Will EG Nodes eat AUMs’ lunch?

gregsmith

@ElliottGarage said:
@5k3105 thanks for preordering the app.
Longpress is actually used just to delete a control and an AU from its slot. You have visual feedback and a confirmation popup, so there's no chance to accidentally remove them

To duplicate bars or notes you need to drag from the bars timeline (and you can undo).

About the 4 bars thing, no testers complain about that...remember that this is not conceived as a full MIDI piano roll au3 app (there are already some on iOS to do that), but as an environment built on scenes and different nodes type that must coexist in a coherent way and 4 bars seems to be enugh for the sceneraio
Anyway I can increase the bar lenght if there will be a popular request, I'm publishin a dashboard to ask for feature and a roadmap.

Thing is, I think you have a bit of a midi powerhouse on your hands. I totally get not sacrificing the core essence of the app, but feel like 16 bars would allow for a bit of grace whilst recording from a midi keyboard or whatever, and a bit more chance for variation. Is it difficult to implement?

But yes, I’ll wait for the roadmap and vote accordingly. It’d be good to see that before preordering 👍

j_liljedahl

@5k3105 said:

@j_liljedahl said:

@5k3105 said:
Want to agree that aum, while quick to get things initially setup, lacks depth. And after 2 years using it, I realize the dev is just not interested in making it better. Just a few bug fixes. Which is unfortunate seeing as theres a lot of potential for improvement.

AUM developer here. I just wanted to point out that's entirely not true Most of my updates contain both fixes and new features.

I do have a huge list of improvements and new features to add, and am nowhere near abandoning AUM. But I'm the sort of person who's driven by joy and passion, and my current focus is not always on my app developments.

I completely understand that, but the main app and concept seem to have stabilized am I right?

Yes, the main concept has stabilized but that doesn't mean there are no new features to add

Concepts like collapsing and nesting mix busses, or just having multiple mix bus lanes scrolling in the vertical, or saving them off as instruments to be used in top level audio slots and other ideas - will aum ever change so drastically?

For midi recording or audio editing, we need to use plugins which becomes hacky really fast. Not just hacky, seriously painful and a waste of time and money on midi recorders, sequencers and gizmos.

Visually collapsing mix busses/groups is on my TODO list. Mix busses can already be "nested" (one bus sends to another that sends to another etc..)

Audio/MIDI editing, automation, etc are things that would make AUM a typical DAW. But my wish is to add such functionality in the future as IAPs, so that users can choose if they want it or not.

The midi apis, while listed nicely for each plugin, are difficult to use correctly and impossible to see what has or has not been connected unless digging back into the panel again. The midi matrix becomes useless after too many instruments are added (like those which also expose 8 or more midi outputs each).

The MIDI controls of each plugin can already be filtered by "assigned" or "unused", to easily see what's used or not. Doesn't that help with the problem?

Regarding the MIDI matrix, I agree it can get overwhelming when having large numbers of endpoints in the session. Folding multiple endpoints from the same plugin is also something I'm considering for the future.

Nodes can be copied, but not an entire channel. Im sure many users have their own ideas what they would like to see.

Entire channels can be copied! Just tap the channel label at the bottom and tap "duplicate"?

The fantastic thing about aum is it does everything right workflow-wise at the start which is, add instruments and effect and start making sounds quickly. Immediate satisfaction.

But after that, it is too simple to use outside of experimental music or straight to audio recording.

I think that depends entirely on personal preference. Personally all my music are recorded live jams, sometimes with some minor post editing.

taeo

For tiny Uis, I employ pencil, multiple controllers, keyboard, and mouse, and the small buttons and knobs aren’t a nuisance….also hdmi to a large display and you should be good to go

AnalogMatthew

@5k3105 said:
There also doesnt seem like there are any open source projects for ios. There are no OSS ios synths right?

Great question! Just dropping in with some cool tidbits – there are several free & open-source cross platform synths that have been ported to iOS such as

OB-Xd,
Dexed,
VCV Rack, etc

For example, this code:
https://github.com/reales/OB-Xd

Is this on iPad:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ob-xd-auv3-synth/id1465262829

(Fun fact: That particular synth was ported to iOS by AudioKit Team member Shane Dunne)

And on the pure iOS side, Synth One is an open-source Synth that’s inspired a lot of musicians in the app store. Working on it has been quite a journey, filled with its fair share of challenges and learning experiences. Keeping a major project open-source is quite a bit of extra work and headaches.

Despite the hurdles, it's great to see that Synth One still has audience. Inspired by this, I'm working on a free follow-up to Synth One. This time, I'm aiming for a closed-source approach for the overall project to maintain quality, but I'll keep the individual components like filters and oscillators open-source.

I hope this approach makes it easier for those who want to use these elements in their own apps. The "everything and the kitchen sink" nature of the Synth One github has been intimidating for people who want to make their own apps from it. And many of the open-source contributions to Synth One did more to break it than to improve it.

Also, some folks mentioned Kickstarter. A quick note – I'll be joining a panel with a Director from Kickstarter at NAMM. In my experience, Kickstarter might not be the best fit for app projects, but that's just my perspective. Hopefully, they don't get mad at me for saying that. 😅

Keep rocking everyone,

MonkeyDrummer

@ElliottGarage said:
BTW you can host EG Nodes as AU3 in AUM, but you can also run the 2 apps in parallel, syncing them with Ableton link and using the MIDI out of the apps eventually. It works great!

For sure? My experience with Link lately has been poor. For example, ElasticDrums has link and it’s horrible at keeping/setting sync with AUM… Could be a poor implementation in ED of course…

MonkeyDrummer

@RajahP said:

Love the multi instruments/effects view in AUM.. Don’t think there are any other Hosts/Daws that lets you use more than one instrument/effect at the same time.. Would be nice to lock-in the minimize view though.. Thanks..

How’d you get so many tracks in one screen? That’s really my only issue with AUM now… Too much wasted screen space between tracks, and no grouping/folders.

I’ve gotten over anything else that was a hang up. Especially modulation since discovering mmm and mLFO. MIDIlfo’s is nice too, but mLFO and MMM are just another level.

RajahP

@MonkeyDrummer said:

@RajahP said:

Love the multi instruments/effects view in AUM.. Don’t think there are any other Hosts/Daws that lets you use more than one instrument/effect at the same time.. Would be nice to lock-in the minimize view though.. Thanks..

How’d you get so many tracks in one screen? That’s really my only issue with AUM now… Too much wasted screen space between tracks, and no grouping/folders.

I’ve gotten over anything else that was a hang up. Especially modulation since discovering mmm and mLFO. MIDIlfo’s is nice too, but mLFO and MMM are just another level.

Just put your finger on an instrument and pull down…. But it won’t lock… Could it be that difficult fo have it locked?

5k3105

@RajahP said:

@MonkeyDrummer said:

@RajahP said:

Love the multi instruments/effects view in AUM.. Don’t think there are any other Hosts/Daws that lets you use more than one instrument/effect at the same time.. Would be nice to lock-in the minimize view though.. Thanks..

How’d you get so many tracks in one screen? That’s really my only issue with AUM now… Too much wasted screen space between tracks, and no grouping/folders.

I’ve gotten over anything else that was a hang up. Especially modulation since discovering mmm and mLFO. MIDIlfo’s is nice too, but mLFO and MMM are just another level.

Just put your finger on an instrument and pull down…. But it won’t lock… Could it be that difficult fo have it locked?

Locked n stacked in 2 rows would show 12 to 18 channels and still be twice the size of a drambo knob. Good idea!

Or use that lower row for piano roll and scene switch buttons

jklovemusic

Majority is always the majority for a reason. Their collective decision is not necessarily "great" yet good enough for sure.

EG nodes to eat AUM? difficult for majority as they make decisions by ranking and 3rd party review/opinion instead of comparing first hand raw data/fact.

To me, EG nodes offers below features with far less cost under AUM bundles(U can't do anything with just AUM). People just start out in iOS music production should check out EG nodes.

1, good enough AU host
2, good enough sequencer(step & live recording)
3, good enough clip looping(midi AND audio)
4, usable sampler
5, usable audio recorder
6, good enough automation
7, some generative midi
8, good enough multitrack/mixdown audio output

I'm sure the list will go on and exceed the pace AUM adding new features.

edit: typo

Kashi

Out of interest, how many people are using Nodes standalone?
And how many open it within AUM?
Thoughts on why you’d opt for one over the other?
I just nabbed it during the weekend sale.
I’ll check a few vid tutorials later because I don’t really know what it is, but it looks pretty cool.

Antos3345

I love AUM. EG Nodes is cool, but it's a different workflow. It's definitely cool and it has a lot of great features. AUM though is like the backbone to IOS music production for me.

Kashi

@Antos3345 said:
I love AUM. EG Nodes is cool, but it's a different workflow. It's definitely cool and it has a lot of great features. AUM though is like the backbone to IOS music production for me.

Sure, I hear you. I feel the same about AUM. I guess I’m just trying to understand different techniques and ways to use EG Nodes , and curious about how folks are using the two in conjunction

NoncompliantBryant

@Kashi said:
Out of interest, how many people are using Nodes standalone?
And how many open it within AUM?
Thoughts on why you’d opt for one over the other?
I just nabbed it during the weekend sale.
I’ll check a few vid tutorials later because I don’t really know what it is, but it looks pretty cool.

EDITED for typos and added a piece about the power of AUM's midi control.

I'm still getting used to Nodes, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt. My big takeaway is that if you want to get something small-medium sized in terms of instruments/midi fx and need to arrange it, Nodes is more efficient. But if you want more complex midi and audio routing and need more instances of instruments/midi fx, AUM not only gives you more flexibility/elegance but also the ability to get more cpu headroom by increasing the buffer size more. Also, you have to like how Nodes arranges nodes in rows of 4...if you have a lot of midi fx you can end up scrolling a lot.

Nodes Kicker
If you want to arrange a song with parts, and if you don't need more than 8 parts, then Nodes provides a more streamlined workflow in many respects because clip launching is built-in. To get the same ability to arrange an AUM session you need to either depend on midi clip launching apps like LK, Atom 2, or Drambo etc., which also means that you generally need to record the midi you're using first into those apps (so you can't just launch Melodybud or Harmony Bloom using the aforementioned apps), or you could go the muting channels route / plugin bypass route (bypass apps you don't want playing until you want them started), which means either using an app like Midi Mixer or Mute Master (which is limited in the number of channels you can use), or setting up a sequencer to send midi that will trigger mutes or bypasses. As you can imagine, this gets to be a pain pretty quickly to just get the same kind of functionality Nodes has out of the gate. Nodes also allows you to launch clips without any midi written in its own sequencers -- that is, you can launch a clip where the instrument is just played by another auv3 sequencer like Melodybud without having to record the midi into Nodes first.

Also, since there are some sequencers in Nodes, if you need to write a sequence there are just fewer steps.

AUM Kicker
Auv3 with exposed parameters are mappable in the midi control, which means you can map controllers/apps to control a plug in pretty painlessly. This is huge. The only other host that tops this is Apematrix because it has built-in LFOs that can send midi to any exposed parameter.

The other sweet thing is the flexibility and ease of setting up complex midi and audio routing. In terms of audio, having bus sends that you can move pre/post fader or fx makes it really easy to get the blend you need into a bus. Using the burger menus or midi matrix is also more robust than with Nodes. Nodes doesn't list the auv3 when midi routing so you really need to keep track of the node number or rename nodes as you go if you have a lot of midi flying around. Routing in Nodes also requires that you arrange the connection from the sending node, whereas AUM lets you make the connection from the sender/receiver/matrix. Finally, and this is more of an edge case, if a plugin has multiple midi outs that you want to connect to a single auv3 node, you need to use a plugin like Midi Bus and things get clunky.

Misc
Organization: The way things are organized are also very different. I'm used to having multiple midi "channels" organized to the left of all of my audio channels (First big arranging apps like LK/Drambo/MidiMixer, then smaller melody sequencers like the Buds/Zoa/Fugue Machine, then drum sequencers like Polybeat/Mididrums, Octachron, then utilities like LFOs/Humanizers/Scalers), If I have a lot of midi fx in AUM, I can see them all on one screen. In Nodes, each midi fx takes up a full node, so I can only see 8 at a time and will then resort to scrolling...I might have 8 midi fx on one midi channel strip in AUM and that will take an entire screen in Nodes. Also, you may prefer the linear left to right way of organizing channels of AUM or enjoy the way Nodes has rows of 4 nodes that you then scroll down. I personally feel more scattered in Nodes once a project gets to have lots of nodes, but again, I think that I'm just so used to AUM after having used it for years.

CPU: AUM allows you to choose up to a 2048 frame buffer size while Nodes caps at 512. If you have an uolder device or a huge project, you get cracking a lot sooner with Nodes. I haven't found a Nodes cpu meter either, but I may just not have looked in the right place. I sometimes use older devices and have a habit of checking the cpu usage to determine whether my next instrument will be light like OPL or if I can swing something heavy like Tera Pro.

Anyway, all in all I like both and see myself using Nodes to get up and running if I intend on doing more basic piano roll / step sequencing that needs arrangement, or if I want to launch clips that use midi fx sequencers.

Jeezs

@NoncompliantBryant said:

@Kashi said:
Out of interest, how many people are using Nodes standalone?
And how many open it within AUM?
Thoughts on why you’d opt for one over the other?
I just nabbed it during the weekend sale.
I’ll check a few vid tutorials later because I don’t really know what it is, but it looks pretty cool.

I'm still getting used to Nodes, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt. My big takeaway is that if you want to get something small-medium sized in terms of instruments/midi fx and need to arrange it, Nodes is more efficient. But if you want more complex midi and audio routing and need more instances of instruments/midi fx, AUM not only gives you more flexibility/elegance but also the ability to get more cpu headroom by increasing the buffer size more. Also, you have to like how Nodes arranges nodes in rows of 4...if you have a lot of midi fx you can end up scrolling a lot.

Nodes Kicker
If you want to arrange a song with parts, and if you don't need more than 8 parts, then Nodes provides a more streamlined workflow in many respects because clip launching is built-in. To get the same ability to arrange an AUM session you need to either depend on midi clip launching apps like LK, Atom 2, or Drambo etc., which also means that you generally need to record the midi you're using first into those apps (so you can't just launch Melodybud or Harmony Bloom using the aforementioned apps). You could go the muting channels route / plugin bypass route (bypass apps you don't want playing until you want them started), which means either using an app like Midi Mixer or Mute Master (which is limited in the number of channels you can use), or setting up a sequencer to send midi that will trigger mutes or bypasses. As you can imagine, this gets to be a pain pretty quickly to just get the same kind of functionality Nodes has out of the gate. Nodes also allows you to launch clips without any midi written in its own sequencers -- that is, you can launch a clip where the instrument is just played by another auv3 sequencer like Melodybud without having to record the midi into Nodes first.

Also, since there are some sequencers in Nodes, if you need to write a sequence there are just fewer steps.

AUM Kicker The sweet thing is the flexibility and ease of setting up complex midi and audio routing. In terms of audio, having bus sends that you can move pre/post fader or fx makes it really easy to get the blend you need into a bus. Using the burger menus or midi matrix is also more robust than with Nodes. Nodes doesn't list the auv3 when midi routing so you really need to keep track of the node number or rename nodes as you go if you have a lot of midi flying around. Routing in Nodes also requires that you arrange the connection from the sending node, whereas AUM lets you make the connection from the sender/receiver/matrix. Finally, and this is more of an edge case, if a plugin has multiple midi outs that you want to connect to a single auv3 node, you need to use a plugin like Midi Bus and things get clunky.

Misc
Organization: The way things are organized are also very different. I'm used to having multiple midi "channels" organized to the left of all of my audio channels (First big arranging apps like LK/Drambo/MidiMixer, then smaller melody sequencers like the Buds/Zoa/Fugue Machine, then drum sequencers like Polybeat/Mididrums, Octachron, then utilities like LFOs/Humanizers/Scalers), If I have a lot of midi fx in AUM, I can see them all on one screen. In Nodes, each midi fx takes up a full node, so I can only see 8 at a time and will then resort to scrolling...I might have 8 midi fx on one midi channel strip in AUM and that will take an entire screen in Nodes. Also, you may prefer the linear left to right way of organizing channels of AUM or enjoy the way Nodes has rows of 4 nodes that you then scroll down. I personally feel more scattered in Nodes once a project gets to have lots of nodes, but again, I think that I'm just so used to AUM after having used it for years.

CPU: AUM allows you to choose up to a 2048 frame buffer size while Nodes caps at 512. If you have anb older device or a huge project, you get cracking a lot sooner with Nodes. I haven't found a Nodes cpu meter either, but I may just not have looked in the right place. I sometimes use older devices and have a habit of checking the cpu usage to determine whether my next instrument will be light like OPL or if I can swing something heavy like Tera Pro.

Anyway, all in all I like both and see myself using Nodes to get up and running if I intend on doing more basic piano roll / step sequencing that needs arrangement.

Aum can also chain projects as you can assign program change to project.
A great addition when performing on stage.

Kashi

Thanks so much @NoncompliantBryant . Really appreciate your thoughts

skiphunt

I think I use both AUM & Nodes about equally. Just depends on what I’m doing, and I’m glad I have both.

That said… I think apeMatrix is STILL a very viable contender, especially for visualizing more complex app routings.

NoncompliantBryant

@Kashi said:
Thanks so much @NoncompliantBryant . Really appreciate your thoughts

Of course!

I will say that the ease with which you can get an arranged thing up, especially if you are launching auv3 sequencers, is pretty sweet as long as you don't need to do a lot of midi routing and mapping with Nodes. For me, being able to launch clips that use other midi fx sequencers instead of the stock Nodes generators is what makes Nodes unique and powerful.

I actually don't find the midi fx capabilities of Nodes to be that useful since I already have plugins that generally have more depth. Imo, the reason to use the midi fx in AUM is to get a fast arrangement up while also bring able to use AUM's midi control to modulate or map auv3 parameters. The Node midi fx advantages for me are that you can arrange a diversity of sequencers in a song mode easily compared to (this is pretty big... Compare this to Atom or LK clips that are all piano roll midi), everything is contained in one plugin instance, and if I don't need the complexity of other sequencers, Nodes is pretty streamlined and has a fast workflow. Still, I'd rather just run Nodes standalone and get the benefit of clips using other midi generators than mix the Nodes midi fx into an AUM workflow, but again, I have other sequencers. If I didn't, I would definitely find the Nodes suite of sequencers more useful.

Some quick impressions:

Piano roll: maybe I'm missing something, but I can't get labels for note values, which makes things feel a bit like shooting in the dark. Frequency/probability/velocity are per step like Drambo, compared with per . Atom/Drambo/LK midi fx all have pretty powerful editors in comparison b

Arpeggiator: also pretty stripped down. Inversions are nice, but no accents/velocity, limited patterns mean that things can get a bit flat sounding compared to midi fed into Bleass Arpeggiator / Steppolyarp / Aphelian / Cykle / Poly 2.

Note/chord generators: in my eyes a bit strange since you'll need to use up a whole node scene if you want to play more than a single note or chord. Maybe someone has use-cases to share that can help me understand their appeal.

Step sequencer: slick to use for note input, nice velocity, probability and frequency features that are easy to edit while having the note input in front of you (unlike Midi Dreams/Stepbud
/Polybud/Quantum). Doesn't send CC, no ratchet.

Drum sequencer: like the piano roll, no labels for notes but has ratchet and the fun
Frequency/probability/velocity parameters. But again, if you have Octachron, Beat Scholar, or Playbeat 3, you just have so much more flexibility.

aaa

Thank you @NoncompliantBryant! I haven't purchased Nodes yet, and your comments have given me a clearer sense of the ways Nodes could supplement/complement my current AUM/Drambo/LK-centric workflow—more so than anything else I've read about the app.

It sounds like the biggest draw of Nodes over AUM is that its clip launcher is more deeply integrated with its mixing desk capabilities. And this makes it a lot easier to compose complex arrangements containing many different generative MIDI sequences. But the downside is that since Nodes is such a new app and not as mature as AUM, it still has some kinks that will hopefully get worked out in future updates, such as difficulties managing visible screen space limitations.

wim

@aaa - I don't expect there will be radical changes in EG Nodes going forward. I think it's pretty much "baked". Enhancements were coming hard and heavy during the first months after release but it's been quite a while since any further updates at this point.

That's just my impression of the situation. I have no inside information.
Nodes is superb as is. However I would consider it as remaining substantially as it is indefinitely before deciding to purchase it.

deadpoetlive

@Svetlovska said:
@ElliottGarage : Hi, and thanks for responding so quickly. What you say heartens me on two counts. Firstly, because you have a dedicated audio recording node on your roadmap of future development; secondly because I begin at least to see a partial workaround via using EG Nodes inside AUM.

I use long form (many minutes long) varispeeded free running or synced wav loops, playing in File Players, as the core of my AUM based workflow. All AUM needs to make it perfect for me is a way to record and edit MIDI control over the faders, pan pots, eq and mute buttons inside AUM, so that I can go back into the recording of a live mixdown, punch in, tweak a setting or a short automation of one of these, and punch out, iteratively. So if I fluff a channel mute, or a volume fade up on a single AUM channel during my live mixdown to AudioShare, I don’t have to scrap the whole attempt and do it all again.

The lack of such at present makes the commiting of my stuff to master, especially on longer pieces, a bit of a white knuckle experience, and artificially limits what I would like to sculpt out of, typically, the audio of 8, 12, 16 channels of continuously running File Player wavs alongside assorted sequencer driven synths. It’s just too many channels to get to manually across the AUM interface in one go, so I find myself compromising on the subtlety and possible movement of the final thing by commiting to a handful of sub mixes as separate AUM sessions first instead, just to physically handle the mix and because there is no way to edit mistakes.

That automation-with-editing is literally the only thing I need of automation in AUM, and it sounds like EG Nodes gets me at least to the record side of that equation.

But can it handle the editing/do over side too?

@Svetlovska

Did you know about this and would it help?

4Pockets also does a Multitrack recorder for Aum

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/multitrack-recorder-plugin/id1483833410

ejacul337

LOL, no. Not ever