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.
Is Audiobus too ambitious ?
Before I start, I will apologise just in case I do not word this as delicately as I would wish to. but it seems to me that Audiobus has not functioned (for me} reliably for quite a while, I have lots of issues with loading saved states, and I find many otherwise solid apps Crash, Glitch or produce error messages constantly in audiobus. In my admittedly limited experience reliability is steadily getting worse as more and more complex Apps like Flux fx are introduced, it also occurs to me that it is almost impossible for the Audiobus developers to keep up with the introduction of new apps and frequent updates and therefore my expectations of Audiobus may be unrealistic, and if this is indeed the case, what is the next evolutionary step. Is there a viable future for the live use of Apps by professional musicians? or will iOS be forever chasing its tail trying to cobble together a limited selection of apps that we can feel reasonably confident are going to make through a full song without falling over. Is it all a pipe dream? or has someone got a plan for the future, I would love to hear how Sebastian and Michael view the future for Audiobus beyond my slight hope that iOs 8.3 will solve some or all the gremlins. I post this with the deepest respect and understand that many of you will not see things the same way as I do.
Comments
On my iOS 7.1.1 iPad the majority of my apps actually work better via AB, than standalone and IAA. I can't speak for 8x users, but for me AB is almost an essential part of the OS. I hope this will always be the case.
Always works for me. I'm sure there are limits to the more complicated stuff. But to record an app into Audioshare (via an FX app sometimes), it basically always works fine.
As more complex apps are introduced and more complex setups become possible, that puts more strain on the hardware - is it possible that it is your hardware that is struggling to keep up, rather than issues with the software itself? In general I think that AB works well and is an essential part of most people's workflow.
I have more faith in the AB team than I do in whoever programs itunes for windows.
If developers didn't have this kind of ambition there would be little progress. They need to push the boundaries within hardware constraints and jump through hoops each time a new device or iOS is released.
I have no doubts that the AudioBus team keeps up as good as they can with what's happening at the Apple-Camp.
I have more doubt in the 3rd party developers who forget to update their apps to include the latest version of AudioBus SDK in their apps when ever that becomes available from the AudioBus developers...
Let me just say that even if I have thought about the question posed in the title, and even if I occasionally feel like the idea behind it may occasionally outpace the actual capabilities of the hardware, I've still had HOURS upon HOURS of fun playing music on my iPad because of AudioBus and the implementation of IAA, which AudioBus undoubtedly played a huge role in (for obvious reasons I won't get into here). And this is an app that was a $5 investment on my part, but justified probably hundreds of dollars of investments in other apps.
So, really, asking if AudioBus is too ambitious is like asking if the whole concept of iOS music is too ambitious. Clearly, it's been extremely beneficial for people who want a mobile solution or don't want to fart around with drivers and VST's on a desktop computer. At the same time, I do hope that the technology catches up to the concept someday, such that the top 2 or 3 phone and tablet models can comfortably run just about everything that goes through AudioBus. What seems to happen instead is that the envelope gets pushed further and further, so you get larger and more complicated apps to go with faster devices, but the idea that you need to "baby" everything to maintain performance is always there.
@StormJH1 Lot of good and sensible and real stuff there.
I think AB is a game changer even now with IAA out. Unfortunately with IOS things have changed and it seems to me that voluntarily or not Apple is killing off our beloved AB. Most of us will probably know that native solutions are the most stable so I hope we'll soon have a solution based on native standards.
I just hope we see IAA introduce state saving and multiple app instances by the end of the decade
I think you might be under the impression that we're adding Audiobus to third party apps. We're not. Third party developers add the Audiobus SDK to their apps and update it when there is a need to.
While it is true that iOS 8 is still not as reliable as iOS 7 used to be, we're seeing slow improvements. On iOS 7 we were using our own backend technology for the audio transfer between apps. Since iOS 8 we've had to switch to IAA and give up some of the control over what's going on during an Audiobus session. But there is really no reason to assume that Apple are not going to fix audio, IAA and Bonjour bugs (which are currently causing problems for users) eventually. If they don't other platforms will be able to catch up and then we'll have a situation where there's even more pressure on Apple to innovate and provide a solid product.
What we can do at Audiobus is to help users navigate through the rough patches and help developers implement a solution for transferring audio between apps that just works (TM) while giving them a way to get their apps noticed by the huge Audiobus community.
We've got two pretty ambitious projects planned for this year and one of them will be revealed in the next weeks.
I'm very nervous about upgrading to iOS 8, so good to hear you're working to improve support for this. Still on the fence for an Air 2 purchase....wondering if the new projects would enhance the new iOS and hardware, which would make the decision a lot easier...
that sounds confident ^^
I don't think they care anymore for now, they are so busy with the god dammed watch and apple pay ...
Only thing that delights me is the new haptic stuff, let's see what's new in fall and what we find under the carpet
i am hoping for "snow "iOS 9 and new haptic tools ...
iOS 8 is just no fun for music as it was on 7 - it made me go back to the Mac
...very interesting....
@Sebastian: 'We've got two pretty ambitious projects planned for this year and one of them will be revealed in the next weeks.'
AB Daw?
2Ambitious Projects.....
Rumors:
I think one is LoopyMasterPiece
the other could be a
Mixer with send/return BUS integrate in AB incl Perfect Sync
YEAH!!!
Not bad guys, not bad.
And Masterpiece is not an Audiobus project.
I'm guessing one isn't an app called "BanjoFran"?
Hot damn! I knew it. The AB crew is working on a crap filter/talent booster! Bring it on.
okay MasterPiece is out of the Race........damne....
AudioBus get a own Category @ the AppStore ;-)
i would love to see Audiobus Pro....
....Multiple App Instances....
....SDK DAW integration so Audiobus comes built into apps like Cubasis/Beatmaker....
Masterpiece will be fucking glorious as far as I can see, too. But it's not really secret. Well... at least the things you know about it yet aren't secret.
My guess is: You have sold Audiobus to Apple for even more money than Camel got for Alchemy and you are going to give us all lots of shares, therefore we are all going to be rich and so can easily afford to hire real musicians to play exactly what we want to hear but sadly could never produce for lack of processing power on our iPads
I am very sorry, but we're not helping you outsource your passion. Although that would be a grand idea.
My only other guess is that you are going to have a joke competition, but personally I don't recommend that as some of the forum members have proven to be very poor losers
Add desktop to all slots?
Or just external device, so other ios devices could be used.