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.
Comments
GearNuts just posted an email update to me that they have the iCM4+ in stock.
www.gearnuts.com
@syrupcore and I are in agreement on this... I saw this as the perfect MIDI router for lots of USB and DIN midi controllers in a studio environment with either an iPad or Mac. The audio pass-thru is a bonus for when you need it, and really cool for pipelining multiple devices, but if its presence makes it impossible to use my existing high quality audio multichannel interface simultaneously plugged in, that's a big bummer.
Derek, were you able to try the test you were planning? For instance if you a put a USB hub between an iPad and the ICM4, with another USB audio interface plugged into the hub. And playing with the timing of the plugging in..... ?
@sonosaurus said:
Curious about this too, but hoping this wasn't the test you had in mind because you can kiss device charging goodbye with this setup.
@Ringleader said:
Yeah, ideally they would include a setup option in the ICM4 to disable the audio portion of the device to the various USB ports. Perhaps if it isn't there now, they could pull it off with a later firmware update? But since the device itself isn't really a USB hub, there still probably wouldn't be a way to plug an audio device into its host-side port (or attached hub) and have it work.
I checked in with the iConnectivity folks yesterday and I don't think that would work @Ringleader. :-/
@Syrupcore & @sonosaurus- it's definitely a great MIDI router - yes and there are plenty of use cases where that will be not only an intended use but perhaps a sole use - but personally I have a MOTU for that in a different studio setup, which I also have an iPad plugged in to ;-) So, my own excitement about the device is based on the MIDI, yes, but also the audio passthru' in particular. I guess horses for courses. The audio passthru is fundamental to my own use of the device as I think it will be for many who are wanting to get digital audio I/O to/from iPads.
Also, it's not a problem to create aggregate devices, esp. in MacOS and I've been doing that very successfully even with the 2+. But, I agree, if you are looking to obviate the necessity of a computer, then the Audio4+ will be a good choice when that comes out.
At the end of the day, whichever device suits our individual workflow will be the device we need :-)
The more I read about the 4+ and the Audio4+, the easier it gets to be to just stick with my 2+ and collection of other MIDI and audio hardware I already have.
If I was starting out with nothing, it might be a different story....
Well that about wraps it up for me. Still a VERY cool device but I will wait for the Audio4+ and hope they have a lightning cable by the time it is released. I do wish you could use multiple computing devices and use the USB host port at the same time on the Audio4+, but that would be more of a down the road use for me anyways. Thanks for all of the info. :-)
My iconnectmidi4 has been picked and packed and is ready for shipping! Very excited!
Thanks @musicinclusive for all the info and video's I'll be looking at them a lot I'm sure to figure this thing out.
Mine is shipping as well from Sweetwater. We'll see how it is despite the downsides
Is Possible to use it only as a Midi device?
Of course.
Thanks Jesse! Looking forward to the report.
@Sinapsya said:
@Zymos said:
Not exactly. Looks like you can't turn off the audio interface. Hopefully @sonosaurus will find a way around that.
I've been back and forth on this unit, I had it pre ordered for a long time and cancelled it. Then finding out that I can't use my interface with it bummed me out. But I realized I really wanted it for the audio out of my PC (all my vst's that have been collecting dust), into my iPad and charging 2 iPads tipped the scales for me. I can't wait!
@syrupcore said:
What makes you think that? I don't have the 4+ of course, but with the 2+ you simply turn it off in the settings app, and audio is handled by the iPad hardware as normal.
@zymos Man I hope that's true of this one as well.
@syrupcore, @Sinapsya, @Zymos - you are absolutely right Zymos - I hadn't thought of that. Yes, if you turn off the iOS audio handling in iConfig, and reset the device, your audio will come out of the speaker (I didn't try the jack yet and I'm not at the device right now - I can test on Thursday hopefully). The MIDI still works just fine.
That would be true too I guess of the iCM2+ as well, but I'd never thought of trying it with that device either since I wanted to route the digital audio via the cable to the Mac / PC - it's one of the reasons I bought the iCM2+ originally.
Complexities... And - cool. Thank you @Zymos. I learned something here!
So many use cases, so little time.... ;-)
@syrupcore, @Sinapsya, @Zymos - I tried it with the iCM2+ which I had to hand, and the jack output does work as well as the speaker output if you disconnect the iOS audio in iConfig on the USB B port as was suggested.
COOL! :-D
@Zymos - I threw a new blog entry up about that, and you got a mention! ;-)
http://www.musicinclusive.com/blog/two_pieces_of_iconfig_goodness/
Hi All,
Sorry to divert on this thread, however has anyone encoutered iconnectivity Iconfig Application crashing when run on a Windows 7 Pro 64 Bit PC ?
When Launched it opens it innitial dialogue box and then becomes unresponsive.
thanks
Amar
When disabling the Midi4+ audio, does this allow you to connect a USB audio interface to the hub coming out of the host port on the midi4+ (still supporting device charging)?
@Ringleader, unless I missed a big development, you can't connect a USB audio interface to the host port,period. Only MIDI interfaces. Before Derek got the 4+ in his hands and started getting into the details, I'd thought you could.
@MusicInclusive- I thought I was just stating the obvious, but I'll take credit for thinking outside the box and using a MIDI interface as a MIDI interface. :-)
@zymos - Figured so and even asked it earlier on in the thread, but I thought that maybe the audio interface portion of the 4+ being active may have been what was preventing it since iOS only allows one audio interface at a time. Still seems weird that a USB host port has a preference as to what types of devices can be connected to it - especially if it accepts a USB hub. The USB port on the Apogee Duet is strange too - but it doesn't even accept a USB hub. And some class compliant midi devices don't even work with it (KMI SoftStep). Never quite got how this works but it might be just me.
Do the host ports on the Akai EIE allow audio interfaces? Maybe it's just not possible for some reason...
Audio? No because it already is an audio device. But I would assume the USB ports would still work since it is just a USB device and when used with a CCK it would be just like using a standard USB hub. The difference here is that the 4+ has a dedicated device charging iOS port with a 30 pin cable (hopefully lightning soon) with no CCK required. Once you get into that type of connection, it seems like all the rules change. But unfortunately this type of connection is required for device charging.
Yes, when using the CCK the iPad is now the host and actually has to provide power to things plugged in, thus the lack of any charging capability in that mode.
Charging is not my top priority, so I'm hoping that if I use the CCK from the iPad to a USB hub, plug a USB audio interface into the hub, then plug the ICM4+ into the hub (using a normal port from it, not the host port), and disable audio on the ICM4+, that all will work as I would like. No charging for the iPad, but c'est la vie. I'm assuming ICM2+ users could answer the question already, but I will know for sure when I receive it tomorrow.
@sonosaurus, man I hope your right! It would be very cool if it worked that way too.
I'm sorry if I missed this but with ICM4+ can you use OSC to control your Mac/PC without wifi or ad-hoc?
OK, I have the ICM4+ now, and everything seems to work as I expected it would!
I was correct that when plugging an iPad with a CCK into a USB hub's host port, then plugging the ICM4+ into that hub using one of its normal jacks, and disabling the iOS audio for that jack in the ICM4+ config software, I can plug in my Focusrite USB interface into the hub and iOS uses it just fine. Along with the 16 new midi ports exposed by the connected ICM4+
No charging, of course.
I also tested the pass thru audio implementation by plugging the iPad directly into the ICM4+ using their shipped 30pin->USB cable (along with my Apple lightning to 30pin cable) and it does indeed seem to work well. I had a MacBook Pro plugged in to the ICM4+ as well, and using an AU Lab setup (with the ICM4+ audio channels as input, and my main audio interface as output) I could monitor the audio from the iPad through my studio monitors. Since this is software monitoring, both the buffer size on the iPad as well as the buffer size configured in your Mac/PC audio setup (AU Lab in my example) will affect the resulting latency, which I did not measure for accuracy, but seemed reasonable. The ICM4+ manual states that the additional latency it adds itself is configurable to be 1 to 4 samples (which is pretty minuscule in the scheme of things). I created a few aggregate devices too on the Mac, so a DAW can have access to all the usual I/O in your main interface as well as the channels from the ICM4+. Incidentally, this pass thru setup worked just as well when I had the iPad connected via CCK to the hub, and ICM4+ connected to that with the iOS audio option turned on. No real reason why you would do this in practice, because you lose charging.
After just this short time testing, it's great to be able to go back and forth between a bunch of controllers and drive iOS apps, Mac apps, and hardware synths (simultaneously if I want to) without re-wiring anything physically. Now to keep plugging more stuff in and figuring out the software routing config that works best.....