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IOS for singers- creativity and control- live fx
Hi all,
I've been lurking for a short while and decided to join up. There seems a wealth of knowledge on all things ios music here, very cool.
A bit of background- I'm a musician/singer who decided to plunge into the world of ios recently. i periodically check these things out as time passes. Recently I thought this ecosystem seems ready and stable/powerful enough to jump into from my hardware-based world, especially as my main instrumental skills are keyboard-based.
I'm old-school but have no desire to stay in the past with my gear!
So I am just getting started but my ultimate aim would be to use ios apps to run my stage needs- live keys rig and live vocal fx processing.
The first step would be the vocal fx.
There seem to be so many excellent fx out there I could use, from the obvious choices like Mixbus CS to the ToneBoosters stuff and much more. Not too concerned about that angle. More about hosting/chaining....
I guess the kind of advice I would appreciate would be on a best choice interface and host to do it all with. I got AUM and Audiobus to see what suits. Also seems Keystage could be a good solution?
Interface-wise I like the look of the Audient stuff (the id14ii) and the SSL 2 or 2+. Basing that off the supposed quality of the mic pre's. I dont think these are for ios as such, but assume they are class-compliant? I suppose round -trip latency is important too but I dont want to stretch cost-wise to an RME...
Any thoughts/suggestions welcome, especially if you think there's an interface that is the best choice or worth considering. Or if theres anything I haven't thought about that could screw things up, haha!
Comments
Hey Anagram, I can confirm that SSL2+ works with my Air 4 perfectly.
If you're driving dynamic mics then you'll need an interface with enough gain, the Audient and SSL 2 should both be OK for that.
I have no experience with either, so can't comment, but from what I know the SSL should work with iOS (being class compliant), and the Audient definitely does but needs to be connected to a desktop computer to change some of the settings.
The latest generation of Focusrite Scarletts have much improved preamps compared to earlier generations, and they work with iOS without any issues. I have a first-gen 4i2 that has noisy preamps (when pushed) and a third-gen Solo that is much better and can drive a dynamic mic without adding noise.
Regarding latency, don't spend a bunch of money to get low latency because it isn't going to pay off on iOS. Much of the low latency in the high end devices is because of their custom drivers. They can't install drivers on iOS so they have to use the Apple provided class compliant drivers. There are somethings they can do on the hardware/firmware side to make sure they aren't adding undue latency in the device OS and things like that, but they can't get the same sort of latency improvements that they can on the Mac over the Mac's default class compliant drivers.
Most interfaces are pretty good now. I really like my MOTU M4 but that's mainly because their DA stage is very good and their output amps are too. For that kind of money, you can get excellent quality now. The main thing is to look for the connection features you need.
Some great advice there folks, thank you. Special thanks @NeonSilicon- as I mentioned this is all relatively new to me so I hadn't considered that custom drivers can't be written.
I seriously cannot wait to dump my TC Helicon Voicelive 3 in the bin (not literally of course). Been using touchscreens for 20 years now and it is the right medium for me for any music work.
You’ll want the Harmonizr app.
I'll probably end up like everyone and want too many! Thanks, I'll check it out.
VoiceFxRack is a great place to start.
I have a Voicelive 3 myself. Fantastic piece of gear and great for live use.
I had mine sold since I hardly use it anymore and backed up last minute. If I ever play live again I want it, it’s the best multi fx I’ve owned, and I owned and sold a Helix which is superior in sound but nowhere as complete.
But it does sound kind of meh when recorded and I don’t dig as an audio interface.
I own Harmony 8 by vyrsin and there’s a few promising vocoder/harmonizers but I haven’t settled on one, I’m looking for more harmonizer and less vocoder.
I hadn’t heard about this one. Is it good?. The UI is kind of weird looking.
I don’t know if you play guitar, I use the voicelive harmonizer with the guitar. To do that on iOS is not as straightforward. You’d need to turn the guitar notes to midi (Midi Guitar or one of those apps that turn audio to midi) and then send that midi to a harmonizer app. You can probably do it in AUM, if something can be done and routed, AUM can do it. It’s gonna be harder on a daw, where routing is more limited. Can’t do it in Zenbeats which is the daw I mostly use. I believe you can do it in Cubasis after the latest 3.5 update, using a midi side chain thingy. I don’t how well it’ll work. Voicelive is good at figuring out notes from a chord, I don’t know if the audio 2 midi apps are any good at figuring out polyphonic material, I doubt it from my experience. Maybe someone can clarify if these apps can work with chords?.
@tahiche I know the Voicelive is good at what it does and is a really good quality product- but yeah for me it's a singing guitarist's tool by design. I think the iPad fits better with my ethos.
I don't use the harmony function much and would probably record harmonies in track for live use.
There is this guy here too from 4Pockets for harmony, seems good from the one video I watched:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vocal-harmonizer-auv3-plugin/id1466786161?ign-mpt=uo%3D4
Probably can't do complex stuff and scale-based harmony like the Voicelive but interesting...
Harmonizr is what you’re after. Driven by Midi Guitar 2 or some other audio to midi app…I still need to find some time to do this myself, replacing my TC Harmony GXT.
On another note if you connect the VoiceLive to your iPad you should be able to unlock the full version of Guitar Rack, which is TC’s guitar modeling app that was actually the first AUv3 one. Not terrible, and still recommend using separate cab IRs with it.
Check also JAX Unisonic :
https://apps.apple.com/fr/app/jax-unisonic-audio-unit/id1492522141
@Paulo164 I wonder your opinion on the latency of any pitch changes on this app versus others?
The Jax app description goes into some detail about how there could be less latency, which to me would be a more realistic harmony sound on instruments or singing. I love Harmonizr, just wondering if Jax is better.
Sorry, I have no clue about how latency compares with other apps.
Harmony Eight by VirSyn also claims to have "Low latency live usage with mic and headphones.".
But I don't know if it can take MIDI IN as JAX Unisonic seems to do.
As a follow-up, I played my first gig using Mixbox CS in AUM as my vocal rack. Flawless, no dropouts or glitches. Tonally walks all over the Voicelive 3 Extreme that I had been using, imo.
Interestingly one member of my band, who is a full-time producer/engineer and has his own commercial studio, quizzed me about it when I first used it in rehearsal the week before. He instantly noticed how much better-sounding my vocal chain was than before.
Even without any other plugins, it's doing exactly what I want and sounding exactly how I want. Best move I have made in a while!
That is interesting. Did you stick with one setting for your entire gig, or did you load different racks for different songs?
@Anagram_R
we want to see you mixbox setup!
As I am in my infancy with it, I had only had time to create a few racks. No radical departures, just changes like using saturator on one song, different delay type on another, that kind of thing. Being able to fine-tune at the gig, hands on, is so useful.
I will post something up later? Chains are quite simple really- but they are effective and sound good!
I have been using a Focusrite Scarlet series live for a couple years. I use it for guitar and some vocal fx. I am very fortunate to have three excellent backup singers in my band so I don't use a harmonizer but Mixbox is my one stop vocal fx shop right now.
Simple and effective.
The next thing would be to map on/off and parameters to a controller, but I haven’t seen an easy way to do this- does MixBox even have MIDI Learn?
Don’t know with mixbox but with Drambo and other AUs you find midi control in midi control settings. See it mixbox exposes unit on/off. I’d be surprised it wouldn’t at this price. 😮
Bottom right in the picture.
I need to go back and check, but I think I remember doing that and you get a list of parameters with no definitions, just numbers. Be pretty time-comsuming to go through them all to find what parameters they change on each effect. A standard Midi Learn function should be an essential on any new updates.
So you’d change MixBox presets between songs?.
Regarding MixBox tweaking via midi mapping to a hardware controller, it’s right there in AUM.
It even has a “Load preset” action where you could switch presets via a controller…
Things to note:
Interesting stuff. To replicate a “pedalboard” thing I’d say it would take some thinking. Let’s take a midi switch pedalboard as an example mapped to MixBox in AUM . You’d need either:
A ) fixed midi mappings to slots in MixBox. So say you have pedal 1 turn on/off slot 1 fix, pedal 2 turn on/off slot 2 and so on… so the pedalboard has fixed mappings and all MixBox presets “respect” the order of slots. This is actually like Voicelive works, with effects in a chain, always on the same order.
B ) variable midi mappings and fx chains. More flexible but requieres a lot more work… You’d need a midi controller with presets and you’d map specific midi mappings per controller preset - MixBox preset. This would be very powerful but more prone to errors. Before a song you switch a preset on the controller (song3 preset), that triggers a Cc message to load the corresponding preset in MixBox (song 3 preset) and you program the controller specifically for that song, maybe have a switch to freeze a reverb or more specific stuff….
Wow, that was long. I had an appointment to sell my VoiceLive since I really don’t use it. But I couldn’t. It’s too reliable, live that thing and hope to use it again.
Cheers!