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.
Apollo Sound Injector - streaming audio over WiFi, out now.
Folks -- we've got an app that streams audio over WiFi (with Audiobus 2.0 support, of course); it's been approved, and we'll let it loose this coming Monday. It works with Apollo Remote Recorder -- so if you have that, you're in good shape. Remote Recorder 1.3 (also approved and updating on Monday) will send out audio over WiFi, and Sound Injector will receive it.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/apollo-sound-injector-streaming/id912136793?mt=8
Sound Injector will be free, and will stay that way. We've also got early versions of a Mac AU and a PC VST on our web page -- those are free too. The AU is moderately stable, and plays nice with things like Logic. The VST is a little more rickety, has higher latency, but it works OK with Reaper. We're going to be working on the plug-ins; they'll be more robust in a while, and we figured that there would be some people who would like to play around (and provide feedback).
We'll put together an Apollo bundle (remote recorder, midi over bluetooth, sound injector) at a nice price, and will be putting everything else on sale for a few days.
And because everyone is going to ask -- latency -- in my set-up, it's around 80ms, but what you get will depend a LOT on your router, and the local WiFi traffic. Sound Injector has a button to squeeze out latency, but you may get audio glitches. I've tried to strip all of the fat out of the system to minimize latency, but physics says that it's not going to be zero (and it'll be higher than audio that is only routed on a single device).
Comments
Very cool! I will definitely be buying that bundle!
Dunno if advocating something like this would lead to support nightmares, but using an ad-hoc network would most likely reduce latency versus going through a router. See this post from Liine (Lemur devs).
http://support.liine.net/customer/portal/articles/1192703-do-i-have-to-use-an-ad-hoc-network-or-can-i-go-through-my-router-
They also have some videos on setting up ad-hoc connections, though I'm sure there are better ones out there. https://liine.net/en/downloads/lemur
Congrats on the app, Patrick.
Is there a standalone pc app? I would find this useful. Not a big user of vst as I mainly use reason and reaktor standalone. Thanks!
I'm liking this as I already have midi over Bluetooth....
Congratulations on the apps! I love your apps and it's nice to see this taking shape. It will change how many people make music.
Looking forward to complete the bundle, as well.
@Buska -- I believe that you can use VSTs with Reason and Reaktor (someone correct me if I'm wrong) -- we're doing the plug-ins, so that you can integrate into desktop apps more easily. I've been testing things out with Reaper on the PC -- seems to be working for me with a 32-bit Windows 8 machine, but I expect that it'll be rough going for other DAWs and machines (I just don't have the resources to test all the combinations, and I rarely do development of any kind on windows).
It's really bad that I cannot use any of your apps because my MacBookPro can't be updated
above OSX 10.7.5.
Please do a 64bit windows VST. 64 is more common that 32 I believe. Might be wrong.
+1 for 64 bit. Reason does not support vst. But you can use rewire ,most modern DAWS support it.
Thanks so much for creating ways to glue all my devices together into one big monster. I am now digging out Computers and AU's that I haven't messed with in 3 years. This is one bundle I will absolutely get!
Wow. This could be pretty incredible. Excited to see how it works once it's released...
You have my attention.
Can't find new bundle in App Store Japan.
Sound Injector is out, and a bunch of stuff is on sale. The bundles seem to be held up at Apple; there seems to be some sort of approval process that they have to go through, not sure when they'll be ok. I couldn't create the bundle until Sound Injector was approved...
Available in U.S.! Thanks Patrick.
How do you find bundles? I'm looking at all of the Secret Base Design Apps but I don't see the bundle.
Hah. Nevermind, I own them all anyway. Though a link to the bundle couldn't hurt...
so did anyone try it yet with OSX? (i.e. ipad audio --> OSX/mac DAW...)
Would love to see a user video or two of these apps in combination!
The AU should work with Logic (that's what I use for development), but I've heard of trouble with Ableton. There are a couple of different AU variants, so I may need to tweak things to get other DAWs to work. The PC VST is definitely cantankerous -- works fine in 32-bit Reaper, but I'll need to figure out some Windows magic to get it playing nice with other DAWs. The plug-ins are still very much under development; I was wrapping up the iOS app, and decided to take a run at desktop versions -- and they fell together pretty easily.
@SecretBasedDesign so if the audio is not routed through an AU once it gets into a laptop/desktop, how would you "tell" the audio where to go? Soundflower? Maybe I'm misunderstanding how Injector is supposed to work...
On the Mac, there is a dedicated Sound Injector AU -- drop the file from our web site into the right folder (~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components), and then start up Logic. Logic should see the AU, and you should be able to insert it into the instrument generator slot of a Logic track.
I'm trying to cut as many layers of software out as possible, to minimize latency. Sound goes over WiFi, directly into Logic.....
Makes complete sense and sounds awesome. Bummer to hear about Ableton, though, as that's my primary DAW. Hopefully it can be sorted out.
I've got an older version of Logic that maybe I'll give a shot. What about Cubase?
I love Patrick's apps, but all of the DAW/MIDI-based ones seem to be just a bit off of me being able to actually use them. I have an iPad2 (so no Bluetooth LE) and a desktop PC that is not on a WiFi network. So, I have Apollo Recorder, but no real way to use it yet (since I can't use Bluetooth over MIDI and it's not a Mac).
Sound Injector may work between my iPhone and iPad, but I'm not sure that makes sense for me. However, I hope to figure it out in the future, or use it with newer devices I may buy some day.
Thanks Patrick!
Ha, @StormJH1 you and I seem to end up in the same boat often!
@StormJH1 -- you should be able to use Remote Recorder with any MIDI source (I recommend Apollo MoB, but anything will work). For the PC, there's RTPmidi, which lets you have a WiFi connection. You can also use a couple of back-to-back MIDI-to-USB adapters (plus a camera connection kit) -- a bit of a hack, but it works well, and is reasonably inexpensive. And the regular iOS MIDI adapters should work too....
The web browser in remote recorder should work with any desktop browser, and the next release of Sound Injector will have a browser built into it (along with Audio copy+paste, and some controls to toggle recording).
Let me know if you need help setting things up, and I'll do what I can!
Can't find the bundle in the US store. Doesn't means its not there only that I can't find it. Anyone have the secret to finding a specific bundle in the app store?
Bundles are held up with Apple approval(?!). I wasn't able to create a bundle until Sound Injector released -- and then after getting the bundle put together, saw that it was a "submit for review" button, instead of "give people a deal." With luck, the bundles will be available soon.
Patrick you are most certainly one of the most game-changing mind-blowing developers on the whole App Store. Similar to the innovation of the Audiobus fellas themselves. That's high praise from me buddy! I wonder if I can hook my next door neighbors' synth up so we can jam without him having to walk into my messy house?
@SecretBaseDesign - thanks for those suggestions. I will try to rig a cheap interface of some kind.