Thoughts on using Tabletop for iPad???

[martygras]

I keep looking at Tabletop thinking it would be great to have sessions saved etc. but am worried that it would bog down too easily and not get enough support for "Tabletop compatible apps".

Now it's been out awhile and it has had a few revisions.
Reviews on the interwebs seem to be for earlier releases.

Is it worth getting, or even useable? Does it have an Achilles heel? Yadda yadda yadda?

I love Audiobus, but I'm still looking at different workflows.

[ghettosynth]

I keep looking at Tabletop thinking it would be great to have sessions saved etc. but am worried that it would bog down too easily and not get enough support for "Tabletop compatible apps".

Now it's been out awhile and it has had a few revisions.
Reviews on the interwebs seem to be for earlier releases.

Is it worth getting, or even useable? Does it have an Achilles heel? Yadda yadda yadda?

I love Audiobus, but I'm still looking at different workflows.

I tried to use it for a live gig some time back. It wasn't an important gig (none of mine are really, but, I mean, even to me this wasn't important) so I figured that something new might be fun.

In a sense it's like reason, but it doesn't really work well on the limited surface. It never went more than 20 minutes without crashing which just became too frustrating to use, but, when it was working well, I found that it wasn't intuitive like I wanted it to be. There was too much moving around on the screen to get to devices. I don't know if I'm being clear, but, IMNSHO, it failed at the tabletop metaphor and felt more like a paged instrument. There were lots of little reasons for this but the driving factor seemed largely to be unnecessary limitations driven by the business model and the failure of the "image of an instrument" to be really worthwhile on the small screen. I'm quite used to the "real" notion of a tabletop performance with various groove boxes and this just didn't work that way.

One of the founders is an acquaintance so I gave it more time than I probably would if I had no personal connection to the product. In the end, I didn't use it and I haven't really spent much time with it since.

Hope this helps,
gs

[gamecat666]

seemed a bit unpredictable in performance for me, and I hate the fact that its severely hobbled until you shell out a load of cash for IAP's (with quite high prices for even the simplest things)
I just despise this type of business so i dont support it.

it gets next to no use here. I bought the iMPC app which is tabletop compatible (same people) and thats a bit rubbish. I only bought it to use the samples in beatmaker 2

[martygras]

Yeah I understand what both of you are saying. It seems like a great idea though. Too bad.

Maybe Audiobus will add "sessions" or something similar.

Thanks

[bjoz]

I've only used it sporadically, as I tend to sequence on my laptop and use the iPad more for sound design. But for what it is, it's not bad. Definitely capable enough if you know what you're trying to achieve ... like Richard Devine (Vimeo)

Maybe Audiobus will add "sessions" or something similar.

I wouldn't hold your breath about Tabletop ever getting Audiobus support, although it would be nice.

By the way, I've never once had it crash on me ... YMMV.

Cheers,

[ghettosynth]

I've only used it sporadically, as I tend to sequence on my laptop and use the iPad more for sound design. But for what it is, it's not bad. Definitely capable enough if you know what you're trying to achieve ... like Richard Devine (Vimeo)

Maybe Audiobus will add "sessions" or something similar.

I wouldn't hold your breath about Tabletop ever getting Audiobus support, although it would be nice.

To be clear here, he's using it like Reason as a DAW. Other than it crashing, I have nothing to say about this. I don't think that the iPad is worth my time there. I don't
"produce" on the iPad in the sense that you are working out songs and saving your modulation etc.

I was speaking purely as using Tabletop as a live improvisational device as a replacement for a real table and a 909+303+otherstuff. Where it fails for me is in it's ability to play it as an instrument. You can't grab the cutoff on on the 303 at one side of the table while fiddling with the 909 on the other side of the table at the same time. Even to switch from one to the other is not a seamless muli-touch experience. I can imagine pinching the screen to zoom in and when half of each instrument is in view I can quickly grab two knobs across two instruments then say, swipe to the left quickly and jump on the mixer, swipe back and tweak some more.

It's cumbersome as a live tool and I think that they really could have embraced the iPad interface. You can swipe around but it doesn't solve particular important specific choices. For example, I want to tweak the mixer and the glitchboard at the same time, can't do it, can't hold the glitchboard selection either. This is an oversight from my point of view.

There's nothing particularly noteworthy about the sounds, good or bad, the 303 is useful enough, and you can certainly quickly whip up little composition studios. In fact, it works well enough if this is your aim, again, modulo the instability. But why, for example, can't you program drums on the matrix sequencer with the sounds from the xox drumbox? There's nothing fancy about the matrix as a sampler, I see no reason to not have one shot samples in there.

Track selection is slow and fidly on the xox. Why isn't a multitouch, hold track select, choose the button of the track that you want. The RS7000 works this way, it's VERY live friendly. Knobs are not for precise selection. Similarly, why aren't their sliders on the mini 4 ch mixer. It's the only mixer with an effects send and doesn't have sliders, virtual knobs are too slow for live use.

I don't think that it's useless, but I don't think that it solves any real problem well. I think that garage band, on the other hand, does. I really like using Garage Band as a quick song scratchpad.

By the way, I've never once had it crash on me ... YMMV.

How complicated have your patches been? In my experience, it's proportional to what you try and use. My setup was essentially a live DJ setup with Matrix/909/303 on either side of two mixers feeding a master mixer with some effects. It crashed multiple times just while piecing the kit together and I'd have to redo sections. This didn't really happen that often until I started building larger kits.

[ghettosynth]

Ok, so, on edit: I just played with this for well over an hour. It seems that they've fixed some of the stability issues because I was playing with my large live set. Most of my other comments still hold though. I was able to come up with some cool workarounds but I can't see it being the "all in one" live rig that I was hoping it was. Nonetheless, I think that I could play a room full of "trippers" for several hours and they'd be all in to it.