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BS-16i new Version 2.1 and price drop: $7.99 --> $4.99
The update just says "Supported 64bit build". Definitely one of my go-to apps for rendering midi.
Comments
Paid 7.99 for it and worth every penny. Super-versatile app with endless free content.
I picked it up, to many good songs with this in its credits not to. Now I'm left questioning why I didn't sooner.
yeah, basically if you haven't got it, more fool you. It's rock solid and uses very little cpu
Yeah, picked it up last night when it went on sale and have dl some great sound font sets
I as just about to almost pull the trigger with sampletank.. but much happier with this
The only app so far that has made me wish I had bought larger than a 16 GB iPad. I've probably got 6 - 8 GB of various soundfonts now. Yeah, I went a little overboard.
@Coloobar said:
The good news is that the app itself is like 50-ish MB, and that comes with 100+ varied SoundFonts. What I do is save a DropBox folder with the different SoundFonts ready to go in .sf2 format, and use AudioShare to import them over if I need a specific one. The process takes like 30 seconds, usually. You can only load 4 banks at one time anyway, but the packs themselves can have tons of sounds in them. I really don't tend to have more than 100MB dedicated to storage for bs-16i at any given time.
This thread is required reading if you're interested in bs-16i and want and idea of how to find sounds and use the app:
http://forum.audiob.us/discussion/1400/soundfonts#Item_103
I would note that it's generally a good idea to use it with .sf2 files smaller than 100MB, or probably less than 50MB. Some of my favorites are the e-mu Planet Phat Hip-Hop (great synth basses) and some various symphony ones.
That's a good Dropbox tip.
My only nit about the app, unless I'm doing it wrong, is that once you load up a soundfont bank you only have access to one channel of the soundfont at a time. It would be nice, for instance, to be able to load up a big orchestral soundfont and then program a sequencer to play a full orchestra using all of the different instrument channels at once. You can do this with soundfont VSTi's on a PC.
@Coloobar
I'm at work so I'm unable to test at the moment but it looks like in BS16i Settings you can go into the Synthesizer menu and set MIDI channels. I'm not sure how that fits in with the 4 different Soundfonts that can be loaded into the 4 available Libraries.
@Coloobar said:
You can set up 16 different midi channels in BS16i, each with their own instrument, and play them all at once.
Good to know - scratch what I just wrote then.
Also, in addition to the MIDI thing (which I haven't tried), the iPad version has two keyboards that can be mapped to different Soundfonts. So you could do like bass note plus melody, like you might on SoundPrism, or a real-life organ.
A recommended app, then, yes?
I have SoundFont Pro already ... is it worth it ?
@richardyot said:
will this work on a iPad 2? I'm worried about CPU resources!
Also, how does this app compare to Thumbjam for soundfont playback? What would make me want to use this over Thumbjam?
@Hmtx said:
T
TJ doesn't support Sf2 ......you can of course use TJ2 as a midi controller to play sounds from Bsi
You can actually map each onscreen keyboard to more than one patch. I have a string section scene with 4 violin patches on the upper keyboard and 2 viola and 2 cello patches on the lower keyboard.
@thepinkelefant said:
wait, I thought Thumbjam does everything ;-) Thanks for the reply
also, @PaulB, that screenshot is almost enough to make me go buy it right now! So are those fx and pan knobs themselves mappable to an external MIDI controller?? That could be fun.
@Hmtx said:
I have an iPad2 and there are many apps that I'd love to have but won't touch for fear of not being able to run them. bs-16i does not give me any trouble on iPad2, certainly not even to the level of other apps that "work", like Sunrizer, etc. I do not consider it particularly resource-hungry.
Of course, as you know, there are general rules with an iPad2 you need to follow at all times, so if you don't follow them, bs-16i or pretty much any app can give you problems. Open only the apps you need, use airplane mode for recording, and consider going to 512 frames in AudioBus if you experience any issues.
I use bs-16i over other apps specifically BECAUSE it seems to run smoother, and because it was universal and I could also use it on my phone.
@Hmtx said:
I have both and to be honest it is a second time I downloaded bs16 and after a few minutes I'm ready to delete it again. I am not that much into 'natural' sounds emulations and to be honest with the expressiveness of thumbjam I'd say what's the point? It totally took me back to times when I used to scroll through gm sound banks on good old yamaha and casio home keyboards with patches like 'footsteps', 'dog bark' and 'punch'. So glad those times are over
This is my personal opinion though, so if you're into emulations there's definitely hips of quality sf2 files out there. Alternatively you could hunt for a violin, cello or a dulcimer player and make them a cup of tea. That of course wouldn't work with the whole orchestra
@Hmtx You can get free (or paid) studio-quality, multi-velocity drum kit soundfonts that rival or surpass anything else available for iOS right now. The app is worth it for me for that alone.
@Coloobar said:
Good point. While I haven't tried too much drumming with it, I can say that the velocity response on the keyboard is GREAT. Not even sure how they program it that well with a glass screen as an interface.
@supadom said:
That's like judging the quality of a cut crystal decanter by the taste of the wine that happens to be in it...
I could use a good decanter. Especially hearing about all the free wine available. :-)
Really the only downside is that it seems like it will be a chore to sift thru soundfont libraries trying to find the 10-20 that I will likely enjoy using.
As I said this is only an opinion of somebody who is not into emulations of real instruments. I am yet to hear an emulated orchestra that will fool me into believing it is real. Of course if you slap tons of reverb on it things get harder but the magic (for me) also disappears. Saying that most of the time synths aren't much better. This is my general opinion on sf and not bs16 per se.
+1JamMaestro
Is it worth buying bs-16i if you already own Soundfont Pro?
If you need 2 cut crystal decanters then yes
@supadom said:
Obviously, your opinion about "real orchestra vs. synth/sample" orchestra is valid. I think the problem for most people, however, lies in the fact that they don't have a spare 40-person orchestra in their basement to record live into an Apogee mic. It's one thing to pick up a guitar and learn some chords well enough to play usable music. As some who played violin (mostly pretty poorly) for 7 years in school, I guarantee you that given the choice between ME playing it for you versus a quality Soundfont, you'd want the latter in your music.
You know this already, but bs-16i and Thumbjam are samples, not synthesizers. Soundfont is basically a glorified .wav file of recorded real instruments. A Soundfont CAN also be a sampled synthesizer, just like it can be a kick drum or a guitar note.
I'd like to think I'm more selective than most about the accuracy of orchestra samples, but I have to say, some of the results I've gotten from ThumbJam and some Soundfonts, are better than I ever dreamed would come out of an iPhone. The problems usually lie not in the individual notes, but in the legato and unnatural transitions from one note to another. ThumbJam, in particular, does this surprisingly well. And since the real thing is, well, impossible for most people to arrange and record, something like bs-16i is a nice tool to have.
I'm sure and I don't think we even disagree. TJ is the only wav sample player that I use and appreciate because apart from using great samples it also gives you a rare opportunity to modulate the sound with the finger while playing. Now I'm going to contradict what I've said earlier on. I did record a fake TJ string quartet that could easily pass for real but I don't think I'd be able to do it with bs16 because of the interface. Ipad has caught my attention because of this incredible trigger surface that is its screen. I honestly hope that one day soon we'll be playing pressure sensitive tablets to add that extra element that is still missing. This is why I still find it amazing how many synth apps are there with a piano style keyboard. There should be more apps like TJ. I'd probably be more inclined to use bs16 if it had more intuitive playing surface. Suggesting to control bs16 with TJ just starts getting a bit too complicated, too distant from the 'just grab a guitar and play' paradigm.
While I would be the first to agree that apps the like of TJ, Geo Synth and iFretless are best suited to playing with the nuances required to reproduce the performance of a single instrument, I would also argue that those nuances are not all appropriate to ensemble playing by groups of instruments. Vibrato and glissando techniques tend to be eshewed in favour of variation in articulation and dynamics, something that bs-16i actually does quite well. This demo was recorded live in one take on the two onscreen keyboards using a different stack of 4 patches on each keyboard.