Spitfire Abbey Road One

LinearLineman

Listen and weep my good iOS droogs. Some fantastic sounds out of Spitfire. I’m happy with my neW SWAMs, however. I’m not John Williams, anyway.

https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/abbey-road-one-orchestral-foundations/?v=_tSct5RJDkI&om_campaign=omme_ca4d5e0d-30c_37649_128475&om_profile=297e-b1f913-01c4e4d0&om_send=30e270020e6f4ee1b44ba34b7375b208&utm_campaign=omme_ca4d5e0d-30c_abbey_road_one_follow_up_email&utm_content=split_w_win_2&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ometria

JohnnyGoodyear

I have been (and will be) avoiding any kind of intercourse with the various promotional opportunities etc.

qryss

Spitfire Audio do some amazing things - my favourite sounds atm along with Empty Vessel and The Unfinished. Love the recent Spitfire intimate strings app, sadly not for iOS but so could be - it’s just samples.

Svetlovska

Fwiw, I second the opinions of @LinearLineman and @qryss, Spitfire Labs https://labs.spitfireaudio.com/ is a fantastic, free, source for some inspiring DAW-only sample set VSTs (‘Soft Piano’ is a particular favourite), and in return for your email and a bit of a wait, you can also get the awesome usually £49 BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover sample set VST completely free too, https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/bbc-symphony-orchestra-discover/ , featuring a few different articulations for every section of the orchestra. To this unsophisticated not-a-composer, they sound totally awesome. I got it a couple of days ago and now have to resist everything sounding like John Williams in boxing gloves.

I also find the vids they do interesting. Yes, @JohnnyGoodyear, they are a commercial company and ultimately trying to sell you stuff, but they are giving away a lot of real top quality sound sets too, plus the lead guys enthusiasm and their passion for music and for recorded sound shines through.

If you do use a DAW alongside your IPad (I have just this week finally got hardware, mixing desk, drum, keys, launchpad and DAW controllers, and IPad all talking to each other in useful way via my iConnect 4+, hoorah!) then they are definitely worth checking out.

ajmiller

Once past the ‘acquired taste’ of the presentation, to hear what the One sound library sounds like in the hands of a seasoned film/ tv/ games composer is impressive.

LinearLineman

@Svetlovska, Agreed, Spitfire offers wonderful free material including the Discovery free orchestra (you have to fill out a survey and wait two weeks). Plus dozens of free sounds. Very good customer support as well (inc. the freebies). It would be fantastic if they got into iOS, but seems unlikely.

Tell me about your experience the iConnect4, if you would. It was recommended to me here.

Svetlovska

@LinearLineman: yes, the iconnect Audio4+:

I’m not a midi whizzkid, used to doing all the smart things others here achieve syncing hardware to IPads and DAWs, and though I did RTFM more than once, I spent literally months trying to get the following to play nice together:

Soundcraft Signature mixing desk/audio interface14 channel desk
2012 MacBook Pro running Catalina & Ableton Live Suite
Launchpad Pro
Arturia Keystep
Arturia Beatstep Pro
Novation Launchcontrol XL
Novation Monostation
Behringer Neutron
Arturia Microfreak
AUM on a 2018 IPad Air
Korg SQ10 sequencer
Roland MC202
Korg MS10
Behringer patchbay
Powered monitors.
Yamaha MT400 cassette multitrack (used for Hainbach style loop and speed experiments)
Guitars, basses, various experimental noisemakers.

I think to someone who does know what they are doing, setting up the Iconnect to act as the hub for this system via the accompanying iconfig app is probably very straightforward, the ‘audio patchbay’ looks deceptively easy to set up. But I am still taking baby steps understanding mixing desks and Ableton, and trying to find a set up for my somewhat random ‘using Ableton as a massive sound sampler’ working method, let alone figuring out the Iconnect, and I did not find this easy.

Early bumps in the road were not initially realising that the ‘host’ USB port on the rear of the Iconnect can only address a maximum of 8 physical devices in addition to the four front panel inputs, and 20 total ports connected simultaneously via a powered usb hub; that my MBP offers only two USB ports, one of which has to be handed over to the Iconnect Mac end of the double headed cable it comes with (the other going to the iPad, obvs]; and understanding that I also needed to create an ‘aggregate audio device’ on the MBP comprising the Iconnect and the Soundcraft if I wanted to use the Soundcraft’s digital interface aspect simultaneously with the Iconnect.

Another bump was that none of my control surfaces would ‘just work’ with Ableton unless plugged directly into the MBP, going via the powered hub for some reason wasn’t good enough.

The solution there was a bonus discovery when I got hold of a secondhand Apple Cinema Display to give me enough screen real estate to get into proper rearrangements of my timeline view.

The Cinema Display (a thing of beauty, btw) uses the now obsolete Thunderbolt 1 interface to the MBP, and has three USB ports of it’s own. By plugging the Launchpad Pro and Launchcontrol XL directly into the Cinema Display, the combo of launchpad and XL are both, finally, automatically recognised when Ableton boots, giving me excellent hands on physical control of most clip launching and track mixing aspects of Ableton. With the iPad plugged in to the lightning connector from the Iconnect lead, I can now immediately on power up with my much reworked template saved, record both midi and audio from the iPad directly into a fresh Ableton session, with no tinkering required.

Last night, for the first time, I ran tempo synced sequences from the MonoStation and SQ10, alongside existing Ableton tracks, live tweaking the Neutron knobs as the SQ10 did it’s thing, recorded scale constrained parts from the Launchpad Pro, sampled a bass patch from the MC202 into Simpler, then swapped modes to use the Pro as my clip launcher, entered beats live from the Beatstep pads, and notes from the keystep - and it all ran like a dream.

I am very much a ‘hash out a few noises, then cut n paste it into something’ sort of person, (thrillingly I also actually layered a guitar part in yesterday - total noob guitarist here - then used the audio to midi converter in Ableton to turn a few chords into a Max For Live randomised sequencer extravaganza. All very satisfying.)

I have no requirement for tight timing across multiple bits of hardware running simultaneously, fancy midi controlled preset switching, or anything associated with live performance, though I do note that once you have a setup you like for the Iconnect, it can be saved into the firmware of it, and used entirely computer free, if that is important to you. There’s also an iPad version of the iconfig app, but I’ve not tried it.

I tend to only record one stereo pair from a single audio and/or midi source at once into an Ableton project, building it up track by track, or a max of 8 simultaneous audio and MIDI tracks from an AUM jam.

(Still working on getting the iconfig setup to recognise different simultaneous midi channels, it’s probably something simple that I’ve missed - at the moment, regardless of the channel filtering I use in AUM, everything comes through into Ableton on Channel 1. I can live with that for now, as by the time I have 8 channels blamming away in AUM, the thing is more or less done except for audio arrangement and that part is working just fine.)

I currently have all the noise generating hardware going via patchbay into individual ins on the Soundcraft, and the output from that going into two of the four available front panel ins on the Iconnect. What I wanted was just an easy way to transfer and build upon my iPad soundscape jams, incorporating a few choice bits of hardware for the knob twiddling fun, that ‘Just Works’ and is immediately ready to record a thing whilst the muse is still upon me, no buzzkill complicated set up required each time.

Fingers crossed, after quite a lot of moments when I though I was never going to pull it off, and with the much appreciated help of several people on this form, it seems that the Iconnect has actually got me there.

Final word of caution - it is now obsolete, and iconnect don’t seem to have anything comparable in their current lineup, so if you want one, probably best to get it now ‘while stocks last’. I certainly found nothing else that offers that tight integration between iPad and DAW.

Hope this helps

LinearLineman

Wow @Svetlovska! Thanks for the fascinating insights into what it takes to get the show off the ground. Very impressive stuff. Would love to see a photo of this setup. I loved the extra screen solution you came up with. How exactly do you connect your keyboards? You might post this as an off topic thread so others can see what’s involved. Very helpful info.

Iconnect has a 4x4 mio.... I guess that’s the replacement? Do you think it has similar functionality?

Thanks again for the detailed overview. My difficulty is that it’s so easy to sit down and just use the iPad and my keyboard to make a fast track... and then there’s the mixing in bed, bath and beyond... 🛀🛋🛏