WaveMachine Labs Auria Pro
Cramming a desktop-class DAW into an iPad app is a tall order, but can the new flagship version of this production system make it a full reality?
Upon its initial launch in 2012, Auria (9/10,
183), WaveMachine Labs’ multitrack audio recording and mixing environment for iPad, stunned us not only with its track count – recording up to 24 simultaneous tracks; playing back and mixing up to 48 – but also its many other high-end DAW features, including PSP Audioware’s Channel Strip EQ, dynamics and saturation processing, eight sub-groups, two auxiliaries, track freeze, delay compensation, 64-bit mixing engine, and automation of plugins and the mixer.
However, the lack of MIDI left the developers with a considerable hill to climb before they could consider their DAW truly complete. Climb that hill they have, though, and the result is a revised Auria range, with the updated Auria and Auria LE now constituting a second and third tier under the all-new, MIDI-compatible Auria Pro. All versions offer in-app purchases via the integrated Auria Store, enabling you to customise them with extra plugins and content, and upgrade from one version to another.
Improvements to Auria and Auria LE include unlimited audio tracks in the former, plus support for the iPad Pro and overall stability improvements in both; and although the layout of the app is the same, with its zoomable mix and edit views, all three apps are graphically more muted (and, we think, clearer) than before. The big screen of the iPad Pro is also put to good use, with the four channel Inserts directly accessible in the Mixer rather than via the FX page. Without doubt, though, the real headline new features come with Auria Pro, which is the focus of this review.
Pro-former
First and foremost, then: MIDI. This follows standard DAW convention, with MIDI tracks hosting MIDI clips that are used to trigger the bundled instruments and any Inter-App Audio-compatible apps on your iPad; and a new tempo and time signature editor.
Recorded MIDI data can be manipulated at the track and region levels. The Channel Strip (accessed via each mixer channel’s FX icon) features a new tabbed MIDI Control panel for applying real-time track changes, including Grid and Groove Quantize, MIDI Volume and Pan (overridden by clip data), Transpose, Legato and Velocity Compression. MIDI clips open in a piano
“All versions offer in-app purchases via the integrated Auria Store”
“A new bussing option lets you create up to 32 stereo busses for routing channel outputs to inputs”
roll editor with functional options including Quantize position and length, Transpose, Legato, Velocity compression and Humanize. You can switch between MIDI tracks in the piano roll editor (a very welcome time saver), and select a ‘reference’ MIDI track to appear greyed out in the background – very handy. The MIDI data to be edited is selected from a menu (note, velocity, mod wheel, MIDI CCs, etc), and the editing is done using a pencil tool. Tap the pencil tool twice and the time-saving Repeat Draw mode lets you ‘paint’ in multiple successive notes based on the current snap setting. More than one note can be selected for editing at a time using the Multi Select function.
The sound of now
Auria Pro also sees the introduction of some excellent new audio-related features, of course. First, you get six dedicated auxiliaries, which, to save screen space, are switched between in pairs at the Master channel return, simultaneously switching the channel sends to match. Next, a new bussing option lets you create up to 32 stereo busses for routing channel outputs to inputs. Each channel can have multiple bus destinations (unlike the subgroups, of which each channel can only be a member of one), and the auxiliaries are now also handled like busses, adding a further six stereo sources for routing into the channel inputs.
For many current and potential users, the addition of audio warping to Auria Pro will be as important as the introduction of MIDI. Both manual and automatic transient marker creation are offered, and the Elastique Pro v3 timestretching engine (with three modes – Pro, Efficient and Mobile) ensures extremely highquality results. Further options include slicing at transients or separating (which uses an additional transient end marker to extract just the transient section, removing the space in between), and audio quantise (snapping transients or slices). Transients can also be converted into MIDI parts or used as groove templates. It’s truly excellent stuff.
Plain sailing
Auria Pro is extremely easy to get to grips with, and its sensible use of iPad gestures (tap, swipe, pinch, tap and hold, double-tap, double-tap and hold) combined with the hardware’s excellent screen response will have you whizzing around in no time. The only slight frustration is that coreMIDI requires a buffer setting of 512 or less, so any Auria Pro project with MIDI tracks is limited to that maximum, while those without can run at up to 4096 samples. So, although our iPad Air easily handled many audio tracks and even quite a few plugins, it creaked a bit when using more than a handful of instruments, particularly when overdubbing. Our iPad Pro walked it, of course, and for serious work, we’d advise at least an iPad 4.
For Auria and Auria LE, v2 marks a pretty minor upgrade: new graphics and improved stability (plus unlimited tracks for Auria). Auria Pro, though, is a very significant upgrade indeed over the regular Auria, setting a new standard for serious iPad music production apps.