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.
What makes you still use AUM?
My app library is getting bigger but one app I'm still missing is AUM. Loopy Pro quickly caught my eye on this iPad music journey (already after 2.0 update) so I never felt the need for AUM except when trying a Vocoder/talkbox from Nurack FX that needed some more complex Midi routing (neither LP or Cubasis had that feature so I gave up on that vocoder or talkbox, can't remember).
I still see AUM being used all over the place though so my question is, what makes you still use AUM instead of Loopy Pro?
Comments
It’s great for just jamming, and often after I have something that sounds good I’ll just let it play and start jamming over the top with an acoustic instrument.
Great for live Ambient jams and other jams. I also use AUM to sample oneshots into Koala Sampler and oneshots for FL Studio Mobile's DW Sampler.
In fact, there was this one bloke from Skinny Puppy who used it for his amazing distorted music name of @iOSTRAKON . I miss that guy.
https://youtube.com/@_iostrakon2935?si=m-2Z_5PGIwxYfxmU
I don’t use AUM instead of anything. But sometimes I want just a big sandbox where I can pile in a bunch of sequencers and synths and just…play. Play with sound design, play with effects, play with generative sequencers. And as a sandbox for playing, AUM is second to none. It just does it’s job and stays out of the way.
AUM came out long before Loopy Pro, so many people already were using AUM as their "hub" to load instrument apps and FX apps.
AUM works well so I guess many people have just stayed with it.
Maybe that's it @Simon cause I feel Loopy Pro excels at what most people are saying they do with AUM, which is to jam. Most of the times I use LP exactly for that, to have a bunch of instruments, fx, etc and just try stuff out.
So as a sandbox, what makes AUM better than LP?
I think a lot of people that used AUM (which is an excellent app) for years and then tried the Loopy Pro trial briefly don’t realize that you can do jammy work in Loopy just as you can in AUM (and in my opinion you can much more easily capture your jams and play along with them in LP — as well as do simple timeline arranging, too) and don’t know you can add sliders, buttons and xy pads to control your synths and fx.
AUM supports multi-in/out plugins which LP doesn’t yet and has more sophisticated midi filtering options.
This is not to take away from AUM — just to say that Loopy is also a great jamming environment.
I use AUM less and less these days but I can remember the distinction between it and Loopy Pro being clearer in the beginning. AUM was (and still is in some ways) just more fun and elegant to set up a quick jam. I mean, the routing matrix is just brilliant wiring things together just never took much in the way of effort. So, if I didn't want to think at all about setup, or be distracted at all, AUM was a bit easier and more fun.
Now that I'm completely comfortable with Loopy Pro, I find it at least as friction free to set up a jam. And now, after that I can take things to the next levels that you can't get to with AUM alone. tbh, nine out of ten sessions never go beyond just a quick jam, but it's nice going in knowing it's all there under one roof.
More often than not, I start with a completely empty Loopy Pro project, so I'm basically just setting up a jam like I would in AUM. I do have templates I've set up for more serious work, but rarely do I have the time for more than just a quick jam. I like the distraction free experience of starting from a blank slate in Loopy. I think there aren't many other people that approach Loopy like that.
Taken at that level (quick jams), AUM and Loopy Pro are interchangeable for me. I've just gravitated to Loopy Pro is all. AUM does have the big advantage for now of supporting multi-out plugins. It has the disadvantage of not supporting controller feedback, pickup mode, and relative encoders. But these days I don't often bother with a controller.
Long and rambling way of not saying anything conclusive. 🙄
I do think AUM is an iOS/iPadOS essential. I think anyone can benefit from having it.
“What makes me still use AUM?”
Inertia and the resistance to having learn how to set up complex MIDI routing in another DAW that probably
Won’t let me plug all the lovely AUv3 apps I own.
I think I’m just slowing down, to be honest. I’m sure there are many that learned a DAW and see no reason to
Climb that hill again just to end up making rather similar music but with so many different touch events.
I agree with those saying reluctance to learn something new when you're happy with what you've got is a factor. And it seems much, much easier to learn your way around AUM than Loopy. I've noticed AUM ranking lower than it used to in the charts recently, though. Maybe Loopy is already eating its lunch, perhaps rightly so.
This...
It’s kinda hard to mess up. Elegant was used earlier and that’s a good descriptor.
I mean you have an in, you have an out, you have a slot for fx with no fuss. What more do you need? Probably a lot, but AUM can probably do it.
I open a loopy project and I see a bunch of donuts.
I find aum more intuitive.
I get the argument that AUM is the elegant solution. I mean, look at it! But from my perspective it depends on what you do with it. If you are adding a bunch of MIDI sequencers and audio looping AUs and control surface/widget stuff, then I think Loopy Pro’s native functionality has it beat for elegance. I like the Loopy Pro mixer a lot too—it can seem small at first, but when you have a lot going on it’s nice to have everything in front of you. And I like to loop MIDI, and loop audio, and it just kills at that.
I don’t see AUM ever being outdated, the design is just too good. Super accessible, easy to learn, easy to use, stable, lightweight. But if you are already comfortable in Loopy Pro then it doesn’t offer a lot that you don’t already have.
For me it was Drambo that took over almost all of AUM's duties. If used solely as an auv3 plugin host, Drambo is equally easy and elegant for setting up quick jams, but this message doesn't seem to get through to many stubborn AUM users
The added benefits are easy access to automation, modulation, powerful step sequencer and clip launching.
The times I reach for AUM nowadays is mainly for recording IAA apps (Samplr, Borderlands, Lumbeats), or when I want to have easy fullscreening of auv3 plugins (Scaler 2 in particular).
@McD ”inertia” hahaha
@timfromtheborder Look at it!!
Agree with all the “great for jamming” sentiment and will add that while you’re jamming and you stumble on sounds you like, you can just hit record on those tracks, capture as many bars as you want, and then take it into more conventional hosts to do more rigid stuff like production and timelines and whatnot. That workflow gels with me, at least
There’s probably an element of familiarity these days, in my case, but I find AUM almost friction free, and I have an aversion to traditional/linear DAWs. And when I started to integrate hardware with the iPad, AUM made it really easy to route both audio and MIDI.
I find AUM’s mixer-on-steroids interface very intuitive. YMMV, and probably does.
I’ve not tried Loopy Pro, but that’s partly because when I’ve seen screenshots etc I’ve not found myself drawn to give it a try. It’s not that I have anything against it - far from it. I have tried the original Loopy, which was OK but not really my kind of thing, and the additions in LP seem to be me more DAW-like (piano roll etc), which is precisely what I don’t like about DAWs.
Bottom line is that people find the tools they click with and that’s different for everyone. One of the wonderful things about iOS/iPadOS music making is that we have lots of options to suit different ways of working.
I came to iOS music 1 year ago, and while I began with AUM, I quickly switched to Loopy Pro because I wanted quantized mute buttons. Since then, I have retried AUM a few times, but there is almost nothing I can't do in Loopy and Loopys mixer is simply more intuitive to me. So I guess it's really about familiarity.
It seems to me the general consensus is, people use whatever they're most familiar with and Loopy Pro interface is a bit intimidating.
I have to say most of the times I use Loopy Pro, I don't ever leave the Mixer page and that's because I use it in a sandbox way similar to AUM. So when I see complaints talking about just seeing circles when on Loopy Pro, I get where they come from but they are not true and just at a click of a button you'll be presented w/ the mixer page, with a "plus" button where you can add instruments and immediately get your hands busy.
I'm wondering if that's the user's fault or Loopy Pro's UI, UX/documentation/marketing fault.
In fact, my default template is everything deleted with just the Master slider present. So no distractions with colors and donuts, a real blank slate. Then, as you said, click on the + and get things started in a few seconds.
The wife.
Actually Loopy does nearly everything. But I wouldn’t give up ApeMatrix, not before AUM and a number of other DAWs I own. Just my humble ope.
This is a great idea. I’m following . No distractions at the outset.
I'm using Loopy more and more this way too.
I have my fancy templates with everything set up in what I think is an amazing way to quickly build songs. I still use them too. But often just a blank slate is where I feel like starting. If anything interesting starts emerging I quickly add some loops, and the jam grows from there.
I hear you. Drambo is my other go-to host when I feel like shifting gears away from Loopy Pro for a bit. It really isn't a complicated app if you just use it as an AUv3 host or as a midi sequencer. It has everything right there in one screen and it's lightening fast to set up. Faster than AUM and Loopy Pro for simple AUv3 hosting and sequencing. Literally just one step (add the plugin) and you're on your way.
The same thing that makes me still use Nanostudio. They are extremely well-thought-out, pleasingly beautiful pieces of software.
For me, it is the fastest workflow for getting a new idea sketched. I also LOVE the midi sequencer multipliers/dividers and use that function all the time.
AUM is an electronic music studio in a sense that no other app is. It has no native methods or metaphors for tracking, looping, and so on. It's the fundamental modular enviroment.. a mixer, rack, patchbay... and it fits my head like nothing else.
I do particularly like that the fx chain is laid out horizontally vs vertically. That clicks with my brain better. Resizing windows feels better though that doesn’t feel good in any host imo.
The midi matrix really clicks in particular. I feel like it takes more taps to get MIDI set up in Drambo unless I’m missing something. ApeMatrix is getting a lot of use these days since its whole thing is being matrix based.
That was me when I tried LP. I don’t like looping.
I did that and said a mixer to mix loops.
That I did not see.
I don't use it.
Between the two LP's, there's no need for AUM for me.