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.
Another noob question regarding AUB and mixers and setlists
Hi, again, good folks...
While I'm waiting for my new iPad and my iConnectAudio+4 to get here, I have a few more questions, regarding apps, mixers, and setlists, basically, not having done any of this before. I've been a PC guy since the dawn of eternity. I'm most likely going to get AUB and AUM. My question... I'll be doing my recording separately, on my PC. I'm primarily using the iPad for synths, as well as using some hardware synths. As various songs will use different synths, using these programs, is there a way I can have a 'setlist' of sorts? Meaning, pull up #1, with a particular group of synths, then a different preset with a different set of synths, #3, #4, etc? I would imagine that having to stop between songs and load up a bunch of things individually would be a workflow obstacle. How do you live performers who use various configurations do this? Please note, I'm not set on AUM... I've read a lot of good things about it in conjunction with AUB, but if there's something better, I'm certainly open to it.
Hoping it's not improper to ask this on this forum, but do I even need AUB for what I'm trying to do here, or would AUM handle it? I still plan on getting AUB, but I wonder if it's needed for this specific thing?
Thanks in advance.
Comments
To be honest if you're just using the iPad as a sound module and driving everything from your daw and using Au only then no you do not need Audiobus. Regarding presets just save each Aum project and it should load all the correct Au plugins as well. The tricky part is if you're using IAA apps since state saving only works via Audiobus. For that you would need Audiobus as well. How many synthss are you planning on sending to your PC ? And will you be using IAA ?*You can send upto 16 channels to the PC using the Ica4+
Does IAA mean "In App Audio? I don't really know, to be honest, as I'm still waiting for it all to get here. I'm trying to find out some things before it does, and one of the things I need to do is learn the vocabulary and how iOS works. This literally is my first Apple product, ever, so I have some homework to do
I'm mostly going to use it live, so I'd be using 4 channels max (to an external mixer) , but in studio type stuff I could very well send it over to the pc through the +4. I'm just wondering if my PC can recognize two input interfaces at once from different manfacturers.
You can't use 2 interfaces natively. You can combine the together using asio4all but it's a bit buggy and can crash your windows with a blue screen if you accidentally unplug one of the interfaces. Not something I particularly like. So I stick to just the ica4+ 16 channels means I can have 8 stereo synths or 16 mono and anything inbetween.t hats more than enough audio content for me
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iAA stands for inter app audio. It's what standalone synths and apps use. It's an older format. They also only can have a single copy of the synth running. Newer synths use something called audiounits and works similarly to vst plugins. So they pretty much save their existing settings and can have multiple instances like a vst. Saving presets with AuM is the quickest for switching between sounds etc. So audiounits are the way to go for this.
That's all good to know, thank you!
the iCA4+ can handle both the iPad and PC DAW simultanously with up to 10 virtual stereo busses between both worlds. No need for the PC interface, which may (in most cases) remain connected, just not choosen as the active one in the DAW.
(you may need to replug your monitor connection(s), though)
The iCA4+ can handle pure input/output just as AUM, or rather better as it saves one software layer.
But mixing experience may be improved significantly if you process IOS synths with IOS effect apps in AUM's routing mixer instead of iCA's. The latter can do the same, but a plain routing matrix is much less intuitive.
The ICA4+ only has 4 physical ins, though, and with my hardware synths, I almost always need more, so I'd probably have to just limit myself to 4 outs on whatever I do on the ipad, and physiscally send them to my Focusrite interface on the PC. Realistically, how many synths can I usually run on the iPad at one time?
Ive actually run 8 instances of ruismaker sending mono to my daw where I pan etc and also 4 ripplemakers simultaneously. That's 16 channels of audio.