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.

How is Audiobus 3 different from AUM?

The feature that people seem most excited about is MIDI routing. But AUM already has a version of this. How is AB3's different or better? Is it the slot for MIDI effect/filter apps?

Are there other features that distinguish AB3 as a host environment? I do see some advantages for quickly restoring complex app setup. But these, to me, have to be balanced against more flexible audio routing and effects in AUM.

I'm not posing this question to criticize the new app or its pricing. Both developers seem friendly with each other, and I'm not interested in stirring up idle antagonism. But the new app seems to compete with AUM in a more direct way, and I'm trying to grasp what it offers before I invest time and music in it. That, to me, is more valuable than US$10.

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Comments

  • All this hoopla has made me realize I have no idea what to do with either AUM or audiobus 3. With audiobus 2, I just recorded synths one at a time in loopy or whatever. You guys are talking about sending this here and sending that there and routing the whatnot through the whatever the hell and im just like damn maybe I'm not as smart as I thought.

  • edited April 2017

    It's mainly AB3 has the advantage of the midi routing/ midi FX apps and state saving of IAA apps.
    AUM has more of an audio mixing advantage.

    You can't save Midi sequencers and midi Fx in AUM as nodes and won't be able to until Audio units supports this. the best combo will be connecting AB3 to AUM where you get all the midi routing advantage of Audiobus and all the mix bus advantage of AUM.

    also you need an output app in Audiobus but you could just use AUM/Audioshare to record into in AUM, plus AUM supports Audio interface output routing.

  • Audiobus has the immense advantage of a global start/stop button in the sidebar and app state saving. Aum is the hub for extensive midi routing, plus bussing. Used in tandem - best of both one linked world. When Aum will be updated to be ab3 ready, as mentioned elsewhere, the ab midi port will be converging into Aum.

  • Yeah without doubt they both have advantages in some areas. Like many, they have become an inseparable pair for myself and the setup I've come to use. The new Audiobus will just give me more options, which is usually a good thing :)

  • @db909 said:
    All this hoopla has made me realize I have no idea what to do with either AUM or audiobus 3. With audiobus 2, I just recorded synths one at a time in loopy or whatever. You guys are talking about sending this here and sending that there and routing the whatnot through the whatever the hell and im just like damn maybe I'm not as smart as I thought.

    I'm in the same boat. Except I use mostly guitars. :)

  • AUM looks much better then AB3.

  • @db909 said:
    All this hoopla has made me realize I have no idea what to do with either AUM or audiobus 3. With audiobus 2, I just recorded synths one at a time in loopy or whatever. You guys are talking about sending this here and sending that there and routing the whatnot through the whatever the hell and im just like damn maybe I'm not as smart as I thought.

    Or maybe you are the smartest person here and just create music when we others here just dig around in endless complex routings and settings.
    I recorded the way you said in the past and made a song per week on a freaking phone.
    Now it´s over. Too much tools to play and i tweak everything to death :D

  • @Cib said:

    @db909 said:
    All this hoopla has made me realize I have no idea what to do with either AUM or audiobus 3. With audiobus 2, I just recorded synths one at a time in loopy or whatever. You guys are talking about sending this here and sending that there and routing the whatnot through the whatever the hell and im just like damn maybe I'm not as smart as I thought.

    Or maybe you are the smartest person here and just create music when we others here just dig around in endless complex routings and settings.
    I recorded the way you said in the past and made a song per week on a freaking phone.
    Now it´s over. Too much tools to play and i tweak everything to death :D

    Good one (I resemble that remark!)

  • @Cib said:

    @db909 said:
    All this hoopla has made me realize I have no idea what to do with either AUM or audiobus 3. With audiobus 2, I just recorded synths one at a time in loopy or whatever. You guys are talking about sending this here and sending that there and routing the whatnot through the whatever the hell and im just like damn maybe I'm not as smart as I thought.

    Or maybe you are the smartest person here and just create music when we others here just dig around in endless complex routings and settings.
    I recorded the way you said in the past and made a song per week on a freaking phone.
    Now it´s over. Too much tools to play and i tweak everything to death :D

    Thanks. I'm going to go ahead and adopt that belief :smiley:

  • edited April 2017

    @Littlewoodg said:

    @Cib said:

    @db909 said:
    All this hoopla has made me realize I have no idea what to do with either AUM or audiobus 3. With audiobus 2, I just recorded synths one at a time in loopy or whatever. You guys are talking about sending this here and sending that there and routing the whatnot through the whatever the hell and im just like damn maybe I'm not as smart as I thought.

    Or maybe you are the smartest person here and just create music when we others here just dig around in endless complex routings and settings.
    I recorded the way you said in the past and made a song per week on a freaking phone.
    Now it´s over. Too much tools to play and i tweak everything to death :D

    Good one (I resemble that remark!)

    +1 here too

    btw went through a lot of ways of making music with iOS. Nowadays I hardly use anything else than Gadget. Besides that I use a HP stream 7 tablet (Windows 10) with Caustic (that's free under Win 10)

    From what I read I see AB3 more or less of quite a competitor of AB3 on many ways. There's a huge overlap. The thing is that after the AB3 release AUM is probably becoming more than ever a specialized tool for a few. Also given that the price is 2 times that of AB3. In my eyes AB3 made AUM a little bit overpriced. Because a lot of it's unique functions you can nowadays do with AB3.

  • Audiobus is a collaborative fight against the dark side
    AUM is just a bit of genius

  • what does that make Auxy? What's with all the apps that start with au?

  • @mannix said:

    @Littlewoodg said:

    @Cib said:

    @db909 said:
    All this hoopla has made me realize I have no idea what to do with either AUM or audiobus 3. With audiobus 2, I just recorded synths one at a time in loopy or whatever. You guys are talking about sending this here and sending that there and routing the whatnot through the whatever the hell and im just like damn maybe I'm not as smart as I thought.

    Or maybe you are the smartest person here and just create music when we others here just dig around in endless complex routings and settings.
    I recorded the way you said in the past and made a song per week on a freaking phone.
    Now it´s over. Too much tools to play and i tweak everything to death :D

    Good one (I resemble that remark!)

    +1 here too

    btw went through a lot of ways of making music with iOS. Nowadays I hardly use anything else than Gadget. Besides that I use a HP stream 7 tablet (Windows 10) with Caustic (that's free under Win 10)

    From what I read I see AB3 more or less of quite a competitor of AB3 on many ways. There's a huge overlap. The that after the AB3 release AUM is becoming more than ever a specialized tool for a few. Also given that the price is 2 times that of AB3.

    I can't agree that AUM is a specialized tool for the few any more than Audiobus can be characterized in this way. As easy as it may be to add Audiobus support to an app, it does require the extra step on the part of developer to add Audiobus support to their app so apps that support Audiobus are a subset of IAA apps. They each have their strengths and weaknesses and can definitely be useful when combined together.

    There is always more than one way to do things so it shouldn't be too surprising that some people prefer all in one solutions, DAW oriented, MIDI/No MIDI, or a modular approach using apps such as Audiobus and AUM. This of course doesn't prevent people from advocating for their approach as superior nor from experimenting with different workflows to see what works best for them. As to whether these experiments are a displacement activity to avoid making music, if this is efficient, or even if efficiency is a primary motivation behind someone's music creation efforts-- I believe is up to the musician to sort out.

  • They're both amazing but fail on their ambition to get all the apps start on startup. It will be a constant struggle and we should all get ready for it with our empathy and understanding.

    I'm saying this because there's a vast spectrum of engagement from developers with some doing this out of passion in spare time between nappy changes, others run small one man businesses and others have bosses that put them on candy crush development because it brings more revenue.

    This is how it is. I'm for now still amazed with AB2 and look forward to future versions of 3 rolling out while waiting for loopy 3 as the ultimate holy grail.

  • edited April 2017
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • I appreciate that AB3/Sebatian has at least provided a framework and SDK - and is attempting to get buy-in from devs that there's more desired from users than what their singular apps provide for on their own. Chances are better that devs will make the updates needed to be more fully AB3 compliant.

    For now, I'm using both AB3 and AUM in my setup, but guessing things will go AB3-only for me within a few weeks. We'll see.

  • edited April 2017

    I use very few audiobus 2 and only true interested in midi plugs like keyboard split... also I use very little AUM but more than audiobus. With import between apps and blocswave/launchpad combo (plus garageband for the rest) I don't feel the need for audiobus.
    Meanwhile IAA and Au have still space to grow and standalone apps like gadget (or Prime, GTL and others) made me think twice about buying everything and collapse the cpu in my mini (I had just few minutes ago a crash between loopyhd/audiobus and blocs even I wasn't routing them for record, just for pfl aside exporting audio from loopy to blocs)

    I'm not sure about AB3 being better than AUM since there are not so much audio mixers with bus routing and full midi controllable...

  • AUM is also a secret file/loop player!!
    You can also adjust the timing of your loops +&- by quarter beats.

    It also records perfectly timed loops. Load up several synths and a drum machine hit play press record. Each file gets its own "track" you could then load to a DAW or back into AUM to cut CPU usage or for further FX.

    Audiobus is a router. It ties apps together. Now it ties midi together.

    Get both. Well worth the money if you don't work in an all in one environment like Gadget, Caustic, or S_nV_x

    Setup your midi and fx in Audiobus.
    Record and route audio (and use AU) in AUM.

  • Audiobus is also a community!

  • I'm still kind of wrapping my head around what AudioBus 3 can do (and whether any of that is stuff I would actually use). I'll likely buy it either way just because I support the developers, the concept behind it, and this website/forum. But it comes at a time when Gadget finally offers enough connectivity to allow for guitars and external equipment, and I have neither the time nor the sophistication to get too far in the weeds with app routing and mixing.

    I hadn't really thought about the AUM comparison because when AUM came out, a lot of people purchased it because it hosted AU instruments, while most of the popular DAW's at that time did not. I bought it for that reason and never really got into the different mixing and routing options.

    I think the integration of AB3 and the new MIDI routing effects apps that do transposition, etc. is kind of cool. But it's also kind of like 1983 technology + 2017 hardware/firepower + 1983 workflow. In other words, yeah, it's really cool that you can use this decades-old programming language to tell modern softsynths what to do, but many of the same musical goals could probably be achieved just by using features in the apps themselves.

  • @Cib said:

    @db909 said:
    All this hoopla has made me realize I have no idea what to do with either AUM or audiobus 3. With audiobus 2, I just recorded synths one at a time in loopy or whatever. You guys are talking about sending this here and sending that there and routing the whatnot through the whatever the hell and im just like damn maybe I'm not as smart as I thought.

    Or maybe you are the smartest person here and just create music when we others here just dig around in endless complex routings and settings.
    I recorded the way you said in the past and made a song per week on a freaking phone.
    Now it´s over. Too much tools to play and i tweak everything to death :D

    that's me. that being said, i dont do anything without routing an app into audiobus then into aum. to me, it's the foundation.

  • @InfoCheck said:

    @mannix said:

    @Littlewoodg said:

    @Cib said:

    @db909 said:
    All this hoopla has made me realize I have no idea what to do with either AUM or audiobus 3. With audiobus 2, I just recorded synths one at a time in loopy or whatever. You guys are talking about sending this here and sending that there and routing the whatnot through the whatever the hell and im just like damn maybe I'm not as smart as I thought.

    Or maybe you are the smartest person here and just create music when we others here just dig around in endless complex routings and settings.
    I recorded the way you said in the past and made a song per week on a freaking phone.
    Now it´s over. Too much tools to play and i tweak everything to death :D

    Good one (I resemble that remark!)

    +1 here too

    btw went through a lot of ways of making music with iOS. Nowadays I hardly use anything else than Gadget. Besides that I use a HP stream 7 tablet (Windows 10) with Caustic (that's free under Win 10)

    From what I read I see AB3 more or less of quite a competitor of AB3 on many ways. There's a huge overlap. The that after the AB3 release AUM is becoming more than ever a specialized tool for a few. Also given that the price is 2 times that of AB3.

    I can't agree that AUM is a specialized tool for the few any more than Audiobus can be characterized in this way. As easy as it may be to add Audiobus support to an app, it does require the extra step on the part of developer to add Audiobus support to their app so apps that support Audiobus are a subset of IAA apps. They each have their strengths and weaknesses and can definitely be useful when combined together.

    There is always more than one way to do things so it shouldn't be too surprising that some people prefer all in one solutions, DAW oriented, MIDI/No MIDI, or a modular approach using apps such as Audiobus and AUM. This of course doesn't prevent people from advocating for their approach as superior nor from experimenting with different workflows to see what works best for them. As to whether these experiments are a displacement activity to avoid making music, if this is efficient, or even if efficiency is a primary motivation behind someone's music creation efforts-- I believe is up to the musician to sort out.

    I can totally agree with what your saying. Which means probably I wasn't clear enough. What I meant is that with the release of AB3 (that overlaps quite a few AUM functions) you can see AUM as a more specialized tool. While AUM was untill now used for quite a few people on this forum for easy syncing and mixing (midi) instruments, I got the impression AB3 can do this better. So (new or old) users can do this now with the (cheaper) AB3 App. I think the situation is more ar less a total turn when AUM came out and musician started to abandon the AB2 because AUM could do more, especially the function a described above. I got the impression that AB3 now turns the cards in favor again. This of course didn't or doesn't mean that AB3 or AUM are making each other abundant. Both have unique features.
    That said I agree that everybody has it's own workflow and AUM can of course fit perfectly in that workflow. But I think AUM has just become more a niche product because of capabilties and pricing. If somebody nowadays would ask me which one to get first when syncing audio apps or midi synths I would advise AB3 while a week ago my answer would have been AUM.

  • @rad3d said:
    I appreciate that AB3/Sebatian has at least provided a framework and SDK - and is attempting to get buy-in from devs that there's more desired from users than what their singular apps provide for on their own. Chances are better that devs will make the updates needed to be more fully AB3 compliant.

    While it's not that obvious on day 2, I think you are spot on.
    It seems every dev is berated here for any lack of interconnectability. Having a midi standard that presumably the AB3 SDK offers, should give small devs the ability to give customers the compliance we all expect, without spending another several weeks coding their own take on a midi control panel. Having a standard I think will make everyone happier. The original AB revolutionized what could be done on iPads (to the level APL had to create IAA), and I (in my unqualified view) sincerely believe AB3 will kick that revolution squarely in the pants.

  • @Cib said:

    @db909 said:
    All this hoopla has made me realize I have no idea what to do with either AUM or audiobus 3. With audiobus 2, I just recorded synths one at a time in loopy or whatever. You guys are talking about sending this here and sending that there and routing the whatnot through the whatever the hell and im just like damn maybe I'm not as smart as I thought.

    Or maybe you are the smartest person here and just create music when we others here just dig around in endless complex routings and settings.
    I recorded the way you said in the past and made a song per week on a freaking phone.
    Now it´s over. Too much tools to play and i tweak everything to death :D

    This is why I can't use Modstep.

    My creative juices and ADHD make it unusable without me bugging out.

    I use Genome Animoog Model 15 1 app for drums and 1 app that is a slicer sampler specialty app.

    Occassionally a piano in lieu of 1. Thats it though creating.

    Performing that is different. But creatively as we seem to be referring this is my approach in regard to complexity of set ups vs. use and creativity

    Typing quick in a hurry sorry

  • @Harro said:
    AUM looks much better then AB3.

    I f_ _ ked alot of models and strippers but didn't marry one.

  • App switching and all the transport controls on AB3 kick ass. I hate that constant distraction of how I need to switch back and forth between apps. Sometimes you get an IAA switcher in-app, sometimes not, sometimes on only one page of the app. Sometimes when you touch the red "... is recording" bar, you land in the host app, and sometimes you land in an IAA app that is being hosted. Sometimes you have to find your way back to the host and then to the AU. It just bugs the hell out of me coming from the DAW/VST world where it was all so simple.

    AB3's app switcher is brilliant. AB Remote is brilliant (or will be again when it supports AB3 better). AB3 Midi stuff has great potential, but needs MIDI sending apps to get on board. AB3 global transport is brilliant. ...

    AUM has a great mixer, really great midi routing without app makers having to do anything special. AUM global transport doesn't always work all that well due to app makers not being consistent in how they implement MIDI, not through any fault of @j_liljedahl. Love the file player! Love the MIDI mapping for AU parameters. Love the recording. Love the routing, love love love love.

    I always wanted to host everything in AB, and then have AUM (or Cubasis or Auria Pro) in the output. With AU support I can do that! .... but sadly not as effectively as I'd like until more MIDI sequencers that I like, such as ModStep and Infinite Looper, have AB3 compatibility.

    AB and AUM have always been like my right and left arms in my setup. I wouldn't give up either, and now I just feel like somebody just pumped them up with steroids.

    I'm a happy camper. B)

  • @RustiK said:

    @Harro said:
    AUM looks much better then AB3.

    I f_ _ ked alot of models and strippers but didn't marry one.

    If you did though, that tip money could sure come in handy for app purchases.

  • So, if someone already has AB2 and AUM ,is there any big advantage jumping to AB3 ?
    (I also have MiMix...)

  • @StormJH1 said:
    I'm still kind of wrapping my head around what AudioBus 3 can do (and whether any of that is stuff I would actually use). I'll likely buy it either way just because I support the developers, the concept behind it, and this website/forum. But it comes at a time when Gadget finally offers enough connectivity to allow for guitars and external equipment, and I have neither the time nor the sophistication to get too far in the weeds with app routing and mixing.

    I hadn't really thought about the AUM comparison because when AUM came out, a lot of people purchased it because it hosted AU instruments, while most of the popular DAW's at that time did not. I bought it for that reason and never really got into the different mixing and routing options.

    I think the integration of AB3 and the new MIDI routing effects apps that do transposition, etc. is kind of cool. But it's also kind of like 1983 technology + 2017 hardware/firepower + 1983 workflow. In other words, yeah, it's really cool that you can use this decades-old programming language to tell modern softsynths what to do, but many of the same musical goals could probably be achieved just by using features in the apps themselves.

    Depends if they've got the features you want. I can't stand the arp's in some of my synths (e.g. Thor), and Gadget is a pain to transpose so prefer to use an external sequencer. Plus they all have their own quirks, so it makes sense to use an external sequencer you know inside-out to drive the synth of your choosing.

    Saying that I've found it hard to find an all in one solution, and now looking at Step Poly Arp as a nice, song based, transposable arp.

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