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Gig report - first "all iOS" (long!)


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Last night I had a gig with some old friends playing jazz & latin chestnuts in front of an appreciative crowd. This was a perfect test of my iPad-only rig. I wasn"t really sure what to expect since having everything hooked up at home and working is no substitute for when you"re on a gig playing music that requires you to be listening, reacting, and feeling connected to the instruments under your fingers.

 

Cutting to the chase - it wasn"t really happening for me, unfortunately. My bar is probably higher than a lot of folks since I"ve been playing virtual instruments on a laptop for many years (I started 20 years ago with a Mac Titanium laptop & OS9 but went full time around 2006 - so really, 15 straight years of laptopping-only).

 

The closest to 'connected', for me, was the Scarbee Rhodes in Module. The samples sound nice but the lack of velocity layers compared to my Mac version is strikingly obvious. And, the top end is piercing - it made me tense up everytime I was playing a solo that reached into the top two octaves of my controller. This is not the case with Scarbee in NI Kontakt. I wish there was a way to balance things out better in that regard. Of course I tried with EQ but that didn"t do it. Maybe a different preset - I like the one with some bell, but I might have done better with a different one.

 

As for acoustic piano (Ivory American D in Module), what a disappointment. Despite my attempts with EQ-ing and adjusting the velocity curve (on both AUM and in my Roland controller), I never felt good playing it. Compared to my New York piano in Kontakt? Not even close. Not just sound-wise, but in dynamic range - actually, the lack of dynamic range compared to my Kontakt piano was more disappointing than the sound. I wasn"t expecting it to equal what I can do with Kontakt in my Mac but had hope it would be 'close enough for jazz', and it just wasn"t. I"m letting my trial expire on that. One bright spot for Korg - giving you a week to try these expansions. Props for that. The dynamic range of the Scarbee rhodes was also less than what"s in the Mac/Kontakt version, but for whatever reasons didn"t bother me as much.

 

I"m not sure what to say about the Galileo organ, since I don"t consider myself any kind of a real organist. It also disappointed me and I"ll probably be looking at VB3m. The sound, with the rotary on and mixed in, still seemed a little too 'clean', almost like a DI. The better Leslie sims I"ve heard add a feeling of space and 'air' and combined with a good preamp sim, some grit. There are parameters shown that appear to address that, but they didn"t do much to help, imo â and when I tried adding some drive in the preamp module, it got harsh sounding pretty quickly. Also, this might be me not understanding organ architecture in general, but my expression pedal was mapped to a knob called 'organ volume.' There"s a separate 'master volume' knob above that. When the pedal was fully heel-down the sound was off completely. I always thought the expression pedal on a Hammond didn"t cut the sound out completely - am I wrong? I see no graphic of an expression pedal anywhere on this app, unlike other Hammond VIs.

 

In better news, the setup I used â iPad Air 2, Apple CCK, AUM, and the aforementioned VIs hosted there â was 100% stable, running at a 128 buffer with zero pops or clicks. I used an app called StreamByter as a midi plugin to alter my velocities for the Korg Module, and I had a master audio bus with one of Kymatica"s reverb plugins I bought to have a global reverb on the entire mix. All this worked perfectly. The Apple CCK"s lightning port was connected to a standard iPad 11-watt charging cube. This kept my iPad"s battery charged and also powered my Roland A800 Pro controller - I didn"t need a separate wall-wart for that. I might even be able to power everything from one of those battery banks if I had to.

 

To sum up - At this point I"m not going to stop using my laptop, especially on jazz or r&b gigs where I need to feel good playing. I think I embarrassed myself last night as I struggled, and this was in front of a crowd that had bought tickets and was there specifically to hear the music - so eyes & ears were on me and the other guys. What a drag that was! It"s not worth saving the extra shlep for that result. OTOH, I see the potential here, once the quality of the instrument plugins starts to rival what"s available for Mac/PC users. I know, 'a bad craftsman blames his tools', but that"s my take on it right now. Thanks for reading!

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Thanks for sharing.

 

I toyed with the idea, iPad seems more stable than macbook (with all the updates of MacOs, Mainstage, vst's), also backing everything up is easier.

My complex setups from Mainstage with multiple splits and backing tracks is not easy to port.

I bought some iPad apps, but i did nog find an way to port all that functionality. Also the switching time was too slow.

 

In my opinion it is too early, but i'm sure it will happen.

Perhaps if apple ported Mainstage and enabled some external storage and we get an M1 iPad...

 

Therefor great to read your extensive story.

Nord Piano 5-73, Nord Stage 3
Author of QSheets: The fastest lead sheet viewer in the world that also plays Audio Files and send Program Changes!
https://qsheets.eriknie.synology.me/

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Thanx for the detailed info. I'm sure iOS will be getting better and better with time. I plan to use an iOS only rig in the near future for gigs that basically require aps and eps. We'll see how that goes...
Be grateful for what you've got - a Nord, a laptop and two hands
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I think iOS has improved greatly, and new iPads will deliver well beyond what my 2018 will do. But still, the underlying issues with apps â dynamic range being one of the big ones â needs to be addressed as well. I don't recall seeing updates in my apps that address wider dynamics, more controllable velocity and EQ etc. Seems like forever since there's been a serious upgrade to, let's say, Ravenscroft IOS.

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Rod

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There will definitely be an iPad in my rig at some point -- once I can figure out a less-complex and more-stable way to connect it all to make it gig-ready. The quality of the instruments available varies all over the map, with some real nice ones, so I think it'll just be a source of additional sounds vs. a replacement for bread and butter in my world.

Want to make your band better?  Check out "A Guide To Starting (Or Improving!) Your Own Local Band"

 

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100% understood. During lockdown in the UK I set up an ipad-based rig but, after a bunch of rehearsals and a couple of live gigs, I've returned to my laptop rig for the same reasons mentioned above.

 

Stability was excellent but the difference in portability between an ipad and a macbook air is pretty minimal, so I'm sticking to laptop for now.

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Thanks everyone for chiming in. I was gonna add this to my original post but it got so damn long I figured I would just do a follow up. Here we go. I spent the day before yesterday setting up my rig at home so my keyboard triggered both the iPad and my Mac running the Kontakt pianos. They were on separate midi channels so all I had to do was quickly switch channels to do an instant A/B. I monitored through my QSC K8s, not headphones - I wanted to hear exactly how they'd sound on a gig. After first lamenting how much more I liked my Mac's pianos, I set about messing with every parameter available to me on the iOS apps that might matter, in order to get those pianos as close to their Mac counterparts as I could. I did get them closer, but I knew there was gonna be a large possibility that they would prove not close enough at the gig, and I was right! Can't say I didn't try.

 

My initial conclusion is that it's because there are fewer velocity layers in these piano and e-piano samples that their dynamic ranges are so limited compared to their computer counterparts. I'm not sure why this, is except to guess that either 1) the devs don't see these apps as made for guys like me that have experience with computer VIs and can tell the difference (iow, they're good enough for most folks' non-pro use), or 2) they want to make them work on as wide a range of iOS devices as possible so need to keep the total sample size down. Maybe it's a combination of the two. What I don't want to hear is that it's a technical limitation of the iPad's audio circuitry. (I just thought of a way to test this, which is to connect the iPad to my MOTU audio interface instead of using its headphone output. Kinda messes with the "portability" aspect of having an iPad rig though! :) )

 

Knowing this, I got interested in the Colossus Piano for iOS. It's 14GB in size with 24 velocity layers per note. That's more than any piano I have on my Mac! Unfortunately (and time for another rant) the

doesn't do a great job of addressing my concerns. This uploader admits he's more of a rocker, and shows how he biased the velocity curve to hit the higher velocity samples earlier. The result is that this piano sounds "clangy" to me. Also, it's hard to hear the decay of the notes at the top end (a common problem with these youtubes) â these folks are just plinking away at them. The iOS Ivory suffers from this faster decay, even in its mid-range. Will this 14GB piano make me happy? I can certainly find out - for $50! Question is, do I feel lucky?(Answer - no!).

 

I realize that not everybody plays like I do, likes the same kind of music I do, does the same kind of gigs that I do, etc. I just wish for two things for evaluating these iOS pianos: audio examples with isolated notes near the top of the range so I can hear the decay. And, some quickly repeating notes or chords with varying velocities so I can hear the dynamics â not that the youtube algos would preserve them, but one can hope.

 

I forgot to add that I have one other piano, Pure Piano. I really wanted to like this, but it has even less dynamic range that the Ivory American D. The "morph pad" concept is very cool and I could definitely see this being used in certain situations where something other than a straight-up acoustic piano sound is needed. It doesn't work for what I need on a gig, unfortunately.

 

I'll add one more thing - my Mac piano (NI New York) uses the samples from their original piano plugin called "Akoustik Piano." For grins I searched Google to find the earliest mention of this plugin â can you believe it was 2005, sixteen years ago! Come on iOS devs, can't you make an iPad do what a Mac did that long ago? Pretty please?

 

Another novel, sorry guys!

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Funny you should mention that, Rod (drawback) was nice enough to send me a .WAV he prepared of him playing the Ravenscroft "naked" (solo, with no effects). I have to hook up my QSCs again to check it out in earnest, which should happen tomorrow.

 

Colossus also has a Steinway that's 1.6GB of samples, with six layers, for $16. That's about the same price as Ravenscroft. I'll look for you-tubes of that, but in general I don't have my hopes up anymore. That's OK; I'm certainly much farther ahead with iOS than I was two weeks ago. As I see it, I have a great "emergency" rig that's super-portable â a win.

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I had Colossus for awhile, but ended up trashing because I didn't think it had the personality of Ravenscroft, plus it was a PITA to load and pick which piano to use â lack of interface ease is a pet peeve of mine. At the time, I wasn't using AUM, so being able to save an instance within AUM may give me a better impression of Colossus. I'll give that a try.

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Rod

Here for the gear.

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How many of those Colossus pianos did you get? There's nine of them that are in-app purchases. There are video examples built into the app, and the Steinway I mentioned sounds alright although there's definitely some "clang" which may be a mismatched velocities curve. So hard to tell.

 

The interface ease you mention isn't as much of a concern to me as once I have the sound I like dialed in, it's probably gonna stay like that.

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Just redownloaded Colossus and tried it. The piano I bought was the "Red" which I'm pretty sure isn't the Steinway. Anyway, it sounds nice in octaves above middle C, but the low end is substandard. Not a nice fit at all for me.

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Rod

Here for the gear.

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Great reports, Reeze.

 

Comparing iOS to a Mac/Windows setup as you are is a much tougher scenario than using it in lieu of (or as a supplement to) some keyboard's internal sounds, which is often a lower bar to meet. When it comes to acoustic instrument emulations (certainly piano), no keyboard OR iPad app competes with the best VSTs. Though B-3X does give you VST-calibre organ.

 

If you really want the actual VST calibre sounds in a super portable tablet, maybe something like a Surface Pro is the way to go. The iPad is smaller/lighter, and the entire environment is fully touchscreen optimized, and it's just simpler. But if you want laptop sound quality out of an iPad-like form factor, maybe that's the solution.

 

One of the encouraging points is that, despite the shortcomings you found compared to your laptop environment, at least you weren't bothered by latency.

 

I don't hold out much hope for Colossus being your answer. It so tasks the iPad's resources that I suspect it may be impossibe for you to be able to quickly switch among that piano, your organ, your EP, whatever other sounds you may want. But I haven't tried anything like that myself.

 

Ravenscroft is my favorite of the piano apps I've tried. I didn't care so much for the default patch, but I thought one of the other presets was pretty nice. I haven't spent much time with it, though, and am not sure how suitable it is for different kinds of playing.

 

bfields, I don't know what the technical limitations of the flash might be (e.g. compared to the speed of an SSD or high speed hard drive of a PC/Mac), but the iPad hardware and software does have some inherent limitations. The virtual memory implentation is more limited, it does not support a swapfile (which is why iOS apps simply abort when they run out of memory, something you basically never see on a Mac). I suspect it basically comes down to the fact that so much of an iPad's design is about (a) maximizing battery life and (b) minimizing heat generation (since there's a lot of stuff very tightly packed together in an enclosure with no fan). My guess is that one of both of those are the reasons they didn't design the system to easily constantly swap things in and out of RAM as can be done on a Mac. All that additional "work" on the part of the processor might negatively impact battery life and/or heat generation.

Maybe this is the best place for a shameless plug! Our now not-so-new new video at https://youtu.be/3ZRC3b4p4EI is a 40 minute adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" - check it out! And hopefully I'll have something new here this year. ;-)

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playing the Ravenscroft "naked" (solo, with no effects).

 

As per Scott's point about Ravenscroft above â the track I sent you was the default piano (called "Classic"), but you can edit and save your own with EQ, Dynamics, Velocity & Reverb. The controls are fairly limited compared to the VI, but they are still quite dynamic.

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Rod

Here for the gear.

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playing the Ravenscroft "naked" (solo, with no effects).

 

As per Scott's point about Ravenscroft above â the track I sent you was the default piano (called "Classic"), but you can edit and save your own with EQ, Dynamics, Velocity & Reverb. The controls are fairly limited compared to the VI, but they are still quite dynamic.

 

Yes Ravenscroft is pretty good, but jeez the Ivory set on Korg module is pretty damn good! I am starting to prefer it tbh. Lots more editing capability than R too (albeit only in standalone version).

There is no luck - luck is simply the confluence of circumstance and co-incidence...

 

Time is the final arbiter for all things

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playing the Ravenscroft "naked" (solo, with no effects).

 

As per Scott's point about Ravenscroft above â the track I sent you was the default piano (called "Classic"), but you can edit and save your own with EQ, Dynamics, Velocity & Reverb. The controls are fairly limited compared to the VI, but they are still quite dynamic.

 

Yes Ravenscroft is pretty good, but jeez the Ivory set on Korg module is pretty damn good! I am starting to prefer it tbh. Lots more editing capability than R too (albeit only in standalone version).

 

Your considering Korg Module's Ivory preferable to Ravenscroft doesn't give me a lot of confidence in Ravenscroft - given the opinion of Ivory I related in my OP here! Of course these are pretty subjective things we're discussing. As I mentioned, I'm probably not in the target market for these iOS instruments; I was just curious how close I could get to what I'm used to.

 

Rod, I've already listened to your file on my cans, that's some really nice playing! I appreciate that you let some notes at the high end ring for a while so I could hear their decay, and I totally get that this is the default patch without heaps of eq or other processing. That's a plus in terms of me being able to evaluate it; If it can sound good through my K8s without a lot of tweaks, there's a better chance it might work for me.

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Great reports, Reeze.

 

Comparing iOS to a Mac/Windows setup as you are is a much tougher scenario than using it in lieu of (or as a supplement to) some keyboard's internal sounds, which is often a lower bar to meet. When it comes to acoustic instrument emulations (certainly piano), no keyboard OR iPad app competes with the best VSTs. Though B-3X does give you VST-calibre organ.

As I said before in this thread, I wasn't expecting an iPad app to equal what I get from my Mac. Honestly, I did not know my own tolerance for "playable" vs "not playable" so this whole experiment was a learning experience. Every gig I do has been with my Roland controller and the NI NY piano - a combination I've been playing for years (with the same settings), so I'm completely dialed in to how it responds to my touch. It's easy and fun to play. The iPad was a completely new experience. Maybe I need more time with it?

 

If you really want the actual VST calibre sounds in a super portable tablet, maybe something like a Surface Pro is the way to go. The iPad is smaller/lighter, and the entire environment is fully touchscreen optimized, and it's just simpler. But if you want laptop sound quality out of an iPad-like form factor, maybe that's the solution.

No, I don't need the super-portability enough to switch computing platforms! First of all, my local gigs have slowed to a trickle (after being completely shut down the last year & a half). Secondly, I already had the iPad, and I use a 10 lb. controller keyboard. I started using the iPad to put charts on, so I was bringing it to some gigs in addition to my computer. Adding some VIs seemed logical. I was certainly not expecting that I'd be blown away by these VIs to the point of replacing my laptop â so it's all good. I know better where things stand now, should I ever be in a situation where an unforeseen circumstance causes me to rely on the iPad for VIs.

 

One of the encouraging points is that, despite the shortcomings you found compared to your laptop environment, at least you weren't bothered by latency.

I thought for sure that loading up a seven-year-old iPad with all these apps would certainly cause me to have to bump up my buffer, but that wasn't the case. To be sure, I was playing these instruments one at a time - no layering! Still, there's a lot going on in my AUM session with a few midi plugins, an extra reverb, bussing, and lots of midi control.

 

I don't hold out much hope for Colossus being your answer. It so tasks the iPad's resources that I suspect it may be impossibe for you to be able to quickly switch among that piano, your organ, your EP, whatever other sounds you may want. But I haven't tried anything like that myself.

You're referring to the big piano? The one that needs 14GB of storage? My iPad is the 128GB model and has over 90GB free. I can easily fit that piano, but the one I'm more interested in is their Steinway which is only 1.6GB.

 

Ravenscroft is my favorite of the piano apps I've tried. I didn't care so much for the default patch, but I thought one of the other presets was pretty nice. I haven't spent much time with it, though, and am not sure how suitable it is for different kinds of playing.

OK then, another vote for RC. I'll be listening to Rod's file through my QSCs tomorrow to see what's up. It does sound nice through my cans, then again so did Module's Ivory American D!

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I don't hold out much hope for Colossus being your answer. It so tasks the iPad's resources that I suspect it may be impossibe for you to be able to quickly switch among that piano, your organ, your EP, whatever other sounds you may want. But I haven't tried anything like that myself.
You're referring to the big piano? The one that needs 14GB of storage? My iPad is the 128GB model and has over 90GB free. I can easily fit that piano, but the one I'm more interested in is their Steinway which is only 1.6GB.

Your iPad Air 2 may have 128 GB of storage, but it still has only 2 GB of memory (RAM), and as I mentioned, is not as adept at employing virtual memory as a Mac is. (I'm not sure how Crudebyte even manages a 14GB piano... no other app comes close.) But to my point there, I see that even their web site says, "This app requires quite some hardware resources from the device. In case there are problems with this app, please close other apps running in the background."

Maybe this is the best place for a shameless plug! Our now not-so-new new video at https://youtu.be/3ZRC3b4p4EI is a 40 minute adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" - check it out! And hopefully I'll have something new here this year. ;-)

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Your iPad Air 2 may have 128 GB of storage, but it still has only 2 GB of memory (RAM), and as I mentioned, is not as adept at employing virtual memory as a Mac is. (I'm not sure how Crudebyte even manages a 14GB piano... no other app comes close.) But to my point there, I see that even their web site says, "This app requires quite some hardware resources from the device. In case there are problems with this app, please close other apps running in the background."

Got it. I can't see how they (or other piano iOS VIs) can do their thing without streaming directly from storage. I bet they do what Mac/Windows streamers do - load just the attacks into ram. Not to contradict, but it looks like I found a different web page of theirs that claims I can run their pianos on an iPhone 5!

 

"Supported Devices

 

Due to the high quality of the piano models provided by this app, please notice the following hardware requirements for Colossus Piano.

 

Minimum Requirement: at least iPad 3 / iPad Air 1 / iPad mini 2 / iPhone 5 / iPod touch 6th gen.

 

Recommended: iPad Air 2 / iPad mini 4 / iPad Pro / iPhone SE / iPhone 6s or higher."

 

https://crudebyte.com/mobile/colossus-piano/#polyphony

 

My old Air 2 makes the cut as "recommended"!

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Got it. I can't see how they (or other piano iOS VIs) can do their thing without streaming directly from storage.

I don't know how Crudebyte does it, but the "other piano iOS VIs" part is easier... they're much smaller... in most cases, they can entirely fit into RAM. Even the well respected Ravenscroft is under a gigabyte. So not much juggling is needed, relatively speaking.

 

But getting back to what I was saying before about running multiple apps simultaneously for fast sound switching, I would guess it's less of an issue when using Colossus' smaller pianos than its larger. But like I said, I'm not sure how they do what they do anyway. If someone chimes in and says fast switching (or simultaneous playing) of Colossus and non-Colossus sounds is actually no problem, and I'm totally unjustified in my concerns, so much the better! The only personal experience I can offer off-hand is that switching from one Colossus sound to another Colossus sound does take a long time.

 

Not to contradict, but it looks like I found a different web page of theirs that claims I can run their pianos on an iPhone 5!

No contradiction, I don't think I implied anything to the contrary. :-) Though what limitations there are when running on the iPhone 5 compared to running on one of the "recommended" models, I don't know.

Maybe this is the best place for a shameless plug! Our now not-so-new new video at https://youtu.be/3ZRC3b4p4EI is a 40 minute adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" - check it out! And hopefully I'll have something new here this year. ;-)

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Not to contradict, but it looks like I found a different web page of theirs that claims I can run their pianos on an iPhone 5!

No contradiction, I don't think I implied anything to the contrary. :-) Though what limitations there are when running on the iPhone 5 compared to running on one of the "recommended" models, I don't know.

Your mentioning of their site saying "this app requires quite some hardware resources from the device" implied to me that earlier iOS devices might not be powerful enough to run this. Probably my misunderstanding. The only other thing I see there is a chart with the max voices count for various devices, and the iPhone 5 does have less of those.

 

As far as having "multiple apps simultaneously for fast sound switching", I can't report anything other than having an AUM setup with two instances of Module (one with Ivory American D, the other with the Scarbee Rhodes), Pure Piano, and the Galileo organ loaded, and switching between any of those while playing presented zero issues.

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Re: Ravenscroft 275 for iOS

It has better samples than the Ivory pianos in Korg Module, but that's really damning it with faint praise - it shares all the same faults as the other current iOS sampled pianos. It's usable, but like the iOS Ivory pianos, it's "just ok" nothing to write home about. For Ravenscroft iOS, I prefer to turn off the in-app Equalizer and Reverb and just add it externally.

 

In contrast, iOS electric pianos are much more competitive, and the organs (VB3m and B-3X) are quite good; but for pianos, but I still prefer onboard/hardware pianos for live performances.

 

The Rabbit Hole - Salamander Piano and Sound Fonts

Compared to the tame and manicured paid/commercial iOS pianos, sound fonts can be quite raw and feel pretty wild, but it might be worth a listen. There are several acoustic and electric pianos available, and the multi-instrumental packs can be surprising. You'll need a sample player of some sort; they recommend bs-16i (US$7.99 + in-app purchases), but the sound fonts are free to download; a poor man's Korg Module or Sample Tank.

 

Soundfonts 4U

Demos and Downloads

https://sites.google.com/site/soundfonts4u/home?authuser=0

 

BS-16i

Soundfont/sample player for iOS, supports IAA and AU, compatible with AUM

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bismark-bs-16i/id388149926

 

Notes:

If you use Musescore, it's worth it to download at least one of the sound font pianos for playback.

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Thanks, that info is very useful! Especially since I recently purchased what looks like a very full-featured iOS sample editor & player called AudioLayer while it was on a BF sale. I'll definitely be checking out those soundfonts. That would be pretty great if one of those pianos turned out to work for me.
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Not to contradict, but it looks like I found a different web page of theirs that claims I can run their pianos on an iPhone 5!

No contradiction, I don't think I implied anything to the contrary. :-) Though what limitations there are when running on the iPhone 5 compared to running on one of the "recommended" models, I don't know.

Your mentioning of their site saying "this app requires quite some hardware resources from the device" implied to me that earlier iOS devices might not be powerful enough to run this. Probably my misunderstanding. .

Ah, I see. The confusion comes from leaving out the other half of the quote... "This app requires quite some hardware resources from the device. In case there are problems with this app, please close other apps running in the background." The point was that it may sometimes be hard to run Colossus in combination with other apps (organs, synths, whatever). The preamble about hardware resources was included only to provide the reason why that is so. It was not meant as commentary about which models it would or wouldn't run on. Though I suppose that the multiple-app limitations would more often be an issue on a model with less capability, like the 5.

 

As far as having "multiple apps simultaneously for fast sound switching", I can't report anything other than having an AUM setup with two instances of Module (one with Ivory American D, the other with the Scarbee Rhodes), Pure Piano, and the Galileo organ loaded, and switching between any of those while playing presented zero issues.
Yes, AUM (or Camelot, Keystage, whatever) facilitates running multiple apps. The question is whether a given combination is sufficiently stable, which I assume depends at least in part of the resource demands of the apps involved. That said, I'm not certain of how problematic Colossus may be here (which, yes, probably varies with the hardware you're running on, and which other apps you're trying to run it with)... it seems likely to be more problematic than many other apps, just because of its large footprint and the developer's own suggestion that you may have to close other apps due to the resources Colossus requires, but it could be that many people are running it perfectly well with whatever other apps they want to run it with, too. But this kind of things is still a consideration in the iOS world, much more so than under Mac/Windows.

 

Meanwhile, today I was playing with my iPad Pro (4 GB RAM), and running 6 apps under Camelot (including Colossus, but only with its Electric Grand loaded, which is small), and, well, it did run. Whether it would survive a gig's worth of playing and patch changes, I don't know. ;-) Latency was noticeable, but tolerable. I suspect latency might be better if some of the apps I was running weren't so demanding.

Maybe this is the best place for a shameless plug! Our now not-so-new new video at https://youtu.be/3ZRC3b4p4EI is a 40 minute adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" - check it out! And hopefully I'll have something new here this year. ;-)

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In addition to what I mentioned about my AUM setup in my post above, I had another instance of Module with the stock strings that I layered with the piano a few times. I don't imagine that stressed the system too much. Other than that, I never had more than one AUM VI-containing channel active at one time; the others were all bypassed. That's pretty much how I do my local gigs â just a few bread & butter sounds I switch between. I'll sometimes do left-hand bass if needed, but don't have a bass VI for the iPad so that wasn't happening.

 

In any event, I'm not anywhere near pulling the trigger on Colossus. I already have one piano app (Pure Piano) that I'll probably not use much, if at all. At this particular time I don't feel like spending more money chasing an acceptable iOS piano, knowing the chances of me being happy with it are not great. I'm sure the situation will change in the future, and it was good for me to get a taste of what was doable right now.

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So going portable is taxed or technically not a given? That's possibly an industrial political matter, it could even be a musicians purgatory in some sense, as in " why give every one a perfectly tunes Steinway on stage" when all that happens with a lot of Apple customers will be playing around in a nerdy way?

 

I'm sure an air book M1 can play samples like the next machine, maybe even better (unless you go Alder Lake Intel) than most, but someone has to put it inthere, maybe play around with DAC pipeline put stuff in that most people might not like to make it sound right for some pro's and doing so might end up blowing peoples' ears off with loud midrange ugliness.

 

If I were a travelling musician without the big car to do so, I don't know how I'd handle! It's not nice to give up good keyboards like a CP4 for instance.

 

Theo V.

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Latency was noticeable, but tolerable. I suspect latency might be better if some of the apps I was running weren't so demanding.

I need to amend that... I realized I was using bluetooth MIDI, so I was not experiencing latency at its best. With a direct connection, it was fine. But I did have camelot set to 256. When running single apps, I have had it set to 128, where it is fine even with bluetooth. But 128 was too low for this combination of apps to work in Camelot. I did have one failure though... when Syntronik was in the mix, it periodically crashed.

 

I had Colossus for awhile, but ended up trashing because I didn't think it had the personality of Ravenscroft, plus it was a PITA to load and pick which piano to use â lack of interface ease is a pet peeve of mine. At the time, I wasn't using AUM, so being able to save an instance within AUM may give me a better impression of Colossus. I'll give that a try.

Continuing on the topic of running multiple apps (some of which may have heavy resources demands), I think that running them in a "hosting" environment (AUM, Camelot, Keystage, whatever) helps. I had originally tinkered with multiple apps using the "brute force" method... no host, just run all the apps at the same time and put then on different MIDI channels. Simple, but clumsy from a multi-sound control aspect. But also, my first thought back then was that adding a hosting environment to, say, the three apps I wanted to run would add yet additional overhead besides that of the three apps themelves, where in reality, using the hosting environment actually seems to reduce the total overhead required, or for whatever reason, increase rather than decrease the capability and stability of the setup. I guess it is eliminating a certain amount of functional redundancy and a certain amount of interface overhead, at least.

 

OTOH, as I alluded to above, I'm not sure about the latency ramifications. When running multiple apps independently, I think you can set each one for its own optimum latency (hopefully someone will correct me here if this is wrong). Under Camelot, you set one latency figure for the bunch, which I think might have to be the "worst case" setting. But as you can see, this is stuff I'm first learning about as well.

 

As for AUM itself, since this thread prompted me to return to a little more iOS experimenting, I was reviewing old threads, and I came acrosss where you said, "I"ve been using AUM for quite awhile - not for gigs - but lately have given Camelot another try. The interface is so opposite that of AUM it"s taking some time to get used to." It's interesting how different approaches can strike people so differently. I've started AUM a few times to play with it, and always end up quickly frustrated. I'm not very visual... I dislike icons, I like words, they communicate to my brain much more efficiently. With AUM I can't get away from the feeling that I'm trying to read heiroglyphics. ;-) I've also played with Keystage in the past and been impressed by it, but whenever I don't use it for a while, I forget how it works. :-(

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... I've started AUM a few times to play with it, and always end up quickly frustrated ...

Same here on AUM. I had to go back and watch tutorials and then re-explain it to myself in audio/MIDI terms I understood, only then did I start to get my head wrapped around it. Kudos to all these app makers coming up with "new" interfaces, but many times the "new" stuff isn't obvious. I don't need intuitive, I just need it to be obvious. Perhaps AUM sits more comfortably in the world of a studio producer vs. the mindset of a live performer. It's probably the reason I understood KeyStage much more quickly and now after Black Friday, I'm feeling pretty comfortable in Camelot Pro. One thing I do like about AUM, it's a pretty raw interface, the internal wiring is all hanging out ready to use, great for tinkering, but I'm feeling Camelot Pro a lot more for on-stage/live work.

 

iPad vs. iPhone

Looks like I'll be digging into both apps anyway (Camelot Pro and AUM) since I have apps on both my iPad and iPhone. Camelot Pro and B-3X are iPad only, so that's where they live. On the iPhone, I use AUM and VB3m.

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