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 Store

Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

Considering updating to iOS 7? Wait!

edited September 2013 in General App Discussion

Hi folks,

We're on the cusp of iOS 7, and I'm here to urge caution: If you rely on music apps, please don't update yet.

iOS 7 audio is not ready. There are a wide variety of bugs that are causing performance problems, crashes and other problems in a large number of music apps.

This may change in the future, but until we see a few point releases for the OS, I strongly urge you to stick with iOS 6.

Cheers,
Michael

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Comments

  • Michael, could you list some of them?

  • I'm afraid not, @giku_beepstreet; we're still under NDA for now. It will presumably be lifted soon though.

  • Also, more generally, it's worth reading this warning about iOS 7 on osxdaily.

  • Why you guys never seem to post this kind of info in the core audio section of the Apple developers forums? Search for inter-app audio and see that there are only questions and very little answers. What you doing is a great service for the audio apps developers but without further information sharing this is useless. I can share my company's own research into iOS 7 inter-app-audio - there are some bugs but some things work - I've posted several threads in the dev forums. See you there? My dev forums username is djplayer. Cheers!

  • While I agree that iOS 7 is not full ready, Michael are you referring to apps that have been rebuilt with Xcode 5, or existing Xcode 4 iOS 6 (and earlier) deployment targets? I'm not seeing anything specifically bad with my iOS 5 SDK targeted apps. But under what conditions? Is this just multiple apps, inter-app audio, Audiobus conditions?

  • edited September 2013

    Hello Aviv,

    We're posting here because we feel like we need to warn users, not developers.

    This post is not about inter-app audio, at all.

    We felt the need to tell users that they might experience bugs with iOS 7's audio system in day-to-day use as musicians.

    Sincerely,

    Sebastian

  • edited September 2013

    @onereddogmedia:

    Please discuss XCode and development specific questions on Apple's developer forum. This is the users's section of the Audiobus forums.

  • edited September 2013

    @Sebastian @Michael
    Let me rephrase the question :-)
    Are you saying that music apps that may (or may not) include Audiobus in pre-iOS 7 are likely to break on iOS 7? Or is this warning specific to only apps that use Audiobus?

    (and yes iOS 7 isn't ready)

  • edited September 2013

    No, this is not a warning specific to Audiobus.

    Most importantly: We're just urging musicians to wait for the point release (iOS 7.0.1+).

    iOS 7 is shiny and new and it might be great for anything not related to music production right from the start.

  • User point of view is enough. I'm curious since I haven't encountered any problems yet :].

  • @giku_beepstreet

    Jarek, since iOS 7 only launches later today I think I can't comment in public yet, but I'll send you some links to the dev forums since we're both under NDA anyway.

  • So, Sebastian, does that mean you will be able to comment in public as soon as iOS7 launches later today? That is what I gather from your post above mine... :-)

  • Awesome!!! :-D Will you be able to tell us the secret "3rd thing" that's coming to Audiobus?

  • Ahhhh, why not if the NDA is lifted?

  • Because it has nothing to do with the NDA. It's something we're working on and that we're only making public when we know we can ship it.

  • Oh, OK. That's different. :-) Thanks for the clarification! I hope it's a solution for the Midi issues iOS has. :-)

  • edited September 2013

    Thanks for the info, guys. Sadly, that osxdaily article totally deflates any anticipation I had for iOS 7 on my iPad 2. Lagging orientation changes and keyboard input?? Ack! No thanks.

  • My thoughts exactly. I REALLY, REALLY hope this is software fixable and that an update comes out that gets things working back to proper speed. I can't afford ANY loss in efficiency, since things are already too slow for me as it is....

  • edited September 2013

    Here's a great article that sums up the situation quite well. Statements from other developers included:

    http://discchord.com/blog/2013/9/18/before-you-update-to-ios-7.html (especially read Christopher Rice's statement about a bug with interrupted audio recording sessions)

    Here's another one from evolver with a detailed statement from myself: http://evolver.fm/2013/09/18/audiobus-warns-musicians-against-upgrading-to-ios-7/

    And last but not least here's Peter Kirn about the same topic: http://createdigitalmusic.com/2013/09/ios-7-now-please-dont-install-yet/

  • This is great information Sebastian! Thanks! These articles you list mention that the NDA is now lifted. Can you now comment at all on the state of Midi in iOS7? I personally am not in a hurry to update to iOS7 and I know that things are a long way off, but I'm concerned about the mess Midi is in, and I'm wondering if help is on the way or if we need to start looking towards Audeonic's Midibus as a possible solution...

  • I can't comment on the state of MIDI in iOS 7 other than that I've not experienced any problems with it. But I haven't tested it.

  • edited September 2013

    I've made a post about the audio interruption bug with details on how to get your audio apps working again if/when it occurs on my Facebook page.
    Holderness Media Facebook

    If you don't want to read the whole thing and just need to know how to recover from the bug, here's the proper steps.

    UPDATE:
    As a temporary workaround, you can enable Airplane Mode to prevent incoming calls, so long as you don't rely on Wifi for your setup. This won't prevent alarm clock alerts but those aren't nearly as common.

    Solution to get audio apps working again if/when the bug occurs:

    1. Once the interruption happens and your app(s) are no longer responsive, don't panic, and don't waste time complaining online. It's easy to get things working again.

    2. Quit Echo Pad and/or any other audio apps you were running COMPLETELY by removing them from the multi-task bar. Simply closing and re-opening the app without removing it from the multi-task bar is not enough, and will not recover the audio. Removing apps from the multi-task bar is a little different on iOS 7 than it is on previous versions of iOS. See step 3.

    3. To remove an app from the multi-task bar in iOS 7, double tap the home button or use the 4-finger swipe up gesture to display multi-tasking.

    4. With one finger, swipe up on the app's window to remove it from the multi-task bar. The app's window will slide upwards out of view.

    5. Once all audio apps have been removed from the multi-task bar, you can now relaunch them and audio will work correctly as before.

    Also, if you have updated or are planning to update to iOS 7, please make sure to update to the latest version of Echo Pad, version 1.4.9.

  • Thanks for the warning guys. I do want to install ios 7 but about 80% of my apps are audiobus dependent. Would like an "all clear" email when you think it's safe. I wasn't going to give it a second though until I got the message from you all. Then I started to look around. Thanks much.

  • I must admit, this panicked me, but I upgraded and have no problems at all with Audiobus running several apps on it. Maybe I got lucky..!

  • @Mark: We're definitely going to send another update once we know that the worst bugs (interrupted audio sessions and problems with audio interfaces) are fixed.

    @Dave: Audiobus itself is ready for iOS 7.

  • I've updated and no problems so far but then again my iPad is not my premier tool for composing.

  • Well it sounds reasonably safe, no calls on my iPad so I'm in the clear on that one. But I'll be using it in a gig Monday, so I'll wait till after that.

  • Hello all! Is it worth to update my iPad 4th Gen 64 GB to iOS 7.1.2 at this time? Now I'm running iOS 6.1.2 and still thinking about this. Is an iOS 7.1.2. is audio-trouble free at the moment? I'm have many audio apps including my favorite Animoog, Thor, iSEM, Modular, Sector, Samplr, Cubasis and I don't wish to ruin performance any of them with this update. In another way I'm very interested in Audiobus 2 possibilities and Apple Inter App Audio that give me iOS 7. I've also purchased iConnectivity iConnectMIDI4+ interface, it will arrive soon and I need it to be compatible with iOS in a best possible way.

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