My custom iPad Pro based setup, with AUM + Digitakt & Digitone

Elektron Gear Digitakt
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First of all, thank you for sharing your experiences with videos on YouTube. Your content is top-notch, there’s no question about that. At the same time as you were working on this, I was also trying to find a workflow that would suit a compact and mobile approach. I discovered your videos late and had almost identical experiences in terms of app selection and hardware setup. AUM remains my central host—the problem you mentioned hasn’t come up for me yet, but maybe that’s just because I generally have different goals. For me, in most cases, classic jamming is the main focus AFTER I have pre-produced a track or song to a certain extent. Let’s see if I can reproduce your problem… I might have more time for that in three to four weeks.

As far as YouTube is concerned… I think the main problem today is oversaturation. In order to even get noticed or find viewers, you primarily have to effectively increase your reach—which has become more difficult in today’s world. You would have to be featured by popular synthfluencers or get in touch with them and hope to get a boost from their reach. But all of that involves a lot of effort—not even taking into account the planning and production of the video content… It’s not because of the quality of your content. It’s because it feels like everyone has “important” content to convey—and that’s across countless areas of interest. Music—and music production in particular—is a tiny niche. Just think about the ever-decreasing attention span… it’s really difficult to deliver the ‘money shot’ in such a complex field. In any case, I love watching your content and I’m delighted every time I feel your enthusiasm for the subject. THAT is passion. And not many people have that. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Awesome! Man you’re taunting me with that photo LOL I’ve been dreaming of getting an Osmose for AGES. You must be having the time of your life capturing the expressiveness of the Osmose with Loopy Pro.

I’m a big fan of the MIDI Fighter Twister as well even though I’ve never had one, especially considering the time at which it was released.

Today I guess by default I would gravitate towards Intech modules:

(if you look on their home page there’s a photo of a girl’s hands on a white desk with a “16 encoders” module paired horizontally with a “8 pads + screen + notched jogwheel” module so theoretically that could enable naming parameters and visualizing hi-rez numerical parameter values)

I was also really interested in a Faderfox EC4 for a while.

In the end I feel comfortable enough interacting with the iPad’s touch screen directly that I’ve been functional without feeling the need to involve other bits, even though they wouldn’t hurt!

I hope the new Keystep is working well for you, it seemed rather cool from what I saw. I have the original version but I just always end up using my elektron boxes to trigger midi (even though obviously that limits what I can do) so I never use it.

About Loopy Pro, I was curious as to whether or not in your use case you would feel limited (in terms of Loopy functionality) if you tried having AUM host Loopy, and I was also wondering if a non-hosted tandem approach between Loopy and AUM seemed viable to you?

Cheers and thanks for sharing your setup!

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Hey kAfA! Thanks for the praise, and it’s my pleasure! I was kind of overdue to give a sign of life and KaOsphere’s comment felt like the right spark for that.

I completely agree with your take on YT. As I see it your understanding of the YT landscape is spot on. A while back I had this realization that I couldn’t just have a “one size fits all” approach towards the YT grind if I was to expect to get a healthy rate of growth going on my channel. I felt like the artistic/editing decisions I took had to take into account that I was just getting started. While large YouTubers can afford to have non descriptive click-baity titles / thumbnails, doing that for me (and I tried, especially the non descriptive stuff) would pretty much systematically result in my content falling into oblivion lol. At first I had this thought that maybe the effort I was putting in being super descriptive was maybe not all that helpful, so I tried to go full minimalist with the title & thumbnail and it just made things much worse, so I reverted to the approach currently visible on my channel.

On the subject of AUM & stuff, as I see it - and this is the extension of the problem I mentioned earlier about being able to record/playback stereo audio conveniently - the biggest problem in the AUM + Elektron boxes environment is the ability to break free from the grid and the difficulty of accessing high resolution parameter automation.

In other words, either you involve a traditional piano roll sequencer in the equation like Atom 2 (which I don’t have), or Helium or Xequence 2 (both of which I have) to cover your unquantized recording needs, AND/OR you take the raw audio recording approach using something like Loopy Pro to achieve that, and you get the bonus that whatever movement you perform in real time as you tweak an AUv3 parameter directly on the AUv3 UI is effectively going to be recorded/perceived as high resolution (to a degree you also can avoid the need to record parameter automation using sequencers that are external to your host application and are therefore limited to low resolution when sending MIDI CC data to AUv3s - as opposed to what the host app would be capable of doing IF it had a built-in sequencer/automation recording & playback)

If you choose to work with a piano roll sequencer to record unquantized MIDI & trigger AUv3s in tandem with your Elektron boxes, it’s likely you’ll run into some friction (arrangement flexibility issues) unless the Piano Roll sequencer you choose has some clip-launching capabilities (Imaginando’s LK Matrix does this but I’ve been hesitant to give it a go -even though I have it- because it’s likely to not be polished enough yet). Additionally there are certain things you can do FX wise manipulating pre-recorded audio (half speed playback is a huge one) that you simply can’t do if you’re relying on MIDI to trigger sounds.

In the end involving a Looper approach due to its inherently simpler nature is much more likely to feel liberating to use in practice, which is more or less what I’ve experienced using Circa Looper (my experience was sadly diminished by bugs).

In my opinion involving raw audio recording/playback in the “mix” really has the potential to dramatically elevate the quality of a production, which is why the subject is so important. For all I know maybe investing in Loopy Pro with the intent of having it hosted in AUM is just that ideal solution, but in the absence of validation from other users in the community that this is viable in terms of resource usage, I guess I’m preferring to limit the scope of the tools I use because I prioritize usability above functionality, and I’m still functional with Circa Looper.

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Yup !

Sry for delayed reply, my life ( outside of my loving and supportive family ) is a mess atm.

In order of appearance :

  • I had several intech modules in the past, they’re good and provide a deep editor with pretty interesting advanced functions.
    As far as build quality is concerned, they feel reliable but a bit on the light side as they are 3D printed.
    On the other side I only took the plunge recently on djtc controller and have been blown away !
    They are miles away in term of feeling and build quality.
    The ( heavy ) downside is that they pretty much have no support ( they just work ! ) and a pretty basic editor software with some little twists though.

I achieve everything Intech editor is capable of, in loopy easily.
So having the power of a programmable controller is not mandatory in my case, no need for an external editor.

  • I also had a faderfox ec4, well built but I just don’t like the screen and the tiny four rows calculator typos… And of course, not cheap !

  • My setup relies on : what you see on screen is what you get on your controller.
    No need to remember which encoder does what, my ipad interface mimics the controller real estate and colours.
    By using “controller profiles” in loopy, all visual feebacks are context dependant.

For exemple :
On the picture I posetd above ( the mapping is not finalized yet ) you can see four blue buttons bottom left of the apc.
They are temp reverbs.
When pressed, they send the looper of their column, in a reverb, pre fader and put track fader at 0 until released.
They also open the reverb interface and switch the fighter twister in reverb control, changing its colours and functions.
Everything switch back to default state when button is released.
Same goes for the above purple button, but it switches to the koala multi fx plugins with it’s dedicated control.
If I want to bypass that behaviour, I shift press the button and the controls stay in their current state.

I use the touch screen for functionnal/building puposes essentially.

  • The keystep is pretty interesting !
    I’m mostly doing jams and improvisation and it suits this role pretty well with pre recorded sequences, arps, you can transpose and mutations, on the fly.
    The only functions which seems hard to use in real time are all the scale/chords/strums tools.
    They need quite a bit of menu diving to setup and appear much more composition/inspirational tools to me than jamming tools.

  • Tbh I don’t need to have aum along loopy in my case, I embraced loopy completely !
    They could probably run side by side but I’m afraid it could be counterproductive and painful switching to one another ?

I already have a slide over file window to load style/key "backbone pre set stems " for jamming, I wouldn’t bother dealing with another one ! :sweat_smile:

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Super useful insight, big thanks for that! :smiley: What were the odds you were going to have actual experience with literally all the controller candidates I have ever considered LOL!!

You made a very good point about the Twister not really needing a screen in the context of your Loopy Pro use case. Were you able to achieve NRPN MIDI resolution control and bidirectionality between Loopy and the Twister? If so that would really bridge the last mile as far as having access to “up to date” tech on the iPad. I do think there’s a strong argument to be made in favour of the intech stuff in terms of slimness, “usage of space” efficiency and the advanced editor though!

As far as the idea of running Loopy Pro and AUM in tandem (as opposed to having Loopy Pro hosted within AUM) goes, I think there’s immense potential in this as long as it’s viable in terms of resource usage efficiency (I’m thinking about the potential risk for overheating the iPad), which I of course have no idea about as I haven’t been able to test it all. IMO this opens up the door to circumvent the major technological limitations of AUM as a host

  1. no built-in sequencer (whether it be a piano roll seq for MIDI or the ability to lay down audio bits on a timeline)
  2. no high resolution MIDI control option when using controllers external to AUM (whether they’re physical or virtual using AUv3s like Surface Builder)
  3. no automation programming at all (neither high or low resolution) or automation read/write
  4. No truly practical audio recording capability (even if AUM can record audio).

while still keeping all of its incredible strengths in play (incredibly robust, feature rich and well made, incredible routing flexibility and awesome UI to manage nodes or interact with AUv3 interfaces within AUM’s environment).

Changing the iPad’s focus from AUM to Loopy or vice versa shouldn’t be a problem as long as Loopy includes a function for that (AUM does). If somehow Loopy doesn’t have that function, in theory it’d be possible to involve Audiobus in the mix but I think this should be absolutely avoided if possible) As far as my current use case goes, I rely on Audiobus to give me the functionality of switching between Xequence 2 and AUM (and Audiobus obviously) at the tap of a button using my iPhone remote control.

If it turns out that Loopy has a built-in function to request the iPad to switch its focus to it (Loopy that is), theoretically that could mean that if Loopy Pro has a piano roll sequencer that is feature rich enough, I could eject Xequence 2 and Audiobus from my setup completely and potentially just run Loopy Pro and AUM in tandem. I’m under the impression that Loopy Pro now has a sequencer and automation read/write but I have no idea how usable they actually are.

The main thing that’s stopped me so far when it comes to Loopy (and to a much lesser extent Koala btw as I’m skeptical about its usefulness) is simply a matter of financial considerations coupled with a lot of previous disappointments overall due to unpolished iPadOS apps.

If I was in an environment where I could have access to demonstrations by people who actually could make a strong case for loopy as a part of an AUM setup, that would pretty much overcome the objections I have about the whole topic. I’d rather be pleasantly surprised and late to the party than speculate and invest in something that doesn’t actually exist as a truly viable option.

Slightly off topic, I have to say though I’m a bit disappointed at the radio silence that Audio Damage have demonstrated regarding Circa Looper as this tool has a lot of potential. It was so inexpensive that it’s difficult to blame them, but it needs significant work still. I took a gamble investing in it thinking it would almost certainly be more lightweight than Loopy Pro, but that was just pure speculation and an arguably educated guess…

To sum things up, I’m definitely open to the whole Loopy Pro thing, but it’s so difficult to actually have access to the information needed to invest in it with confidence. It’s true that it’s not particularly expensive, but it’s not that cheap either, it all comes down to the value it gives, which is from my perspective not clearly demonstrated yet, as it’s a relatively niche product. There’s no question it has massive potential of course, but Loopy Pro being the work of one man comes with certain implications. It would be incredible if AI could be put to work as a sidekick to help him take care of the technical challenges inherent to the process of developing Loopy… Anyhow cheers! :slight_smile:

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Just made a little video to show the feedback.

https://youtube.com/shorts/vfh4xVwaaho?si=hRJ4sCFZ4CaKVsxI

You can of course sends nrpn messages since you can send virtually an infinite amount of messages with a button, dial, whatever, with options to send immeditely, successively, after a delay from 1ms to 16 Bars. If you need more just queue another dummy event of 16 bars and so on…Pretty powerful.

Another interesting feature/concept is that you can use the same midi source multiple times, process and name each copy differently and route them freely to anything. No more hassle with midi channels and filters, just mute/unmute the correctly processed instance for the situation.

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Absolutely amazing! Thanks for recording and demoing all this! Seeing a demonstration of bidirectionality working and how SMOOTHLY the green rotary fader changes its value when you turn the encoder on the Twister completely changes where Loopy Pro stands in my mind. I’m so surprized the Twister was able to accomplish all this. The quantization loop launch flashing feature is also insane lol. I guess the only discrepancy that remains in this scenario is that the visual starting point of loops is 6 o’clock on the Twister encoders (which is understandable) vs 12 o’clock on Loopy. If anything I guess Loopy should have an option to change that on its own UI seeing how cool the Twister is, but in the end I don’t think this should matter much once you get used to it.

Your use case of the Twister also demonstrates there’s a clear usefulness in favouring a design where the encoder is surrounded by LEDs vs just having 1 single LED at the 6 o’clock position with varying light intensity (the InTech design) as that is nowhere near as helpful in scenarios where you might want to use a 1 beat quantization loop launch mode (just 1 example). Au fait, j’ai vu que tu étais Français aussi, coucou lol :smiley: Merci encore!

P.S. : Vive la France et les paysans qui la défendent!

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I’m progressing toward the end of mapping the whole thing !

I have four synth tracks : 1 instance of tekno, 1 of koala, 1 of model D/15. And the osmose.Four effects buses with Space, koala FX, zodiac echo and transit.
On top of that I have lofi af and needlepoint.
12 audio loopers with no pre set length, 12 midi loopers.
Spectra controls tekno and koala with dynamic routing.
Twister controls all parameters of all plugins and osmose with contextual profiles.
Apc controls tracks, clips, records, overdubs, opening closing of interfaces etc…
Osmose can be routed to model D on the fly.
Keystep is my generative sequancer, arp.

Almost there, the Setup is extremely fun to play with.

Cocorico :rooster: !

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