How to integrate Riffer
I’m new to this iOS music making so apologies for the total basic question but I can’t see the wood for the trees at the moment. I want to use the AU app Riffer to trigger Obsidian. Can’t for the life of me get it. (Runs away with head hung in shame - 
) Ta for any help. Really enjoying discovering NS2 though.
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@ajmiller You cant do it in app at present for recording and Riffer doesn’t show up as a midiFX but you can use it for live use. Try using Riffer in standalone mode outside of NS2 and send midi to your tracks that way.
Right! Ok, thanks. Sorry to harp on but why wouldn’t it work? What is the underlying reason for it not working. An internal midi thing? It appears as an AU as does, say, Ravenstock Piano and I can get a sound from that straight away. I do understand Riffer doesn’t produce sounds exactly but isn’t it the same idea? Again, if I’m missing something obvious bear with me. Cheers.
Ok think I’ve sorted it. Thanks.
How did you get it to work? I’m Running riffer externally,” Riffer MIDI_Out” shows up in NS2 on my obsidian track as MIDI input, but won’t trigger any notes when I play in riffer, NS2 does not show up in riffer as a MIDI destination. I’m using other apps to send MIDI into NS2 so I have that part down...
I don't own riffer but here's a few things to try:
Do you have background audio enabled? It's in NS settings.
Also, in the Obsidian mixer track's IN/OUT tab check that the channel matches riffer's. This defaults to OMNI (all channels) so it's probably fine but worth a check.
Finally, on that same tab, check that the settings for "Track receives MIDI when" are what you want.
Thanks for the reply Will! Yes on all - background audio is enabled, all MIDI channels are selected (light colored) and I’ve toggled “Selected” and “Always” with the same results. Head scratcher... I know riffer is spewing MIDI with a MIDI monitor (MIDIWrench) and so far NS2 has been very well behaved for the simple midi I/O stuff. But I also realize that without the ability to trigger riffer from NS2 (I.e. start/stop) then it’s still a kludge because it won’t be synced and will need to be edited later. I’m just now switching to NS2 and I’m going through the phase of trying to figure out which old paradigms I used in the past will work with NS2. I appreciate the positive vibes of this community!
THIS * 100. If you're using this approach you will be an NanoStudio ninja in no time.
Sorry I can't be of specific help with Riffer since I don't own it. Do you have another sequencerish app like StepPolyArp or Quantum that you could run stand alone just to double check the settings you have in NS? Maybe @jumpercollins can offer some insight.
@Will No can’t get it working either. It’s not a AU midi effect so doesn’t show up in that list so you can lay down midi data from it. It doesn’t have a internal sound engine from what I can see so you can’t use it as a instrument which is how it’s listed inside NS2. Also remember NS 2 can’t record midi data at present within the DAW itself so cant send midi out from Riffer to a second track to record can’t even here it triggering a second track with a synth on. So at present stick Riffer in Audiobus 3 and use virtual midi bridge to send to NS2.
@Will Is Matt aware that it would be very good idea to add NS to virtual midi destination list ? Is there some simple request task for this feature ? Or is this information just buried inside various other threads ? Because i saw already multiple times this in various threads... To me looks like this shouldn't be too much complicated, of course maybe i don't see something which could arise from it (worst case something UI related ?)
If you got the MidiFire app and AUM, then you can do the following:
that's it.
@toneman
I didn’t tbh. When I replied above I thought it was the Background Audio switch and kind of left it at that as I’m not up and running with NS fully yet - I’m working on tunes using other apps and haven’t had time to use NS fully.
I sent en email to AUDIOMODERN to ask them if they could update Riffer so it could be seen as a midi FX. I speak about this in another forum because at the exception of AUM and apeMatrix, what’s the point of having Riffer as an AU instrument ? Unless your host is capable of midi routing (which is not the case with NS2, nor BM3 or Cubasis), using Riffer inside your host is pointless.
Sadly, I haven’t received an answer so far but I really hope AUDIOMODERN will update Riffer so it can be used properly, like SPA and Rozeta.
I did something similar and left an app review for riffer (it hasn’t been posted yet) - it wasn’t overly critical, but yeah it seems pointless to have it as an instrument... they just updated it a week ago, so at least they are active...
Well FWIW I added Autony (another algorithmic sequence generator like Riffer) as a MIDI fx unit with Obsidian and it does work, but you can’t record the MIDI it generates (I think this has to do with the placement of the MIDI FX in NS2). Hopefully that might also get addressed in future updates.
I got some nice stuff going with Autony. It drops a note here and there when changing pages but wasn’t too bad in that regard. Being able to record its MIDI out would be nice as has been said a million times.
Nice. This is also possible with MIDIFlow standalone if you already own that. https://www.midiflow.com/documentation/#custom-virtual-ports
And apparently is already available in the AB3 beta so should be publicly available in the not-too-distant future.
I'm not sure. And no idea about difficulty (or ease) of implementation.
I am aware and have a note to look into it. TBH the virtual MIDI ports have always confused the hell out of me - you can have an app register as a receiver that other apps can send to, or you can have senders that the other app receives from, or you can have both.
To be honest, I don’t think Riffer works well in the current iOS AU midi land. Riffer works great on other platforms with its drag and drop midi way of working, but I feel the app has been shoehorned into iOS land - where it simply doesn’t work as well.
OK, got it working with MIDIFlow (needed to remap MIDI channel as it looks like Riffer is CH1 output only) as a connection test; but still have sync issue (start/stop) and that will have to wait until a future update (unless I’m missing some other trick).
The only problem with Riffer is that it’s not a midi FX but an instrument, problem which certainly could be fixed by the developer. Aside from that, this app works perfectly on iOS and behaves like any other app of its kind.
Riffer's developer is really responsive and I bet a quick email to him, he’d fix this if we requested it? The desktop version of Riffer is really interesting, and to have it on iOS at such a great price too.
I just left a request for it in a Review on the App store; said that it would be nice to have both options as Synth and/or MIDI FX app.
Try and email the developer directly too. But yes, good call at the App Store!
I've just purchased Riffer, so I also have a stronger excuse to email the developer.
The reply I got was “AUv3 still does not officially support MIDI plugins” and that they were working on it.
Weird answer... although I don’t really know what your question was.
My question to him would be : can you update Riffer so it’s considered as a AU MIDI FX. I don’t know if it’s not officially supported but other developers do it perfectly with their app : StepPolyArp (and now QuantiChord), Rozeta, Physical Bouncy, Midi Echo, even Sugar Bytes with the bass section of Egoist...
Not that weird. What it actually means is: 'we are still figuring out Apple's archaic methods of implementing internal MIDI'. In fact this also frightens the bejezus out of our own Blip. But perhaps it also says a lot about developers who also may think a simple port from desktop to mobile would be 'simple'- without really understanding the whole touch ethos that comes with iOS. Bram gets it right because he's never developed for Apple desktop, only iOS. PantsOfDeath hinted on this with Auria (mk1) which is chock full of mouse-driven drop-down menus. It's a problem I have with Audio Damage plugins too, and why I won't buy their stuff any longer.
You're wrong, @brambos was famous long before iOS :-)) Hammerhead, Tuareg sequencer... He is living legend
@dendy note 'Apple' in front of 'desktop'! I am actually right! Hammerhead, Tuareg sequencer... etc were all Windows!