I need to snip and adjust arbitrary regions - which is smooth and ultra-precise in SAW.

Click-hold into a region gives 1 vertical guideline at the click y-position and 2 at the beginning and end of the region. The guides reach across the full vertical screen area of the arrangement, so items can be shifted according to (say) some inner transient or the boundaries. No matter if source or target, all marks are present at any time.
Not even Pro Tools can do that...

Zooming (by mouse dial) is very similiar to Twisted Wave, if you tap-drag up/down exactly on the playhead position. In SAW the zoom center is tied to the playhead position, which I consider more efficient (or less confusing) than TW’s smart offset calculation.

Since TW‘s selections are temporary, one easily taps them away by accident while zooming... oops, try again.
In SAW temporary selections are kept until intentionally unclicked. Items on the timeline can‘t be moved until unlocked by holding the shift key - no accidents... etc etc.

All such mouse options could easily be translated into touch equivalents, but noone seems to be interested.
When I felt familiar enough with Ferrite, I took a couple of files and did exactly the same arrangement as I‘d done with SAW.
Took me at least 5 times longer - and I really, really wished to succeed in less time - as I mostly record on iPad.

ps: this is not a SAW Studio promo, but I just don‘t get why developers don‘t view at existing audio editors before they start working on the next iteration.
SAW may be a bit exotic (the very first native multitrack editor/recorder, though), but BIAS Peak was the gold standard on Mac for ages and uses almost identical controls.

mrufino1

@Telefunky said:
Yes, I also have Hokusai (since it was released), but never got along with it.
It may be my personal „mode of operation“ that makes IOS audio editing so uncomfortable for me... most of the time not using time/beat grids at all while playing and recording.
So I need to snip and adjust arbitrary regions - which is smooth and ultra-precise in SAW.

Click-hold into a region gives 1 vertical guideline at the click y-position and 2 at the beginning and end of the region. The guides reach across the full vertical screen area of the arrangement, so items can be shifted according to (say) some inner transient or the boundaries. No matter if source or target, all marks are present at any time.
Not even Pro Tools can do that...

Zooming (by mouse dial) is very similiar to Twisted Wave, if you tap-drag up/down exactly on the playhead position. In SAW the zoom center is tied to the playhead position, which I consider more efficient (or less confusing) than TW’s smart offset calculation.

Since TW‘s selections are temporary, one easily taps them away by accident while zooming... oops, try again.
In SAW temporary selections are kept until intentionally unclicked. Items on the timeline can‘t be moved until unlocked by holding the shift key - no accidents... etc etc.

All such mouse options could easily be translated into touch equivalents, but noone seems to be interested.
When I felt familiar enough with Ferrite, I took a couple of files and did exactly the same arrangement as I‘d done with SAW.
Took me at least 5 times longer - I really, really wished to succeed in less time - as I mostly record on iPad.

Wow, not too many people still using SAW studio. I’ve never used it but I know it’s history, very advanced for its time. I understand it is super stable too. It’s not being maintained anymore, is it? Either way I’m set with logic, but it’s cool that you’re using SAW.

Telefunky

@mrufino1 I just had to look myself... big surprise: new website, new shop, lower prices, 64bit versions, Win-10 compatibility, impressive colaboration and network features.
https://www.rmllabs.com/MainSite/sawstudio.html
(never mind the candies color scheme, it‘s skinable)

But if I get a new MacMini M1 I‘m strongly considering Logic, too.

krassmann

I also like to develop ideas in AUM (usually with Atom 2, LK, Cykle, Riffer) and the creative flow is nice and easy and it’s a fantastic setup for live sessions. But I struggle a lot to arrange these jams into songs. I also tried the approach to create audio stems and then arrange it in a DAW but that doesn‘t work for me. The electronic music I do requires a lot of motion and a lot of automation of the synths over the whole arrangement and with this approach it’s not possible, the stems are static. It works for FX though, but that’s not enough for my music.

So, I think I need a DAW that has all the possibilities I have in AUM, but this simply does not exist. Neither Cubasis nor Zenbeats or AEM have fully implemented multi in/out and can’t do real sidechaining, Auria is too unstable and BM3 is just not my pair of shoes. Zenbeats is close but it’s also missing something like AUM‘s Midi tracks that host sequencers and support routing their output to any instrument. 😔

My only hope is that Logic lands on the iPad and that it has got all these features. Not that I dream of becoming a Logic user but I hope that it would force Steinberg and the others to finally offer a feature complete DAW. No DAW with sidechaining in anno domini 2021 - WTF. Anyway, I believe that will change and yesterday I ordered an 11 inch iPad Pro.

Telefunky

@krassmann said:
My only hope is that Logic lands on the iPad and that it has got all these features. ...

All these features won‘t help, because there‘s no screen estate to perform on.
The iPad (currently) is a single screen device and that‘s what you have to get along with
At least on the midi side it‘s fairly easy to chain multiple (non high power) iPads for control purpose.
On the audio (DAW part) you can exchange at least 8 stereo busses in both directions with iConnectivity interfaces. Or any number of channels between 0 and 20 if you setup sender and receiver in an asymetric way.

krassmann

@Telefunky said:

@krassmann said:
My only hope is that Logic lands on the iPad and that it has got all these features. ...

All these features won‘t help, because there‘s no screen estate to perform on.
The iPad (currently) is a single screen device and that‘s what you have to get along with
At least on the midi side it‘s fairly easy to chain multiple (non high power) iPads for control purpose.
On the audio (DAW part) you can exchange at least 8 stereo busses in both directions with iConnectivity interfaces. Or any number of channels between 0 and 20 if you setup sender and receiver in an asymetric way.

That's not true for iPads Pro. The display resolution is similar to a MacBook Air and already with the 2020 generation you can use a monitor. But that must be supported by the apps. For instance iMovie can use an external monitor to display the rendered video. Unfortunately only with the same aspect ratio as the native display.

Moreover I expect that the Thunderbolt port of the new pro models will utilize monitors better. I hope for a decent monitor support in iPadOS 15. It will probably be revealed during WWDC. It would be awesome if USB-C touch monitors would be supported.

Telefunky

... and already with the 2020 generation you can use a monitor. But that must be supported by the apps.

which makes it effectively a single screen device atm

onerez

@krassmann said:
I also like to develop ideas in AUM (usually with Atom 2, LK, Cykle, Riffer) and the creative flow is nice and easy and it’s a fantastic setup for live sessions. But I struggle a lot to arrange these jams into songs. I also tried the approach to create audio stems and then arrange it in a DAW but that doesn‘t work for me. The electronic music I do requires a lot of motion and a lot of automation of the synths over the whole arrangement and with this approach it’s not possible, the stems are static. It works for FX though, but that’s not enough for my music.

So, I think I need a DAW that has all the possibilities I have in AUM, but this simply does not exist. Neither Cubasis nor Zenbeats or AEM have fully implemented multi in/out and can’t do real sidechaining, Auria is too unstable and BM3 is just not my pair of shoes. Zenbeats is close but it’s also missing something like AUM‘s Midi tracks that host sequencers and support routing their output to any instrument. 😔

My only hope is that Logic lands on the iPad and that it has got all these features. Not that I dream of becoming a Logic user but I hope that it would force Steinberg and the others to finally offer a feature complete DAW. No DAW with sidechaining in anno domini 2021 - WTF. Anyway, I believe that will change and yesterday I ordered an 11 inch iPad Pro.

So like my last techno (ish) tune I did…. I would create stems that had the automation in it.. from AUM. yes its a pain but I just can’t do it all live any more. So I might have 4 different stems from one baseline that I then can throw in Cubasis.

I feel your pain @krassmann 😢

krassmann

@onerez I think I will try that. It’s always painful to commit to something and then being unable to modify the stem during arrangement. Crazy but just now an old thread woke up and it contains a very inspiring post that I copy here. The user describes a workflow on the iPad that embraces the commitment of recording to stems and I think that’s totally right. I just have to let go the idea to work on the iPad the same way as on the desktop.

The original post: https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/comment/749360/#Comment_749360

@klownshed said:

@swiperrr said:

@klownshed said:

Could you please tell me your iOS native workflow for reference?

Once I stopped trying to replicate my Logic workflow on the iPad everything just clicked.

I use a combination of apps and the main concept for me is when I’m using iOS I don’t worry about the mix Or arrangement. I just like to make short sections or sometimes just play with sound design. But I don’t get bogged down trying to arrange, produce and mix as I go anymore. That is crucial to my enjoyment of using iOS.

I’m gonna continue behind a spoiler as this getting long and I don’t want to take up too much room boring people :-)

When I get anything I like I record the stems. On desktop I never commit anything. Right up ti exporting a final master everything is editable and tweakable. I like to do the opposite with iOS and use it the way I used to make music on multitrack tape. Commit and move on.

I like to use AUM with rozeta sequencers to make loops. I usually use all soft synths on iOS, rarely anything sample based.

I import the stems into BlocsWave on my iPhone, usually for future use.

Then I can load blocs on my iPhone and can be putting together my loops in no time. BW is time of fun and I use it to explore arrangement ideas and jam with loops never originally intended to go together. I often get nice results using the loops at vastly different tempos to the original loops.

Once I have a germ of an idea I usually export the Blocswavd project and import the audio into Logic where I finish the track. Hopefully!

I often fire up my phone to get some ideas down for the track when inspiration strikes.

I do not like using my iPad as a logic replacement.

I feel like I’ve found a way of working that suits me and uses the devices to their strengths. I don’t like working around limitations that are unhelpful musically. By that I mean fiddling with a piano roll that is much more fiddly and slower to use than I’m used to on desktop isn’t creative. It’s just frustrating. I’m 10x quicker on logic and iOS DAWS make me feel like I’m trying to play piano wearing boxing gloves.

However, limiting myself musically works for me. When I’m lacking inspiration, starting at an empty arrange window on a 27” screen just sucks all inspiration away and I have so much content on the computer option paralysis can quickly get in the way. I can lose hours I don’t have to spare just auditioning synth sounds then I forget what I wanted the sound for.

If I’m using AUM on my iPad I tend to limit myself to a fairly small track count and this can be fun. I don’t feel the need to keep adding tracks for example, I concentrate on the more important aspects.

iOS DAWs are very limited and frequently frustrating when trying to use them the way I use logic. So I don’t use them that way.

I use all the tools available to me on iOS to just have fun and this makes me much more creative. I can load up NS2 or AUM add a handful of synths and a couple of drum synths and just play.

Sometimes this results in nothing. But often I find some bits I like which I record as audio and add to my library. Commit and move on.

When I come to use these loops at a later date I often have no recollection of making the loop and can’t remember how it was made. So I don’t worry about it and use it as I would any sampled loop.

This method suits me today as I have a very different life to when I started using computers and synths to make music in the late 80s. I don’t have the time I used to have and iOS has been essential into getting me back into making music again. But to repeat what I said at the start I had to change my priorities with iOS to avoid frustration and become creative. I started off trying to do everything on iOS and make full songs. I now use iOS the way I’d use a guitar or piano with band mates in the past. I use it to actually write music and just use logic once I’ve already got a song to record.

Best of both worlds.

But my advice isn’t to copy anything I do but to find your own way. iOS has given me so many different ways of making music. Explore them all and just have fun.

Here’s a relatively recent example of a song I made like this:

All drums are from iOS. Mostly Ruismaker. The synth at the beginning with the sample and hold style modulation was made on iOS; it’s a Lorentz sound I modulated with stepbud. The chorus synths and vocoder were made in Logic.

The loops went back and forth; I often put the logic stems back into BlocsWave so that I could work on arrangement ideas. This resulted in a much simpler arrangement. The first few tries in logic were far more complex and had different drum loops all over the place. By using BW on my iPhone I discovered I really liked the simple arrangement with fewer changes. Anyway, I hope that this helps spark some ideas and takes you off into a completely different direction.

mistercharlie

I like BM3 for coming up with ideas, and working on variations. It’s also the best way I’ve found for recording the OP-Z. The sampler’s midi sync is tighter than Ableton even. Then I can export these clips to Ableton or Logic.

The only thing I don’t like about using BM3 is that naming the samples is a huge pain. iirc it creates a duplicate whenever you rename one.

robosardine

@Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr said:
What’s wrong with Cubasis? I have some quibbles with it, but it’s pretty easy to split loops and arrange them on a grid.

@jwmmakerofmusic said:
Can you explain how Cubasis 2 is laborious for you mate? I use NS2 as my main DAW, but since I can't really record and edit vocals on there, I use Cubasis as my audio editor.

You were right all along 🤗! After trying several and having a good go with Audio Evolution for a while I gave Cubasis 2 another go. Now I can’t even fathom what my problem was with it 😀. It’s working out just great, much easier than I previously found. I have now clicked. Editing and getting around it is just a breeze like you said. It even seems to sound better for me.

jwmmakerofmusic

@robosardine said:

@Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr said:
What’s wrong with Cubasis? I have some quibbles with it, but it’s pretty easy to split loops and arrange them on a grid.

@jwmmakerofmusic said:
Can you explain how Cubasis 2 is laborious for you mate? I use NS2 as my main DAW, but since I can't really record and edit vocals on there, I use Cubasis as my audio editor.

You were right all along 🤗! After trying several and having a good go with Audio Evolution for a while I gave Cubasis 2 another go. Now I can’t even fathom what my problem was with it 😀. It’s working out just great, much easier than I previously found. I have now clicked. Editing and getting around it is just a breeze like you said. It even seems to sound better for me.

That was me and Drambo. Couldn't click with it at first, and then.....I did. 😂