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.
ODYESSEi with MusicIO (or Studiomux)?
Has anyone tried the new Korg ODYSSEi app with MusicIO?
I am using a iPad Air 1 (which is apparently entry level for ODYSSEi) and I find that I can't use it with MusicIO without getting audio hiccups (little glitches). 
It don't get the issue using the onscreen keyboard, and also didn't get them when testing w/ a Line6 Moblie Keys keyboard that transmits MIDI, monitoring audio from the headphone jack. But apparently, the combination of this ODYESSi w/ trying to send audio over the USB cable (at 256 buffer) pushes it over the edge. Even holding one sustained note causes a hiccup.
This is a huge bummer for me, since this is one of my all time favorite synths, but it is nearly useless to me if I can't integrate it into my desktop DAW workflow. In desperation, I'm thinking of trying Studiomux. But I would hate to invest the $ and time in that route only to end up with the same performance.
Basically, I would love to hear from anyone who has tried ODYESSi w/ MusicIO or Studiomux, esp with a iPad Air 1. Are other people getting the same issue?
Thanks!
Lady App.
Comments
I have only a useless ipad 4 so i can't test, but the Studiomux devs recently overhauled the desktop software.
@Lady_App_titude
I have MusicIO, and Studiomux, and Audreio (which I prefer over the first two) but haven't tested any with Oddysei...what I've been doing lately with iPad synths into desktop DAW is running audio line in, treating the iPad like hardware. The sound is quite good, might be worth testing with one of your synths that doesn't glitch, and already works with your MusicIO or Studiomux, so you side -by-side compare audio in with digital in. You might be pleasantly surprised. If you're using your MusicIO to send midi from your desktop to iPad, I think that still is do-able alongside an audio-in
Was using it was studiomux this morning. Did not experience any issues.
On which iPad? Pleeeze, @JiggyWig ... And what buffer setting? And what iOS version (I'm on 9.3.5)?
Thx, @Littlewoodg. Not familiar w/ Audreio. Trying to make sense of the poor information on their website. (Why do they have TWO videos demonstrating how to send audio from the DAW to the iPad -- like anybody needs that -- and NONE on how to send from the iPad to the DAW!) From what I can glean, it looks like $25 and it's audio only. I think I'd be more inclined to take a chance on Studiomux for $10. What do you like better about it?
I will also look in to seeing if I can figure out how to use MusicIO for MIDI and then recording audio w/ the headphone out. I was hoping to get at least another year out of this iPad Air 1, but maybe ODYSSEi will end up being the app that broke the Air 1.
I think I like the routing of Audreio best of the three. The set up seemed easiest but it has been a while, the setup may have simplified in the other two. I don't recommend buying any of them over another, but I found Audreio easiest for the most basic use case: send midi to iPad from a track in the DAW, get synth audio back, into an audio track in the DAW
Theyve since introduced a cloud-based wireless subscription thing, but I was strictly hardwire in my needs.
Their website is almost disinformational, for my use as above, USB midi and audio between devices...
The hardware audio line-in I mentioned, as an alternative to these apps, has been my live playing on iPad rather than sequenced from the DAW, audio line-in to a DAW audio track among other already built tracks. (I've not tried the Audreio USB for midi sequencing, side by side with the audio line-in, which would be the only way to really compare the quality).
I mentioned audio-in as an alternative, (maybe side by side with your StudioMux or MusicIO using either for your midi) because i read on another thread here about the quality of audio out of the iPad and into desktop being very very close to what is possible using a/d interfaces...
thought it might be interesting to test results using another synth that isn't hicupping in your present setup, and compare audio tracked both ways, via MusicIO interface v. via audio in. Then figure that Korg will likely sound better than that..
Even if it's only audio line-in.
iPad Mini 2 (ME276B/A) iOS 9.3.5 (13G36)
Studio Mux Server v2.2.3
I aggregated it with my normal audio interface & used Ableton to record ( thought I was going to record some hardware too, but didn't bother in the end. )
ODYSSEi set to "Standard" audio latency
Thank you very much, @JiggyWig! It appears your iPad Mini 2 has the same processor and memory specs as my iPad Air 1. This would seem to indicate the problem is with MusicIO. MIDI works fine w/ MusicIO, but not audio.
Could you answer one other question: On the iPad are you using IAA or Audiobus to route audio?
(The reason I ask is because MusicIO relies on IAA and the problem could be in Korg's IAA implementation. But I believe Studiomux can work with either IAA or Audiobus. ( I think? ??? If it can worth with either, I'd be curious to see if you get better results with one or the other.)
Thanks,
Lady App.
On this occasion I was using ODYSSEi loaded directly into studiomux using IAA, with nothing else active.
I've tried it again this evening and it's still working fine; it's been live-looping into Ableton just grand.
Update:
I have done more testing, using a low-demand synth that has worked fine for me in the past, Yamaha Synth Book, and I'm getting the same audio dropouts (hiccups, glitches). So I now think this is a general problem with the audio side of MusicIO, and may not be related to the Korg ODYSSEi app at all. I sent an email to MusicIO support reporting all of this.
I'm about to drop $10 on Studiomux and spend some time learning that system to see if things are smoother there. I'll report back. Wish me luck...
If any Power Trio MusicIO team members are reading this, please look for my email. Would love to get some comments from you.
Hey, we're still here (slammed with work, though!). For audio glitches, the first thing to tweak would be the buffer settings on the Mac plug in. Moving it towards the right will increase the latency, but should reduce audio glitches. I've been thinking of increasing this further, to handle systems with slower CPUs.
I'll try to dig out the email and respond in the next few days; just buried right now with some time-critical stuff.
Good luck
Thanks, @SecretBaseDesign. You're talking about the "Latency Compensation" setting in the Mac server app, right? The settings are Low, Medium, High. I'm guessing "Medium" corresponds to 256?
Yes, changing that was the first thing I tried. I just did some more testing and changing that setting to the left (not right) from Medium to Low does help, but I'm still getting some occasional glitches on an iPad Air. It also seems that latency gets worse over time at that setting. It's OK at first, but in the time it took to type this, I went back and the latency had become too extreme for playing.
I have always had Latency Compensation set to Medium in the past. I wonder what changed?
[Note that it was ODYESSEi that first alerted me to the problem, but I have since tested with other apps, including ones that worked fine at Medium in the past, and now I get the same dropouts as with ODYSSEi, so, despite the subject title of this thread, the issue is not unique to ODYSSEi.]
I wonder if an iOS update along the way somehow made IAA audio less efficient? (I'm at 9.3.5 now.) Would updating to iOS 10 help?
I will keep testing with Latency Compensation set to Low and see how it goes. (BTW, changing buffer setting in the iOS app to anything higher than 256 (the "recommended" setting) is unplayable, so I have to keep it there.)
Best,
Lady App/ Babz
I tested audreios wireless transfer once and it had REALLY horrible latency, something like close to a second or so..
@ToMess
Yep the wireless can be bad, when I was using it, i only used USB.
I mean, latency is already an uphill battle. I want to add wireless on top of that?
A preliminary update: I have since purchased and tried Studiomux and have tested with ODYSESSi and several other apps at 256 buffer and I get NO GLITCHES. This seems to point to a definite problem with the audio side of MusicIO.
At the same time I am struggling to fully understand how Studiomux works. The documentation is poor, and there don't seem to be any clear or recent tutorial videos on using Studiomux.
MusicIO set up and documentation is relatively clear, I have had good success using it in the past, and I would love to get it working correctly again. In the meantime I will keep trying and testing with Studiomux. I still don't have it fully working with my DAW, but to the extent that I am able to test, it seems superior in terms of audio efficiency.
Glad you're up and running.
FWIW I'm no expert with studiomux, but my usual config is to use it as an audio interface (not a VST) and manually route all the audio and MIDI in Ableton - which is really easy. All the audio channels & MIDI ports show up and just need to be enabled. Studiomux sends 9 stereo pairs of audio, the first is the mix, and the following pairs correspond to the channels in the app. NOTE. Sometimes this seems to fsck up and I need to restart the server, but when it's working, it works. This tends not to be a big deal unless I actually run multiple synths, but typically I'll only be using one so the mix channel is perfect.
Unfortunately, I can't get the iPad to show up in OS X Audio MIDI Setup to create an aggregate device, so my only option for audio is to use the plugin. I have written to Studiomux support and still waiting to hear back.
I have Ableton, but don't usually like to work in it. And my preferred DAW (DP) is not covered in the manual, so I am left to guesswork, analogy, and trial and error for much of it.
@Lady_App_titude -- for music IO, did you toggle the buffering in the plug-in? The toggle in the desktop app controls what happens with the audio going out the speakers (if you're monitoring directly from the desktop), while the plug-ins have a separate buffering option. The idea is that you might want extreme low latency to listen to while you're playing (and will tolerate some glitching), while what goes onto the track in your DAW should be clean.
Sorry for being slow to respond. Under a ton of time constraints, and let's just say that the last couple of days have been rather difficult.
Studiomux and Oddysy is fine, sounds really nice and authentic, love the vst setup with Push 2
Thanks so much @SecretBaseDesign ! Almost all of my testing has been at the Finder level, not inside a DAW w/ the plugin. I did not know about the buffer toggle in the plugin, so thx. At least that gives me another thing to tweak! Sorry to hear about difficult days. Hope things are better soon!