recommend me an ipad 'DAW'

[rockstar_not]

Garageband has some great soft instruments on-board. The 'smart instrument' feature is very handy for making backing tracks and it saves out the midi data that you can go back and edit (at least the keyboard and guitar smart instruments do this.)

It's 5$.

The built-in organs, electric pianos and synths are worth that alone. The amp simulations aren't too bad either, if you are an electric guitar player.

I've written some tunes on it on my tiny iPhone 4S screen - not stellar, but at least I was able to sketch out the ideas while they hit me.

You'll eventually want to move the audio somewhere else. One downfall of GB for iOS is that there is still no fade-in, for whatever reason.

But again, it's 5$.

Here's one track I did after visiting a little town in Florida called Lake Placid - where the town has gained it's fame by painting murals on sides of buildings.

http://snd.sc/1cPkLE4

There's some fat-fingering in there. But keep in mind, I did all of the 'playing' on the screen of the iPhone 4S. Saved out to SoundCloud directly from the GB app. Kind of handy. On the iPad, the keyboard is somewhere between the mini keys like on an Akai Synthstation 25 and normal sized keys.

[Karmacomposer]

Look at Meteor - it is a DAW with optional MIDI editing, audio recording, etc.

It's very good. I also bought Auria a while back and it is very good. I do know that Auria will EVENTUALLY have MIDI editing capability.

Mike

[dswo]

By the way, I wasn't aware that BM2 could do pitch shifting of looped audio....unless you are referring to adding the audio to the sampler...

BM2 can do pitch- and time-shifting on audio in the sample lab/chop shop. The resulting files can be looped, but it doesn't shift in realtime.

[dswo]

I spent some time with Cubasis over the weekend. Built-in instruments are way better than BM2's, and I like the way tracks and track properties are handled, all in one place and very flexible. But basic editing tasks -- drawing notes, moving events, copying a pattern multiple times -- seem easier in BM2. As much as I like the track-handling features of Cubasis, I'm not sure yet whether I'll switch; still need to investigate the media library, to see whether it's an improvement on BM2's.

[bunnywrench]

I prefer BM2: http://www.iosmusician.com/2013/03/use- ... -apps.html

[Armadillosound]

+ 1 for Cubasis.
It's not perfect, but the interface is pretty good.
Comes with a nice cut down version of Retrologue too.

[IncarnateX]

+ 1 for Cubasis here as well. I have converted from from BM2 because Cubase has the best workflow so far. It works very well with audiobus. An alternative would be Auria used with together with audiobus. In contrast to the other daws, Auria has great effects you can apply directly to the audiostream of audiobus and not only during playback of the recordings.

[martygras]

Every iDAW I've researched has it's strengths and weaknesses, but one important "feature" to me is stability.
I've used Multitrack DAW which is really stable, but not feature rich, so I recently got Auria, (missed the sale, but seems worth the price) and Auria has some occasional lockups.
In my book lock-ups are one of the worst things that can happen during a tracking session, especially if it causes lost data/performances.

I've read several posts in many forums regarding crashes, many of which also come from Cubasis users. can anyone else chime in here regarding stability of each DAW?

It's also important to note that any app can potentially become unstable at any update. At least temporarily, so we do need to be extra careful when considering that latest and greatest version.

[bunnywrench]

I just think, feature-wise, BM2 is a better choice than Cubasis. Maybe the UI isn't most people's cup of tea, but there are more features in BM2 that I personally rely on than in Cubasis, not the least of which is a reliable clock sync. Cubasis is also missing a sampler, automation, sidechain compression, editable sends and i/o bus routing in the mixer. BM2 also has sample slicing, timestretch, and pitch-shift, which are indispensable to me.

[audiojunkie]

The first couple of versions of Cubasis had some stability problems from an undo bug. This has since been fixed and the DAW has been very stable. I new version that vastly improves efficiency and adds 24/96 as well as many other features is just around the corner.

[Armadillosound]

I've not had issues with Cubasis so far.

[bunnywrench]

The latest version of Cubasis still has a scary bug where when you use a Cubasis instrument to lay down a riff, melody or whatever and double tap the clip from the track it is in to activate the note editor sub screen and hit quantize, the whole thing is deleted instead of quantizing.

[audiojunkie]

That's been fixed and will soon be released in the 1.6 version.

[fandango]

Ok, I just watched the first three Cubasis tutorials. You're right, audiojunkie, the BM2 interface is kludgey by comparison. I'll definitely be getting Cubasis when it goes on sale.

I'm very interested in Cubasis, as Cubase is my main host (and nothing really compares for me), but I don't like swapping the dongle out onto my Macbook to take my projects around. Having a Cubase-compatible song mockup facility on the iPad is very appealing.

That said, it's £35 (I don't doubt it's worth it), but you mentioned when it goes on sale.

Do things on the App Store ever go on sale (or on discount periods)?

Is there a way I could find out if Cubasis was ever reduced, other than periodically checking the App Store?

UPDATE - Aww nuts. According to the Appshopper website I missed an opportunity on the 6th this month.
http://appshopper.com/music/cubasis

[martygras]

http://appshopper.com/music/prices/

They track all the price changes so you can look back at its history, which is kinda neat.