Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
Beat-Machine Updated (August 2014)
I have an iPad2 that I use for most of my music creation, along with a newer (and faster) iPhone 5s. I know I am not alone as an iPad2 user, as I've seen several people comment that they also use one. It's probably the oldest device you could realistically use with AudioBus and most DAW's, but generally, if you follow the right steps, it works absolutely fine.
However, last night, I downloaded SeekBeats, the wonderful $7.99 universal app that is a drum synthesizer. It came highly recommended from people here, and I liked what I saw in the intro videos. Apart from being totally lost on how to change sounds in my kit and program a proper sequence, I noticed some terrible slowdown in the app, even using it in isolation outside of AudioBus. This surprised me, as the app is a very small file size, and I didn't expect it to demand much resources. Loaded it on my iPhone 5s, and thought it struggled at times even there.
Any other drum apps people have had trouble with on older devices? S4 Rhythm Composer Pro was an accidental download on my part that I REALLY liked, but it's slow on the pads and menus, even if it tends to be okay playing sequences. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/s4-rhythm-composer-pro/id693960820?mt=8 Beat-Machine was only 99 cents, but it's so slow loading things and changing screens that I had to delete it. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/beat-machine/id505825861?mt=8
Also, what are some tips/workarounds for improving performance with drum or other apps that stress your CPU? Here's a quick list of what I have tried, and will likely try for SeekBeats:
- Switch device to Airplane mode to reduce interference/CPU use of antennnas
- Close all other apps except AB and other linked apps
- Increase app latency, or add latency in AudioBus (256 frames is my default, but I switch to 512 or sometimes 1024 with some guitar apps if they struggle in recording)
Comments
That doesn't sound normal to me. I use an iPad 2 and don't experience the things you are mentioning. I would suggest power-cycling your device.
Here are some additional things to try that might help overall performance:
http://forum.audiob.us/discussion/2092/post-your-tips-to-get-the-most-out-of-your-system-#Item_1
Thanks for the thread link. I do vaguely recall coming across that at some point, but that it is quite an extensive list of suggestions.
I was actually hoping to hear that nobody else was having problems with SeekBeats - that would mean that it will work properly! Perhaps my iPad2 was just a little "clogged" up with a bunch of downloading I had been doing recently.
But I laugh at the people who say "leave an extra 3GB of space on your device" to help with performance. Ha. I haven't had over 1.5GB of "extra space" dating back to BEFORE I became addicted to music apps. Now? Not a chance.
If it weren't for AudioShare - it'd be even worse. I use it to "store" excess samples, soundfonts, etc. in DropBox rather than leaving them on my device.
I've updated Beat-Machine, but the update took forever to make and it's taking forever to come out. It took so long because I wanted to address these issues. The entire app is now contained in one large screen with a toolbar at the top to scroll between different sections to avoid loading new screens (this is slow). The kits still take time to load, but I've shaved about 3 seconds off the loading time of a typical kit. This is on an iPad 2 (all i've got). In the case of Beat-Machine it's because I made my own sampler that can load 24 bit / any sample rate files with non destructive trim and reverse and wave shaping and pitch. Apple's default AU sampler can't do this and uses much less cpu. I just had this idea of limitless sound quality and options when I made the thing and it just uses more cpu than a simple wav player. The sequencer uses some power too but I plan on replacing it with a better one eventually because 16 steps just ain't good enough anymore. The GUI also gets disabled when running in the background now (don't know why I didn't think of this before) which saves power and has stopped audio dropouts I was having on my iPad 2 when recording through AB. IAA is pretty cool too, the sample accurate tempo sync "actually works" and it seems to be able to record Beat-Machine at lower sample rates if you want instead of forcing the audio session at 44.1 like AB. I'm testing with garageband. And I made it so record can be toggled on and off while the sequencer is playing. So hopefully you can try it out again and get some use out of it when the update comes out. Sorry it took so long... programming just takes so much dang time...
EDIT: and maybe some other devs can chime in about how they are rendering graphics on the screen? I just used Apple's default UIKit and I noticed that simple things like tapping buttons and scrolling though scroll views cause noticeable cpu increases. I think objective-c is just slow. Which must be why it's easy.
Will it support state saving?
@dreamless - Thank you for the detailed update on your app. Obviously, I would have not have paid anything for your app if I didn't think it was a promising product that was something useful for rhythm production. I do keep in the back of my mind that MANY of the actual developers here keep an eye out for mentions of their product, but at the same time, if there's something I feel can be improved, AB Forums is the ideal proving ground for sharing and discussing those issues. I don't suspect you took my comments personally, but if you did, I apologize. My device is older, also, and while I am not a programmer, I suspect that the hardest part of programming would be getting the framework of an idea to actually run more smoothly and efficiently (especially when other apps are introduced).
I will certainly watch for your update and gladly try Beat-Machine again in the future. Thanks for your continued work!
@DaveMagoo said:
I can't get my hands on the AB2 SDK because it's not available yet. I think they must have just fronted it to the most popular app devs. AB is shockingly easy to implement though so I can add it real quick. The only state it needs to save are what kit, pattern, and song are loaded up. On that note, IAA was shockingly difficult to implement because there are NO INSTRUCTIONS FROM APPLE WHAT THE HELL but it works well and has some extreme potential. Does anyone know if all IAA hosts behave the same? I've made it so you can sync Beat-Machine with the sequencer in garageband and skip to different steps and measures of a pattern by changing the position of the timeline in garageband (because the sequencers are actually linked in time with IAA, not just tempo sync'd). I hope this works in Auria and Cubasis.
Yes, Auria and Cubasis both have good IAA transport/timeline integration. But not all hosts behave the same yet. For the first several months even GarageBand wouldn't supply the IAA clients with tempo info, good to see they fixed that one.
@dreamless said:
This sounds FANTASTIC!!! Could you post some GUI screen shots?
(I changed the thread title to "Beat-Machine Updates Coming..." because my question was answered and the BM news took over the thread
)
Very excited about the Beat Machine update news. It was already a good app beforehand, the updates are sounding like this could be my go-to sample-based drum machine.
@StormJH1 Well you didn't have to do that... I just wanted to shed some light on the subject. The other rhythm boxes may have similar reasons for slow performance (custom audio engines, slow objective-c GUI). My honest answer to your original question is that you should probably try funkbox and dm-1. They seem to use the least resources and are held in high regard. dm-1 seems to have a lot of random bugs that can pop up out of nowhere but for me funkbox has always been perfect.
EDIT: I'll grab some screenshots tonight when I get home, I've been meaning to do it anyway
A bit of input...I prefer the editing options and pad layout (esp. the pad layout) on Beat-Machine to Funkbox, personally.
I have DM-1 and FunkBox - you can't buy all the apps, but it's also not an either/or thing. I like a good variety of options to try different things out. Many of the popular drum apps (FunkBox especially) excel at certain things but are hard to work with, or have an emphasis on a particular type of music.
It's been a little while but I recall liking the export options in Beat-Machine - a lot people use copy/paste for drums even if they'd never use it for other things.
Interesting to see the screen shots of the update
Looking forward to this one. No pressure ;-)
Can't wait! It has come a long ways from when you started. Awesome to see that you are continually improving it!
Great news!In the meantime BeatMachine keeps resseting and jumps out of audiobus when I change eg virtual-midi,send clock etc on the setings tab. In my (poor) opinion maybe there is a cofilct between audiobus buffer setting and the app's buffer.
@dreamless screen shots of the update please
ok ok, i'll stop putting it off and do it today!
Thanks :-)
The overall look of the interface hasn't changed too much, but i've made it less confusing and faster to get around. I also now have the AB2 SDK, and I've built it for native 64-bit for those devices that are extra fancy. Here's a full rundown on what it's got now:
I know people will still want more features than this but don't worry... because the programming never ends
@dreamless, impressive list, thanks!
Sounding good @dreamless!
@dreamless - I actually like some of the subtle interface updates, and the update list looks impressive. Thanks!
YAY!!!!! Way Cool!!!! I love the new features and improvements, and the GUI changes definitely make things easier!!!! Fantastic job!!! I'm really looking forward to it!!! :-)
Amazing job...very impressed, so many, many thanks.
Looks like a great update dreamless.
Thank you very much! Any screenshots of how using the sound generators or it's too early?!
@dreamless said:
Thanks for the screen shots, I am quite sure that users would love this long awaiting update.
When can we expect to see this on the App Store.
Looks very cool