DRAMBO as AUv3 on MAC in Ableton Live
Hey you,
i haven't purchased DRAMBO yet and want to know if someone has any experience regarding Drambo as AUv3 in Ableton Live on Mac?
I have spend a lot of money on iOS / iPadOS music apps that didn't satisfied me. Beatmaker 3 confusing GUI, Cubasis good GUI but too limited and too old fashioned build in instruments, so i became more carefully.
My goal is to play around on my iPhone and / or iPad, sketching ideas, creating Synths comparable to Reaktor Blocks, simply have fun, but still be able to use it in Live on Mac later. I don't need a full production environment on my iDevices i just want something that deep, motivating but also seamless integrable in my Desktop entvironment.
How is your experience with Drambo on Mac? Does the synchronization of patches work flawlessly?
How is the scaling? (While Moog Model 15 and my other AUv3s technically works flawlessly, i cant scale them, some have naturally a good size on my screen/resolution combination, some not)
How is Drambo on the iPhone compared to the iPad? Still usable? I don't like Cubasis 3, Nanostudio, Garageband on the iPhone, because of the small GUI while i like Ableton Note and the iMaschine 2 because they focussed on usability / playability instead of the self expectation to be a full DAW.
Ideally i create an Instrument on my iPad or iPhone, save it, open up Live on my MAC when i am at home, load an instance of Drambo in the AUv3 inside Live on Mac an load the patch, i created on my mobile devices, directly via iCloud and Midi trigger / -play the synth i created, from within Ableton Live with clips or my Keyboard. My question: does it work like that way in reality? Have i a realistic vision about how Drambo interacts in my theoretical use-case?
Comments
How is your experience with Drambo on Mac? Does the synchronization of patches work flawlessly?
yes
How is the scaling? (While Moog Model 15 and my other AUv3s technically works flawlessly, i cant scale them, some have naturally a good size on my screen/resolution combination, some not)
doesnt scale, but has usable size
Ideally i create an Instrument on my iPad or iPhone, save it, open up Live on my MAC when i am at home, load an instance of Drambo in the AUv3 inside Live on Mac an load the patch, i created on my mobile devices, directly via iCloud and Midi trigger / -play the synth i created, from within Ableton Live with clips or my Keyboard. My question: does it work like that way in reality?
you save your patch from iPhone/iPad to iCloud and open it in the Drambo AU in live and go on with your day.
you can use your midi session from what you saved inside drambo or whatever is in your live clip/you play on the keyboard.
what doesn't work is triggering your clips/patterns in drambo with live clips, drambo AU simply follows the transport (play/stop) of live ...
(means if you set drambo to play its patterns one after the other it will do that ...)
and the au doesn't expose its parameters to live for automation/whatever, needs to be done within drambo AU
(so if you want to wiggle some morph module knobs, or what have you, you need to use midi map inside drambo and the au needs to be open and selected)
How is Drambo on the iPhone compared to the iPad? Still usable? I don't like Cubasis 3, Nanostudio, Garageband on the iPhone, because of the small GUI
I dont recommend using that kind of complex software on an iPhone, im always surprised when I see ppl do it 😮 - the screen is simply to small for my taste.
what also doesn't work is if your iPad drambo project contains AUs & you try to open it in live
AUs can't host AUs ...
Works great on iPad, iPhone and Mac here 👍 I sometimes go for walks while using Drambo on my phone hehe.
Thank you all, i bought Drambo + the Wavetable pack and everything works so far like you described. Easier to get initial results than i thought, especially compared to building a synth in Max for Live.
Even that parameters aren't exposed to the DAW isn't a big issue because the AU recognizes the MIDI CC input perfectly.
I think because of Drambos modularity, exposing parameters is complicate, a good way for a future update could be the integration of 8-16 global Macros that will be always exposed to the DAW no matter if they are linked to parameters or not, so we could control whatever they were linked to in Drambo.
I have a minor graphical issue with AUv3s in Live 11+12 that isn't exclusively related to Drambo, there is a continuous flickering where some UI elements slightly light up fpr a few milliseconds in about one second intervals, when using Drambo AUv3 in Live. This neither happens with Drambos AUv3 in Logic nor in the standalone version.
It also happens in Audiokits King of FM AUv3 but not in the Moog and Koala AUv3s in Live, has anyone experienced the same? Its not strong and doesn't affect the usability just a little annoying.
When i do a long click on a module Mac AUv3 and standalone, i only see CUT, COPY and PASTE when i do this on my iPad i additionally see DELETE and SELECT ALL. I know can use CUT instead of DELETE and easily use the mouse to select multiple modules, but i wonder if there is another way to access the DELETE and SELECT ALL commands?
Beside that i am very happy, everything is very fun and intuitive to use with the GUI that is straight forward and doesn't confuse unlike so many other complex iPad apps.
Great to have you here @NIELS_ON!
So you have some experience with Max4Live?
MIDI mappings could be improved indeed in several aspects, but one idea would be to have a "Control Rack" rack preset with 8 or 16 Knobs or Morph knobs in front or readily mapped to some of your favorite AUv3 parameters, with each knob already connected as desired. You could then quickly map these 8/16 knobs as desired.
max and max4live suck.
you need a phd in computer science to get anything complex going. 🤠
I went through some M4L tutorials sets and thats all, i can look into a max device and have a basic understanding of what it does, depending on the device. But it is a visual coding environment in first place and not a dedicated modular synth system. I think it would be more interesting for people without programming background if it had more pre made containers suited for certain tasks or Ableton would develop a synth only environment based on max, i think Drambo is going the right way, i want to start with an oscillator and not care about how to bring the midi input in a readable format in 10 extra steps. Atm. i still prefer Live over Bitwig in some important areas, but systems like Bitwigs The Grid, Drambo and Reaktor are more intuitive usable than M4L for this kind of stuff and i think Ableton generally has a gap for the people who want to dive in some nerdier stuff but not to the ground of the ocean, but there is not much in between Lives stock devices and capabilities and the ground of the ocean, same goes for midi in Live, you either use the project based "one to one" mapping in Lives surface and/or the userscript textfile or you learn to code your own midi remote scripts, but something mediocre complex like the Traktor midi mapping capabilities isn't build in.