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.
Comments
@Michael. Last night in AB3, audio mode, 512 frames: Model 15/Unique in Input one at a time not simultaneously, Group the Loop in Output> mad crackles.
Same setup with Loopy in Output> mad crackles which eventually cleared when I let a session play unaltered for ~5 minutes.
Cleared session, tried same Input/Output setup as described above and switching between sessions in both output apps several times as to provoke crackles. Nothing.
All this was done free standing not with an audio interface.
I’ll try again tomorrow connected to an audio interface and add AUM to the mix.
Thanks for all the work you’re doing. I feel like this will get sorted out.
It always does.
@Ben - WT-actual-F, I have no idea why that worked
So you didn't need to reboot?
@Michael. No I didn’t reboot first. It was spur of the moment stuff.
So as promised, today: Hard reboot>AB3 at 512 frames>in the audio interface>AUM in input slot with Model 15, Funk Drummer, Micro Terra, Lorentz, Unique, JamUp. Good as gold for ~ 1.5 hours.
Most of the time spent in JamUp and programming Micro Terra. Then fiddling with Model15 and Unique.
By the time I got around to Lorentz it was crackle city but had started prior to that.
Tried switching buffer size to 1024 but little help there.
Just to report that my second air 2 (previously crackly) restored a few days ago from other (non crackly) iPad’s backup has been performing fine.
No crackles when swiping between apps or otherwise. No crackles with delays in Samplr and Turnado which I’ve started noticing with IOS11 arrival.
Also a system restart before starting an AB3 session cures loading problems with Loopy and ToneStack.
I find that if I get out of AUM or AB.
Go to the app and launch it.
Then swipe it away it helps/9 out of 10 times
My problems are way BIGGER THAN THIS.....
Hello,
Just tested on my iPhone 7 Plus with lightning headphones ThumbJam, blocs wave, gadget, BeatHawk 2 and loopy with Audiobus 2 and 3, with AB remote opened and Ableton Link on all apps.
All apps killed the good way and fresh restart between test. All apps play together and jamming on ThumbJam.
AB3 128 buffers: audio clicks when switching between apps and while playing ThumbJam
AB3 256 buffers; audio clicks while playing ThumbJam
AB3 512 buffers: no audio clicks but too much latency
Ab2 128 buffers: audio clicks only when switching to BeatHawk 2, clean audio with ThumbJam.
Ab2 256/512 buffers: no audio clicks anywhere very stable.
256 buffers is the minimum for proper playing in this situation, so ab2 the way to go buy too bad not being able to use ab3 features especially auv3.
@Michael re: rebooting - In Aum, the leftover from ab cleared session 'Midi Monitor Source/Destination' was gone, however in Auria there are 16 instances of 'Audiobus Intermediate Out' (IAA ports?) plus an instance of 'Audiobus: MoonBeam Sender', an app that's been in the queue over a week ago (with frequent clearings in the meantime), which also wouldn't vanish with a reload/swipe delete.
Greetings, crs
I feel like something randomly hogs memory or cpu priority. not sure if it's an ios process or audiobus 3. It seems to be a lot better in audiobus 2 but none of these steps (clear session, soft/hard reset, reboot, closing audiobus first) seem to work. I should mention as well that I always use airplane mode.
The issue happens for me from a clean boot up and starting audiobus. Sometimes everything runs flawlessly tho after hours of doing other stuff on my iPhone 6s Plus
I’ve done quite a lot of testing in AB3 and tried rebuilding similar set ups in AB2 and AUM.
In terms of latency artefacts (when all the apps load properly with no tap to fix or loopy channels being ‘busy’) AB3 has no crackles at no time running at 128 frames.
The same preset rebuilt in AB2 has crackles at 128 frames and seems ok at 256.
AUM gets crackly at 128 but I haven’t tried other settings.
At this point in time I have no choice but to persevere with AB3. Not yet ready for live use due to preset loading issues but I do have faith.
I somehow wish Audiobus and Loopy were some 2 or 3 times more expensive to fund an extra coder in the team. These are complex apps.
Say, here's a question... are there any setups in AB 2 that just use the speaker output (no other apps in the output slot) which work better than AB 3?
Sadly that's not how the App Store works - you up the price, less people buy the product and you end up making the same amount
There aren't many apps that support a team on their own. Adding devs doesn't always help, anyway...
Mine. Description is 5 posts above. Multiple apps to normal AB output, ab2 is clean at 128 ab3 is clean at 512. Clean is without audio crackles.
If that helps, I can offer to run any tests on iOS 10.3.3 with iPad Pro 9.7 (1st gen).
Have lots of Apps to test with, but neither Loopy nor Tornado.
Ah, beg pardon, I didn’t get that they were all inputs. Interesting - okay, this gives me something more tangible to work with. Will investigate
Weirdness possibly unrelated to problem were talking about but I think I discovered something.
1) So zeeon (input AU) running to system audio output (earbud headphones in this case)
2) Close au window and its crackle city
But
1) Change output to audioshare with monitor on and crackling went away (with or without interface showing). Was able to get 3 instances running at 128 buffer with no issues
Will continue testing since the AU issue might be seperate from audiobus 3 general audio thread priority issues
OK two more things
AU has the same issue (when UI is minimized) in AUM unless routed to AUM -> audiobus 3 -> audioshare/loopy
Also running out to loopy instead of system output seems to clear up jitters (not as much as audioshare but I assume that's just app complexity and resources)
Perhaps a bug in Zeeon that makes it use more CPU when its UI is closed?
However, it makes no sense that it would make a difference if you route it to audioshare/loopy. Zeeon does not know where it is routed...
Unless this is another CPU frequency scaling problem, where audioshare or loopy results in a higher and more stable load on the CPU which makes it stay at a high speed and not slow down to save battery. In that case, you should get similar results also if you're just running audioshare or loopy in background (make sure they're doing something, like playing a loop/file) even if you're not routing audio to them.
@j_liljedahl
its not just zeeon, it's all heavy AU(input)apps when their interface is minimized. Im not sure why system audio is problematic in this scenario but routing it to an audiobus output app with monitor turned on seems to fix it
Happens with model 15, kauldron etc in both audiobus 3 or AUM
I'll test the background theory
Allowing or not allowing access to the microphone, could that play a role?
Nope.
OK interesting. @j_liljedahl and @Michael I tried running zeeon in audiobus 3 with system audio as output. Crackles per usual, but launching audioshare (seperately in the background) and opening the record window fixes it.
I tried opening and closing the record window and the results were immediate. Close the record window while still in audioshare, crackley crackles. Open it again and they go away
Wow. Sounds like I’ll be writing another bug report for Apple!
Really interesting! Just a quick check: do you have the same buffer frame size setting in both audiobus and audioshare? (not that audioshare should be able to change it if you started audiobus first, but you never know...)
128 buffer for both
Any breakthrus on the audiobus 3 vs 2 front?
Not yet!
Here's an easy example that plagues my work flow.
If you put audiobus 2 into 64 buffer (start tonestack at 64 buffer then launch audiobus 2 and close tonestack) and use
Mic -> aufx:space -> loopy
Runs like a dream. No pops or crackles at all and amazing latency for rythmnic lyrics to feel on time
I've tried the same on audiobus 3 and it shutters a lot. Not unreasonable since 64 is super low latency but it's weird it runs well on audiobus 2
Also au apps still run strange when going to system output but not audioshare or loopy with monitor on
Audiobus 3
Au3 (zeeon, model15, kauldron) -> system output
Stutters as soon as UI is closed
Au3-> loopy (or anything with audio monitoring on) and it runs fine with or without UI
Not the case with AUM. Running to system output or IAA ports seem to get glitchey whenever the au3 UI is closed
For instance this still has glitch issues
Wow amazing research and testing! Thanks bro I see fixes com
In this screen shot are you running AUM in AB3?