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.
We'd like to hear your suggestions for the app listing.
Hi there,
We're thinking about making the listing of compatible apps (http://audiob.us/apps) a bit more navigable (yes, that's a word) since there are more and more apps in there and just scrolling through them isn't that great of a user experience anymore.
How would you like to have them sorted or presented? What kind of information are you missing there?
We basically want to make it easier for users to find out what's new in the Audiobus/iOS music part of the world.
What are your suggestions?
Comments
Maybe paging would make it more navigable (learned a new word). Decreasing the size of the icons might also help.
Maybe the default should be order by date so that new stuff is always on top ?
I was going to say "Date Added/Listed". You could have tags/categories which would surely help with the further future too; Synths, Guitar/Bass, Drums, DAW/Recording, Vocals, Effects, Misc. I like the icon size but maybe a tad smaller. Keep the Input, Effect, Output options too but under each app description list which slot they fit in since several are in two or more
I would suggest a config page with checkboxes next to each app so that we can actually limit the list of apps available in each slot. Perhaps accessible from the settings pull down. For instance, I have probably 20 or so AB compatible apps, but I only use about 7 of them regularly. It would be nice to hide the others when they're not in use. Also, I know it was mentioned about saving setups as well. I think that's a great idea too. It may not be exactly what you're asking but it would impact the experience in a similar way.
Also possibly link to each persons account so they can view which apps they have/don't have and save it
Different ways of sorting, please. Alphabetical, by newest/oldest, app category. That kinda thing. There's no one size fits all solution, so you will definitely need to offer us different ways of sorting the data.
Plus, a favourites list and being able to load presets of our favourite input/FX/output setups would be nice. Might as well do all the UI changes at once, right?
Keep it simple: a categorized list with little icons. The first line could be reservated for "new / last added apps"
What kind of categories would you like to see?
Wait a minute. I'm confused. It happens a lot. Is the question in the OP about the website or the app? I thought it was about the website, but several people are commenting on the list of apps in the app.
There's a "compatible apps" listing in the app and that is pretty much the same as the website linked above. That's what we're talking about.
OK, but it still seems that several answers are about the user's apps in the input/effects/output sections of the "connections" as opposed to the general list of what is "on the bus"/available in the app store.
Synths: analogue, vintage, modular... Drums, samplers, fx....djs....audio tools, daws.... Something like thet
@MrNezumi: Yeah, but it's good info anyway. We might have to restructure that at some point, too.
As for web/compatible apps list: I think a "Added in the Last 30 Days" link would be best. As far as I know, the apps already show up according to the date they are approved by the app store, so no need to change that there.
Tags would be great. If I want to know my options for a drum synthesizer (i.e. not sampler or rompler) then being able to type "drum synth" would be ideal, instead of having to find a list of all drum apps, then read through all the descriptions to see which ones actually synthesize the sounds and which ones use samples.
Also, it keeps you guys from having to actually build menus or nav bars with specific categories (plus, how descriptive do you make the categories? This could be a mess to try and organize considering how many functions a number of apps attempt to perform, and how different users view apps differently based on how they specifically implement them.)
As far as the in-app menu goes, I'd just love to be able to favorite certain apps and see them collected into a specific folder on the list. Wouldn't need much more customization passed that, but making an editable folder structure is probably the way to please the most people. Everyone understands how to create/organize folders so it's not going to confuse many users, and then they can decide how OCD they'd like to be about organization.
tl;dr search box should search descriptions as well.
As a user, when done well, I love tags. As a developer/site maintainer they always turn out to be a bit of a rabbit hole! Who creates and maintains them? Who creates the taxonomy initially? If it's folksonomy style (free tagging) it'll get unwieldy (esoteric tags, four mispelllled versionz of the same tagg). If there's a fixed taxonomy, what happens when they expand/change it?
I think an easier long term solution is to get the search box to also search descriptions. Searching for 'drum' right now is very misleading. Let developers put whatever keywords they want in their descriptions and get back to work on the fun stuff.
Design wise, I think the current version is beautiful. I'd love to see the full itunes description (and perhaps overall rating) without visiting that awful beast. Via 'more info' link or something. Might clog up the user experience but links in the 'more info' box to youtube and this forum (simple url/?q=foobarapp) would be handy - that's how I find out more, generally.
Might be cool to see a collapsed view of the AB universe by offering a grid button. This would collapse the whole shebang into an ipad home screen sized icon grid without descriptions. Click one to reveal more info - maybe even biting the ipad open 'folder' design.
I don't know if it's possible via WebView but while browsing the app listsing in-app, being able to hide apps I already own would be nice.
As far as the input/effect/output load lists in the app I agree that a favorites list is really all that's needed. Favorites should be the default list with the first item in the list being 'all >>'. The all list simply has stars for adding to and removing from favorites. Skip folders and config screens - keep hacking on MIDI!
@syrupcore WRT tags, agreed. Not the best solution. But some devs put some pretty deceptive keywords in their descriptions. I could see the guys at -withheld- just gut-loading their descriptions so their apps pop-up for every keyword. just sayin. It's all speculation.
+1 great idea
yeah. keyword and tag "seo" can both get ugly. Using the app store description might help mitigate that a bit.
I say resize the view so you can see the current list but with 18 apps viewable at any time as opposed to the current 6 (you can test this theory by pinch zooming out to show 12 apps down the left hand side 2/3 across the screen). The same as the App Store.
Also when I select the App Store link for an app I am interested in and get directed to the App Store I cannot see the full description as its........
With no way of selecting the usual 'more' tab.
Oh, sorry I completely missed what you were asking about, Seb.
+1 for the favorites idea anyway ;-)
Sort by order of frequency of use please.
(Ignore this, for some reason I thought we were discussing the list we select apps from when loading an Audiobus slot)
Nice! *cookie to @syrupcore*;
Well what I don't like about Liine.net with the user library is that it's hard to search templates. So I think you guys are going to need to compile a metadata repository for audiobus compatible apps based on what features(Midi features, clock sync, camera kit support, Audio\midi hardware compatibility).
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make it clear whats for ipad and iphone....i purchased sunrizer for iphone thinking it was for ipad while looking at the audiobus site...it still works but not happy...lol
I was annoyed that I had to go to the iTunes Store to see how much each app costs.
shares cookie. @nathanbiehl's sentiment is part of what I was on about.
I say do away with it all together and have the apps greyed out in the relevant connection slot to see what you could be using.........then select the greyed out app for more details and the option to buy!
Easy peasy.
i would like categories:
date added ** popularity ** type of tool (synth/sampler/midi/experimental/etc)
most of all, i would like to have the list be divided between what i own, and what i don't own.
ok what about impc on the bus...i know they are with table but the bus would be coooool