Loopy Pro: Create music, your way.
What is Loopy Pro? — Loopy Pro is a powerful, flexible, and intuitive live looper, sampler, clip launcher and DAW for iPhone and iPad. At its core, it allows you to record and layer sounds in real-time to create complex musical arrangements. But it doesn’t stop there—Loopy Pro offers advanced tools to customize your workflow, build dynamic performance setups, and create a seamless connection between instruments, effects, and external gear.
Use it for live looping, sequencing, arranging, mixing, and much more. Whether you're a live performer, a producer, or just experimenting with sound, Loopy Pro helps you take control of your creative process.
Download on the App StoreLoopy Pro is your all-in-one musical toolkit. Try it for free today.
Comments
I agree with jwmmakerofmusic. AUM is great for ambient, especially ambient drone. AUM, to me, is like an ambient drone sandbox... so many routing possibilities. With my iPad's large touch screen, I can tweak synth and effects live in real time and adjust faders (even up to a few at a time).
For me this is an exciting and refreshing way of making music as for decades I've been using DAWs to have everything sequenced and 'locked down'. With recording in AUM, each recording will always be unique. Everything I record with it is a 'live studio recording'
That first experience of playing guitar through AUM on my iPad Air 1 🤤 it was perfect and still is.
Since my move to making my tracks mainly on Mac, Im using my iPad mainly as a source of sound - either like a sound module I play, or a creative playground to make samples to export to my Mac based tracks.
So, I use AUM as a mixer for the most part, or occasionally just a way to add fx to my sound apps.
I can definetly see a scenario where I could use LP now that it has midi, but after my trial with it, I have put its use on hold. The main reason for this, is that I perceive (either rightly or wrongly), that LP has somewhat of a learning curve that would require a reasonable amount of time for me to make the template that I would need to make to get benefits over sticking with what I know (AUM).
I'm quite sure that the time would be well spent and garner benefits to having a personlised LP setup, but at this time I have just started investing in learning my new Mac DAWs, new VSTs and continuing to learn to play. This continued learning along with the odd 20 tracks or so I am currently building, has made me weigh up the benefits of a new way of creating on my iPad against precious time - thats why I currently continue to stick with AUM
Im also just a hobbyist. I imagine that professionals count their time as more precious then myself, possibly?
I know that I waste some time here, but to be honest thats just breaks from doing other stuff.
On the other hand, I do see my lack of investment in LP and Drambo to be probably the two things iPad related I really should re-evaluate!
I just spent 3 years learning "Studio One/5" and now need to learn Loopy. As I can't pack
a WIN machine all over the place, and don't even care to
The iPad seemed such a great idea I switched to it. and when I found the KingB organ I was elated,
as the IKM B-3x was my main desire, in my studio setup
and even @ 81, with a rock being more conducive to learning, I have no qualms about it.
I use AUM for its ease of setting things up quickly, its midi capabilities and matrix, its ability to make nice nice with most IAA stuff, and I think it just looks nice. When I first bought a music app (Rymdigare) and realized I needed a host to use it, AUM has been my ol’ reliable.
However, as I continued along, I learned of other hosts that had features that weren’t present in AUM: timelines (logic), parameter automation (cubasis), lfos (apematrix), p-locks (drambo), ease of looping (loopy pro), sequencers/piano rolls, etc. I began to try and build these things into my AUM templates to pretty consistent success, but my once simple mixer host has become a Frankenstein of sorts. In addition, having an older iPad meant every auv3 I added slowly increased my starting cpu usage, where a host with these features built in runs better.
So why do I STILL use AUM? I’m not so sure anymore. Unless it gets some pretty big updates (it’s been a while), I need to come to terms with the fact that other hosts just logically making more sense.
On the other hand, people moving from AUM to DAWs are often frustrated with the lack of audio and midi routing options as compared to AUM. DAWs are generally more cumbersome to set up as well.
A lot of my creativity seems to evaporate when I start staring at a bunch of track lanes in a DAW timeline, whereas AUM, Ape Matrix, and Loopy Pro seem to enhance my creativity. That's just me though. Some people thrive in DAWs, and of course, if you really want to put together and a structured song, a DAW is almost a necessity.
Drambo and Loopy Pro (and I'm sure others) strike sort of a middle balance, in different ways.
@wim
I think the answer is a healthy mix of the two for sure. AUM will always be a great space to “play” and generate things creatively. I just lately find myself with these creative ends and wishing I was already in another host/daw to move further. So for me personally, I need to work on my means of transitioning ideas from one system to another. Recognizing the problem is part of working through the problem right? I think I need an auv3 therapist haha
You need an AUv3 ChatGPT plugin that can give you real-time advice on what to do next to take your tracks to the next level as you play. 😉
I’ll see what I can fanagle with Cems new T2S app 👍
For me AUM has always been easier to get started with and just jam.
But when I began my journey towards a hybrid electric guitar pedalboard, I ran into a lot of show stoppers in AUM. Main one, I couldn't set a tap tempo midi switch and even if I was able to tap a tempo or sort of, it didn't calculate to the nearest beat which left me with tempo in decimals. Not good. Also, when I got ToneX Max app I wanted to set up a dual stereo amp setup but some of the effects when enabled during a live worship service, especially reverbs or some delays, there was an abrupt sound that would come thru the mains in our church! Was pretty embarrassed since it was during those quiet solemn moments where I wanted to enable my reverbs for shimmer and ambient sounds!
Then @espiegel123 shared with me his awesome Loopy Pro pedalboard setup which I reverse engineered. It was the only way I learned how to setup the most amazing hybrid ToneX dual amp setup in Loopy Pro!
I changed some of the UI widgets into my own style and was able to create an awesome setup! What I really loved was that now I had a perfectly working Tap tempo switch on my Xtone Pro Audi Midi interface. I even was able to connect an Mvave Chocolate USB midi controller to add an additional 4 midi stomp switches!
So all in all Loopy Pro's midi learn functions allowed me to use my custom made user interface to create widegts which when triggered via midi on my Xtone Pro midi stomp box, these would in turn trigger whatever apps I've assigned to those widgets!
At first it felt daunting! I get it. I was there but I truly wanted to learn this man, and @espiegel123 and @wim and other awesome helper friends in the amazing forum helped me get thru the learning curve.
Oh, and for some weird reason, no more abrupt sounds when triggering my ambient guitar setup live! That was crucial.
For anyone feeling the same way, Loopy Pro is truly a deep ocean of an app! So deep you feel you can never learn to swim in it. I get you, I was there, and still learning to swim. Lol! But we have amazing life savers here! All you need to do, is look beyond your self imposed limits and ask. Ask for help. It's ok to feel stupid asking, I've been there. The most rewarding thing is to feel heard and helped by great people here.
I'm planning to finalize my setup soon and post it here to help other electric guitar players. It is so worth it IMHO.
I tried Loopy and thought, “wow, this like AUM with a timeline/multi-tracker”. Then, I tried using it for recording and loading clips and the honeymoon was over. I simply can’t get anything done in it. Recently, I revisited LP and tried to load a simple clip and couldn’t figure it out. If I have to read the manual to do simple things, I’m going to lose interest. AUM is very intuitive and that what’s I want when I sit down with my guitar after a long workday when I have little patience for fiddling around instead of playing.
I’m slowly starting to open ApeMatrix more often instead of AUM. It’s got all the features I use from AUM but in a much more compact view. Having a sound and MIDI matrix is awesome and makes multi out plugins a lot easier to use.
Any chance you could share details with us of what you couldn't figure out? We'd love to address whatever it was that didn't work out for you.
For me AUM is intuitive, very nice UI, simple to set up and use but I can't complete anything in it, it's just for experimenting. I use Audio Share to trim the files I record in AUM to load into Koala. I would like a nicely featured iPad DAW that I could use, one with a timeline and PDC but I haven't found the one that fits me.
Coincidentally I just noticed Zenbeats has PDC (and reportedly multi-threaded audio support).
Ok I feel silly what is PDC?
Thanks for that information. I've generally avoided Roland because, in my experience, they overcomplicate, but I will check out Zenbeats.
It's plugin delay compensation. So any plugins that cause latency are accounted for, other tracks are adjusted and, hopefully everything stays in perfect time.
Point Defense Canon
It's rumored that a major DAW is expected to get a rail gun soon. The DAW wars are starting to heat up.
I saw a band last night that played heavy metal Star Wars covers dressed as Galactic Empire leaders. They had some skits between songs and a good light show. It went on a little long for someone not into Star Wars but it was fun.
In AUM , you have a mixer, and everything you want is easy to plug in and mix/record. loopy is a bunch of squares and circles, And it loops, I don't use loops in this way.
I like the simplicity of the interface and its great workflow. It also feels very natural for me to work with. Aum still is King for me. I do like Drambo too.
I am posting not to convince you to re-evaluate but to set the record straight about Loopy Pro’s features.
If one doesn’t want to record in Loopy Pro, they can create a template without “squares and circles”. And if you want to record without having the clips be visible on your main page, you can do that as well.
Loopy Pro does not only record loops. It can record non-looping, linear audio, too. And it has a handy timeline where you can arrange, mix and export recordings.
AUM has been my go to set up. My beatmaking adventures have been centered around AUM since I first figured out how to use it (still learning).
I've been sort of ruminating on this topic, because there's something that can be hard to pin down about all DAWs where there's a qualitative difference in the output for me from one to another. Not in the sense of greater or lesser "quality", but in the sense of the music from one DAW having different qualities than the music from another.
For me, my output from AUM tends to be lightly structured and ethereal but complex. I think AUM's innate simplicity facilitates the creation of complicated multi-bus effects chains and intricate interactions between multiple sequencers (Cem Olcay's apps shine in this context). Doing this sort of plumbing in Logic or Cubasis or Zenbeats is (when it's even possible) laborious and flow-killing.
I think other DAWs have this approach, notably apeMatrix and Loopy Pro, but the routing in AUM just sort of "clicks" for me, probably because I have so many hours of just noodling around in there.
For me:
Logic Pro: Structured, polished, not as sonically interesting
Ableton Note: Free flowing and humanistic, loosely structured, unfinished
AUM: Unstructured, evolving, sonically interesting
Zenbeats and Cubasis I slot in with Logic Pro, they're all direct competitors I think. Loopy Pro can kind of operate across the spectrum but combines some of the advantages of AUM and some of the advantages of Logic.
I get more finished tracks out of Logic. I have productive fun with Note and Loopy. Working in AUM feels like musical meditation. I don't get finished work out of it, but it nourishes my soul.
Loopy Pro is an extraordinary app, no question about that, but time and time again on this forum people indicate how difficult they find it to set things up in it. Yes, of course, there are also many hereabouts who are absolute experts and can get it to do almost anything but there doesn’t seem to be any escaping the fact that it just isn’t intuitive to a lot of people unfortunately.
I would recommend that far more templates/demo projects are included which do simple things - things that the experts might consider unnecessary to have demo projects of because they’re so ‘easy’ to set up. Empty template projects are going to be tiny in terms of increasing the app size so I think it would really benefit it to have a great long list of pre-routed templates of different setups to allow users who find it confusing to experience the full range of its capabilities and to easily achieve the basic functionality so many seem to find a headache currently.
Just a thought.
Great post. 👍🏼
I also find that different DAWs often inspire different end results. It's not easily quantifiable, but you've done a good job exploring how it works for you.
Agreed. I do think if the MIDI matrix of AUM in particular clicks with anyone then it’s worth them looking into ApeMatrix. The MIDI grid is the same as AUM just transverse, and the audio grid works the same way. It took a few dedicated sessions to get it to click but your mention of Cem Olcay apps I think works really well in both.
I acknowledge that, but apeMatrix just feels too context-switchy and bifurcated for me. And there was never a moment of "this is why I'd use this instead of AUM" when I've played with it. Just my experience though.
People keep telling me that Loopy Pro is not just about looping. Do you have video that show that and that are not 3hours long ? I am a DAW user what can Loopy bring me?
I also start all my song in Audiobus but now I have moved to ApeMatrix. Basically what I do is very simple, I have a drum and then I add either Scaler 2 or Chord that I send to both a bass synth and a pad synth and I write chord progression then I move to Cubasis.
I'm still trying to, but.... i have AUM and 2 mix output (drums/perc + everything else) and i have Loopy Pro at the "everything else" output.... where i can record long takes of every sound i want to. Then export to Macbook
Not recording too much but it's a workflow where i can make some stuff at the end. Loopy Pro is also a DAW with the SEQ view. Clip based but you can mix everything there very fast. My 2c