Cubasis 3.3.1 vs Audio Evolution Mobile Studio 4.3.2. How is the current state of things?

Pynchon

Hello, I’m new to iOS music production. I started using AUM for my creations and live jams. But now, I need a reliable DAW for lineal editing. I’m specially interested in having advanced audio tools because I like to experiment with field recordings and sculpting of sounds.

I purchased Cubasis 3, but sadly, AUM spoiled me with its bus routing options that I consider an essential tool in my workflow. I need to be able to send the audio with effects of a channel to new channels, and then modifying these channels. Sometimes, with a simple sound and a subsequent multiplication of this same sound with small variations through the chain of linked buses, I can arm a complete piece of music. And when I move the CC parameter of an effect in the original channel, this will create subtle changes in the rest of channels routed through this. Something that is very hard to replicate by simply cloning tracks in Cubasis.

I have read that Auria Pro has fantastic routing options and audio tools, including audio scrubbing. But the lack of AUv3 parameter automation is a deal breaker for me.

This brought me to Audio Evolution Mobile Studio. Its record of updates seems impressive, with an active developer constantly adding new features and squeezing bugs, contrary to Auria whose development seems to been in an hiatus state. Plus I love the idea of having Ableton Link integrated, or the possibility of inserting an infinite number of effects per track.

But before I make the investment in a new DAW, I want to know if Audio Evolution has the option of sending the audio with effects of a track to a channel, and then inserting the audio of this channel in a new audio track, similar to AUM.

If not, maybe I should continue with Cubasis, and purchase ApeMatrix instead. Using its AUv3 modules to route audio through channels in Cubasis as a possible fix.

Also, I have other couple of questions regarding Audio Evolution Mobile Studio. Does it has support for multi I/O AUv3 effects routing, in a similar fashion to the most recent Cubasis 3.3 update?

And how it compares to Cubasis 3 in its audio edition tools? Does it has audio scrubbing, better tools for audio stretching and pitch shifting?

Thanks in advance.

ChancedMusic

Do group tracks not work for your need in Cubasis 3? You can have just one track routes
to the grouped track. You don’t have to have multiple.

rollin

@Pynchon said:

But before I make the investment in a new DAW, I want to know if Audio Evolution has the option of sending the audio with effects of a track to a channel, and then inserting the audio of this channel in a new audio track, similar to AUM.

You can have as many audio tracks as you like, with effects on each one.

You can have as many sends as you like, with effects on each one.

You can send audio from any audio track to any send (or straight to master).

You can send audio from any send track to any other send (or straight to master).

You can write automation on any audio track or any send track (the send track appears as a virtual audio track in this instance).

I wrote that longwinded description because technically you can't return the send track as a new audio track, so there are some limitations.

I think the routing is versatile enough that it would work for what you've described.

Pynchon

@DukeWonder said:
Do group tracks not work for your need in Cubasis 3? You can have just one track routes
to the grouped track. You don’t have to have multiple.

Thanks for your suggestion, @DukeWonder, I know that you can create a group of tracks in Cubasis 3, but this has a completely different purpose to routing the sound of a channel to a bus that you can add as a source of sound to feed the signal of other audio tracks.

Creating a group of tracks is really useful if you want to save resources. Or applying, let’s say, a compressor to all your drum tracks.

The thing that I want to do is for example, creating a simple sound with effects in a track. Route this original sound to other 5 different tracks. In each one of these 5 tracks, deforming the original sound through extreme effects like glitches with Glitchcore, distortion with SoundSaw or Shaper 2, etc.

Then, when I alter the parameter of an effect in the original track, the other 5 tracks feeded by this source with also vary their sounds.

Maybe, I can route one of these 5 tracks to other bus, putting the output of this bus in other 3 tracks, creating other extreme variations.

In a way in which with a simple beep sound or with a bit of noise created with auGEN X, I can create a complex and organic sound, evolving with the interactions of the automated CC parameters of the different AUv3 effects and instruments.

AudioGus

Not sure if it helps as I have not used it but Ape Matrix gives you an AU that you can load in Cubasis that may help…?

rollin

Whilst I find the routing really straightforward in AEM, automating parameters is a bit fiddly. I think this is most likely because I am on a 5" screen.

I prefer a tracker interface for editing parameters vs the standard DAW automation curve paradigm. So my biases may be coming into play here.

AudioGus

…

echoopera

@pynchon Since you're in the market for something with routing flexibility, have you looked into Drambo at all? It's more akin to having an OctaTrack or DigiTakt on your iOS device. It also works fantastically well with AUM

Here's a quick demonstration of why Drambo might be for you and everyone else wanting to do crazy audio routing

Enjoy the Gravity of the Rainbow that is Drambo

wim

You can host AUM inside Cubasis.

Pynchon

@rollin said:
I wrote that longwinded description because technically you can't return the send track as a new audio track, so there are some limitations.

Thanks, @rollin , very useful information, now I have a whole picture of which are the possibilities (and limitations) of Audio Evolution Mobile Studio.

I think that I will follow the advice of @AudioGus , prioritizing the purchase of ApeMatrix.

Now that I think of this, other possibility is to use the beta version of Sonobus, using the local network option for sending audio between channels. But in my experiments sending the Alchemy synth from Garageband through AUM via Sonobus, even in a local network, sometimes there are some rare audio crackels due to the connection speed. So I suppose that ApeMatrix should work much better.

@echoopera said:
@pynchon Since you're in the market for something with routing flexibility, have you looked into Drambo at all? It's more akin to having an OctaTrack or DigiTakt on your iOS device. It also works fantastically well with AUM

Here's a quick demonstration of why Drambo might be for you and everyone else wanting to do crazy audio routing

Enjoy the Gravity of the Rainbow that is Drambo

Thanks @echoopera in your advice about Drambo. I purchased Drambo the last month, and I’m still exploring some of its possibilities. But there is a reason for which for some of my current projects I can’t rely in AUM, and I need a timeline. AUM and Drambo are amazing for live playing. But I’m with some glitch experiments in which I’m playing with rompled segments of some parts of the compositions, recorded as audio files. And I want to put tracks with small and messy fragments, using some effects. For this, I need a complete control of a timeline, to trigger each sample or sound in an exact second, with precise control. Mainly influenced by Rắn Cạp Đuôi and their last recording, ‘ Ngủ Ngày Ngay Ngày Tận Thế’, which is one of the most impressive works of experimental music that I have listened recently.

Also, I love modular, something completely new for me. But since I discovered miRack, I’m addicted and I have spent a lot of hours experimenting with its sequencers. Indeed, after learning the wire logic inside Eurorack modules, contradictorily, I find the Drambo method without wires incredibly more confusing!

@wim said:
You can host AUM inside Cubasis.

Yeah, sometimes I use AUM hosted inside Cubasis to record sessions. The thing is, once again, you can’t have complete control over a timeline. Or you can use things like Atom 2, but this is incredibly more time consuming.

The amazing thing about AUM is how it makes incredibly complex things like Midi routing look trivial and simple.

My main reason for choosing and iPad as my main music tool, over a Mac.

echoopera

@Pynchon said:

@rollin said:
I wrote that longwinded description because technically you can't return the send track as a new audio track, so there are some limitations.

Thanks, @rollin , very useful information, now I have a whole picture of which are the possibilities (and limitations) of Audio Evolution Mobile Studio.

I think that I will follow the advice of @AudioGus , prioritizing the purchase of ApeMatrix.

Now that I think of this, other possibility is to use the beta version of Sonobus, using the local network option for sending audio between channels. But in my experiments sending the Alchemy synth from Garageband through AUM via Sonobus, even in a local network, sometimes there are some rare audio crackels due to the connection speed. So I suppose that ApeMatrix should work much better.

@echoopera said:
@pynchon Since you're in the market for something with routing flexibility, have you looked into Drambo at all? It's more akin to having an OctaTrack or DigiTakt on your iOS device. It also works fantastically well with AUM

Here's a quick demonstration of why Drambo might be for you and everyone else wanting to do crazy audio routing

Enjoy the Gravity of the Rainbow that is Drambo

Thanks @echoopera in your advice about Drambo. I purchased Drambo the last month, and I’m still exploring some of its possibilities. But there is a reason for which for some of my current projects I can’t rely in AUM, and I need a timeline. AUM and Drambo are amazing for live playing. But I’m with some glitch experiments in which I’m playing with rompled segments of some parts of the compositions, recorded as audio files. And I want to put tracks with small and messy fragments, using some effects. For this, I need a complete control of a timeline, to trigger each sample or sound in an exact second, with precise control. Mainly influenced by Rắn Cạp Đuôi and their last recording, ‘ Ngủ Ngày Ngay Ngày Tận Thế’, which is one of the most impressive works of experimental music that I have listened recently.

Also, I love modular, something completely new for me. But since I discovered miRack, I’m addicted and I have spent a lot of hours experimenting with its sequencers. Indeed, after learning the wire logic inside Eurorack modules, contradictorily, I find the Drambo method without wires incredibly more confusing!

Are you going to be playing back samples which are then effected at specific times? You could always load a folder of sounds into a Sampler and load them into specific zones and play them…or pre-bake the Samples into a single file and place that 1 sound file into a FlexiSampler and slice it up based on Transients and play it via the properly mapped keys.

Drambo may not have a linear timeline but it is quite capable of many things when you think in a Drambo fashion.

Adam Hardyman has a great Glitch example using Drambo here:

And here’s an early study i did using 7 FlexiSamplers playing at different times in the 16 step sequence while abiding by conditional trigs/rules on when to play:

Here’s a quick little setup file using the single sample assigned to a FlexiSampler and sequenced with conditional trigs at different times in the sequence:
https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0e5FEjZobNcdIbtNVTCXR4NKA#Glitch_test-1_sample

It should open with the sample as well. Let me know if you have any problems with the file. Hope it helps somewhat since you already own Drambo 👊🏼™️

Pynchon

Thanks, @echoopera , the example in the video is impressive! I will definitely spend more time with Drambo.

I have tried to download your Drambo pacth, but I can’t import it into Drambo, everytime that I try to open the project, nothing happens.

All of that said, I can think in a lot of ways of achieving something similar with other programs. For example, recording a sample of a section in a track, slicing this sample in tens of fragmented sections of one second, then creating an instrument in for example AudioLayer. Triggering the notes of Audiolayer with miRack using the noteSeq module, which is one of the most crazy sequencers available on iOS. Maybe processing the midi output of noteSeq with midiGates and then with Cality to increase the radomness. Or directly slicing a micro sample in ReSlice, sequencing this with miRack+midiGates+Cality, and using LFOs to drive the parameters of ReSlice.

The thing is, I want to do this manually as an exercise in audio editing, with a spirit similar to Delia Derbyshire and her magnetic tapes manipulations. I find fascinating the idea of trying to achieve glitches like the created by effects such as GlitchCore, but in a manual way. And at the same time, to improve my skills with traditional DAWs and lineal editing of sound.

Regarding the original question of my topic, the comparison between Cubasis and Audio Evolution Mobile Studio, I finally bitted the bullet and purchased Audio Evolution.

While it has buses, they are completely ineffective. You can send the processed audio of a track to a new bus. But if you try to mute the sound of the original track, the audio in the bus will disappear. For experimental purposes, this defies the purpose of buses. Sometimes, you want an audio signal simply feeding other signals. If you reduce the volume of the original signal, you will also reduce the output volume of the rest of signals, even when the VU meters in the mixer console are displayed for these extra buses at a full level. Which is a poor design decision.

Plus the program is clunky as hell, you can’t modify most of the parameters while the audio is playing. There is a tactile timeline in the bottom of the screen, but you can’t navigate through this line if the play button is activated! And everytime that you open the program to start a new project, it will try to set the output audio to 44.1 kHz, which causes audio glitches on my iPad Pro M1. You can configure the audio to 48 kHz in the settings, but it will not save your preferences!

I have already requested a refund. It seems a very promising DAW, but it still needs a lot of work. And the UI design is horrible coming from Cubasis. Plus it’s a fest of clicks to access some basic functions.

ervin

@Pynchon, mate, if this is the level at which you operate when you consider yourself to be "new" in a field, I wonder how good you are in things where you don't consider yourself a newbie. 👊

MadGav

@Pynchon I think you’re talking about parallel processing - on a mixer I’d expect to achieve this by mult-ing in the patchbay. I think the only way to directly do similar in Cubasis is duplicating the track.

FWIW another weakness of Cubasis groups is you can only route a track to main or a group, not all of them or any desired selection. This would normally be possible on a hardware mixer with groups.

Sends could be used for limited parallel processing, but only 1 plug-in (make it MixBox, right?)

espiegel123

@Pynchon : i noticed you said that Auria Pro doesn't have parameter automation. That isn't true. It might not be the app for you, but it does provide for automation of AU parameters. The issue with regards to AU parameters and automation has to do with recording knob twiddling. If an AU reports knob touches, Auria will record the AU parameter changes. If an AU doesn't report touch status, it doesn't record the resulting parameter change. One can draw parameter changes. For those AUs that don't report AU control touches, it is a bit clunky, but I wanted to clarify since your statement seemed to indicate that AP doesn't do parameter automation at all.

echoopera

@Pynchon out of curiosity have you looked at ZenBeats? It offers individual Bus Sends as well and hosts AUv3 instruments and effects.

Aparillo being sent out to 3 distinct Busses of different effects with a timeline view to lay down Midi Data...I believe it also supports Audio on the timeline...but haven't done too much of that.

tahiche

@Pynchon I totally get your need for buses, I’ve tried plenty and haven’t found a proper solution. Auria is obviously way ahead in routing, like a “big daw’, you can use buses as outs, or groups or send effects. These are not possible in any other daw that I know of.

• send effects: sure Cubasis has them, Zenbeats too like @echoopera points out. But what if you want to stack fx instead of parallel sends?. Like have a distorted reverb send. You can’t.
• group tracks: Zenbeats can’t do it. Cubasis can in the recent update. But it’s still limited in functionality…
  I might be wrong, but internally a send fx track or a group track are basically buses, right?.why not expose them and let the user decide what to do with them?. Like have a track’s input set to another bus that is in turn a group output…
  I had no idea about the Ape Matrix plugin mentioned by @AudioGus. Looks really interesting. Sort of like the audio equivalent of Audioveek’s “Midi tools” bus send and receive. That could be a solution for the “stacked fx” sends, aswell as for “duplication” of signals.
  I keep saying audio in iOS is miles behind midi. The latest Cubasis update sort of stirred things up, but still… very limited audio editing, buses, etc. Glad to see I’m not alone!

Pynchon

Many thanks for your kind words, @ervin . I didn’t have any previous experience making music when I started this spring. I didn’t know the most basic and simple concepts, like what is a chord, a LFO or what is transposition in Midi. And I’m still very far of knowing these basic elements. Compression in mastering or how to use an equalizer in a channel to add coherence to a mix are still esoteric concepts for me, that I’m still very far of dominating.

Most of the things that I have learned have been reading this forum, searching for a topic everytime that I had a doubt, and investing a lot of time practicing. So more than a merit of me, my current point of knowledge is a consequence of how supportive and well versed is the people in this community.

@espiegel123 That’s great to know! Honestly, until last week that I started investing time in Cubasis, I preferred to automate using touch parameters in a live environment, and drawing points seemed weird to me. But once I figured out how it works, I very much prefer the method of drawing now. You can make crazy things that are much more hard to achieve using your fingers in a live environment. So not having touch parameters in every AUv3 parameter in Auria is not a problem.

For the moment, I will continue using Cubasis 3, with ApeMatrix for having audio buses. And I will wait until the next discount of Auria Pro for picking this and all the IAPs. Hopefully, in this time, I will also have a clear picture of the compatibility of Auria with the incoming iPad OS 15.

It’s not only a question of having audio buses. I hate to don’t have audio scrubbing integrated when you edit audio in Cubasis. And I really dislike its VU meters in the mixer console, coming from AUM. It’s amazing how well it works for adjusting the precise amount of volume in a mix. In comparison, I feel blind when I’m mixing in Cubasis. I really miss having yellow bars!

echoopera

@Pynchon I just wanted to say thanks for introducing us to Rắn Cạp Đuôi. I've been letting them flow through my headphones this past week...it's so awesome to hear this kind of experimental goodness coming out of Saigon...this is some of the most beautiful Controlled Chaos at its finest i have heard in a long time. Thank you for this.

Good luck in your quest to discover the right setup on iOS for your expressive needs.

I also wonder if this could be achieved with some creative routing and Sampling setup in NanoStudio 2...I may have to do a deep dive on this app to see what is possible.

You could use Slate as a sort of Clip launcher, defined by your timeline, and then effect your parts via your routing workflow...

echoopera

@Pynchon Just another quick follow up on your question. Is there a reason the Send FX Channel won't work in Cubasis for your needs? It offers up to 8 Global Send FX, with individual per channel Mix settings, which should allow you to route, customize and automate your SendFX on Audio and Midi channels quite effectively?

Anyhoo...I was playing with the SendFX last night in Cubasis, and thought about this thread and figured I'd ping it again.

Hope all is well.

Cheers!

Pynchon

@echoopera At the end I have found a reliable method for replicating my AUM experiments with complex audio routings in Cubasis 3, using ApeMatrix.

You have more info in this thread that I created today, regarding the setup and some of the limitations that I found:

https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/46515/i-need-an-auv3-fx-unit-for-recording-audio-at-24-bits-synced-with-the-transport-button-of-the-daw

If you are thinking in integrating ApeMatrix with audio buses working in a similar way to AUM, I also really recommend using miRack for creating mixers inside the channels feeding the buses. Cubasis 3 is very weird, and if you mute a track with an ApeMatrix Mixer Send Receive AUv3 instance, it will create an annoying sound. By including a miRack AUv3 instance with a mixer and a VU meter just after the ApeMatrix unit, you can overcome this limitation, changing the volume of a track without affecting the routed tracks.

I have also added to my tools MIDI Link Sync, that it lets you to add Ableton Link functionalities to Cubasis 3. So now I can sync IAA sequencers like Refraktions or Different Drummer in my Cubasis workflow.

https://apps.apple.com/es/app/midi-link-sync/id1071048493

And for better audio editing, I picked Auditor, which is one of the most impressive iPad apps that I have seen, thanks to its tool for automatically creating crossfade loops. Its spectrum analyzer is also fantastic for working with field recordings, it will be on invaluable help when I buy a Zoom H5 the next month.

By the way, Apple didn’t refund me Audio Evolution Mobile Studio, so I have spent the weekend playing with it.

Regarding working with buses, if you don’t plan to route a bus with effects to a secondary bus, you won’t need ApeMatrix, because I discovered that you can change the position of the Send effect prior to the volume. Which is amazing!

Also, it has a FX Grid with two lines of effects for creating complex routings between them which is incredibly powerful. You can do crazy things that aren’t even possible in AUM! It’s in the same league as Drambo or miRack, but more easy and intuitive.

And while the included internal synth is a re-skin of AudioKit Synth One, you can use multiple instances. Which is fantastic, Synth One is one of my favorite synths, and its great limitation was that you can only use one instance, due to its IAA nature.

Sadly, it doesn’t support sidechaining of effects for other than its internal compressor and the ToneBoosters IAPs. So for mastering purposes, Cubasis 3 is still miles ahead.

Also, it doesn’t support AUv3 plugins with multi-output. So contrary to Cubasis 3, you can’t push things like FAC Alteza to its limits, using the secondary AUv3 units.

But if they add sidechaining for external AUv3 units like Cubasis 3 in its last update, I can see myself switching from DAW. Because its FX Grid is gorgeous. More powerful than most of the desktop DAWs.

And I’m glad that you enjoyed Rắn Cạp Đuôi!

rollin

It's good to read that you are getting some use out of AEM. (As I was feeling bad that it didn't work as you'd hoped and my earlier post probably contributed to you buying it.)