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.

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Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

questions about idam

I'm pretty new to iOS music and a recent thread here mentioned idam, which is interesting to me. I have an iPad Air 2, still on 10.3.3 (although I intend to update to 11) and Logic on a Macbook Air running Sierra. I also have an iphone 7 with iOS 11 on it. The daw I use on my iPad is AUM.
How do I enable idam? What would be a common use scenario? What are the benefits? Drawbacks?

A search didn't turn up any simple explanations, any insights are appreciated.

Comments

  • first, you want to update to latest ios and macos to get latest IDAM support

    then you enable IDAM by plugging ios device into mac, going to audio midi setup app on mac, then press enable

    now you have a shared midi port and a stereo audio channel from ios to mac

    you can use the ios device like a sound module, sending midi from logic and recording audio from ios. works great with or without AUM.

    you can send midi from ios to mac too

    you cant send audio from mac to ios

    drawback would be that for me, i get some audio glitches. maybe some others do, some dont. still early days.

  • edited November 2017

    It is useful if you use a desktop DAW. The iPad then becomes an external hardware synth for the desktop system. First you need to update to iOS 11. Then you plug the iPad into your Mac with the standard Lightning cable. Then you launch Audio MIDI Setup on the Mac, go to Window->Show iOS Device Browser and click Enable. Then the iPad becomes an audio and MIDI assignment for tracks in your DAW. Specific steps at this point will vary depending on your DAW.

    It essentially eliminates the need for a hardware interface or utility app like Studiomux or MusicIO, although those may still be needed for more complex routing setups. Basically it allows you to send audio and MIDI to and from your Mac with a standard charging cable. And it only works on Macs.

  • Thanks so much for these replies! This forum is really helpful.
    Idam sounds like a great feature. I'm waiting on 11.2 to upgrade my iPad, then I want to try this out. I can imagine lots of possibilities.

  • @wellingtonCres said:

    drawback would be that for me, i get some audio glitches. maybe some others do, some dont. still early days.

    Only been using it for one day so far but did notice one audio glitch. I tested with about a dozen or so apps, including Module, Neo Soul Keys Studio, ODYSSEi, Galileo Organ ... can’t remember them all... This was with a modest Air 1. Almost perfectly solid, but even one glitch is worrisome. I think some apps are more demanding than others.

  • @wellingtonCres said:
    first, you want to update to latest ios and macos to get latest IDAM support

    then you enable IDAM by plugging ios device into mac, going to audio midi setup app on mac, then press enable

    now you have a shared midi port and a stereo audio channel from ios to mac

    you can use the ios device like a sound module, sending midi from logic and recording audio from ios. works great with or without AUM.

    you can send midi from ios to mac too

    you cant send audio from mac to ios

    drawback would be that for me, i get some audio glitches. maybe some others do, some dont. still early days.

    It actually works with El Capitan too :)

  • Cool, now I know what all this IDAM business is about. Any hope of this coming to Windows ever? I have Studiomux, but this sounds much easier to deal with.

  • no hope for windows...

    the audio glitching i get is characterized by about 20 mins of perfection, then a kind of chittering sound shows up. it lasts perhaps 5 seconds, and tends to reoccur regularly every few mins. it seems to have something to do with the clock sync function set up in the AMS app, as changing those values changes the behaviour. nothing i can think of causes it to be silent.

    anyone else?

  • @wellingtonCres said:
    no hope for windows...

    Figures. I'm outta here B)

  • @wellingtonCres said:
    no hope for windows...

    the audio glitching i get is characterized by about 20 mins of perfection, then a kind of chittering sound shows up. it lasts perhaps 5 seconds, and tends to reoccur regularly every few mins. it seems to have something to do with the clock sync function set up in the AMS app, as changing those values changes the behaviour. nothing i can think of causes it to be silent.

    anyone else?

    Haven’t seen anything like that. What I got was just one note kinda hiccuping for a second, like a buffer overload. I did notice that things got really messed up (major latency) after I walked away and came back and the computer and/or iPad had gone to sleep. Restart fixed it. Need to cheek my energy settings to make sure it doesn’t go into sleep mode.

    What audio and MIDI interface(s) are you using on the Mac? Sounds like some kind of clocking issue.

    And yes I am using El Crapitan. I think that is the earliest version of the MacOS with which IDAM will work. I know it didn’t work on Mountain Lion. Not sure abt Mavericks.

  • i am on high sierra and latest ios 11 on an air 2 with no hardware interface, just headphone out aggregated to the idam device.

    i also have observed the latency issues after letting it sit idle for a bit, does not need to actually sleep to cause the problem...

    alas...

  • To avoid the glitch, while using your iPad via IDAM in a DAW, you should create an aggregate device, and set the clock source to iPad, and enable the drift correction on your other audio interface. As soon as i figured that out, i was living glitch free, and the sound quality improved as well.

  • yeah that makes sense and i had tried that, it changed the glitch, but did not solve my problem

  • @wellingtonCres said:
    yeah that makes sense and i had tried that, it changed the glitch, but did not solve my problem

    Did you experiment with different clock source and drift correction settings?

  • @wellingtonCres said:
    i am on high sierra and latest ios 11 on an air 2 with no hardware interface, just headphone out aggregated to the idam device.

    i also have observed the latency issues after letting it sit idle for a bit, does not need to actually sleep to cause the problem...

    alas...

    I'm assuming I'm reading this incorrectly. Are you not coming back to a DAW on the mac?

  • @wellingtonCres said:
    yes

    Too bad it didn't help, well i guess it takes two to tango, with my particular DAC it works great, never tested it with the on board sound device.

  • I have been having a lot of trouble with IDAM. Midi send and receives just fine between my Mac and iPad but audio will cut out if I change to a different app on the iPad or for any other seemingly random reason. Is anyone else having this issue?

  • @Lady_App_titude said:

    @wellingtonCres said:

    drawback would be that for me, i get some audio glitches. maybe some others do, some dont. still early days.


    Only been using it for one day so far but did notice one audio glitch. I tested with about a dozen or so apps, including Module, Neo Soul Keys Studio, ODYSSEi, Galileo Organ ... can’t remember them all... This was with a modest Air 1. Almost perfectly solid, but even one glitch is worrisome. I think some apps are more demanding than others.

    What was the glitch?

    I am having MIDI latency from keyboard to the iOS app connected.

    Kind of bummed.

    It was Animoog and another.

  • edited June 2018

    @RUST( i )K said:

    @Lady_App_titude said:

    @wellingtonCres said:

    drawback would be that for me, i get some audio glitches. maybe some others do, some dont. still early days.


    Only been using it for one day so far but did notice one audio glitch. I tested with about a dozen or so apps, including Module, Neo Soul Keys Studio, ODYSSEi, Galileo Organ ... can’t remember them all... This was with a modest Air 1. Almost perfectly solid, but even one glitch is worrisome. I think some apps are more demanding than others.

    What was the glitch?

    I am having MIDI latency from keyboard to the iOS app connected.

    Kind of bummed.

    It was Animoog and another.

    This was from Nov. 2017, so I don’t remember the specifics of this quote, but scrolling up, I found some more on what I was referring to.

    My general issue has been increased latency over time, after about an hour or so. Rebooting fixes it. Over the course of a day, I need reboot a few times, but I can still get work done. Studiomux has the same problem, but it takes longer for the latency to appear — maybe 2 hours? So, Studiomux has been my preferred method. Haven’t tested with IDAM for several months. I used to use MusicIO (and loved it, and they fixed their creeping latency issues), but then after Oct 2016 it developed audio glitch problems, and they stopped answering my emails, so I had to find other solutions. I don’t know when it was last updated. Looks like over a year and a half. Might be good for MIDI only. ?

    So for me currently, Studiomux best, then IDAM, then MusicIO.

  • For midi only I use midimittr combined with IDAM for audio (since im not on iOS 11 yet).

  • @Lady_App_titude said:

    @RUST( i )K said:

    @Lady_App_titude said:

    @wellingtonCres said:

    drawback would be that for me, i get some audio glitches. maybe some others do, some dont. still early days.


    Only been using it for one day so far but did notice one audio glitch. I tested with about a dozen or so apps, including Module, Neo Soul Keys Studio, ODYSSEi, Galileo Organ ... can’t remember them all... This was with a modest Air 1. Almost perfectly solid, but even one glitch is worrisome. I think some apps are more demanding than others.

    What was the glitch?

    I am having MIDI latency from keyboard to the iOS app connected.

    Kind of bummed.

    It was Animoog and another.

    This was from Nov. 2017, so I don’t remember the specifics of this quote, but scrolling up, I found some more on what I was referring to.

    My general issue has been increased latency over time, after about an hour or so. Rebooting fixes it. Over the course of a day, I need reboot a few times, but I can still get work done. Studiomux has the same problem, but it takes longer for the latency to appear — maybe 2 hours? So, Studiomux has been my preferred method. Haven’t tested with IDAM for several months. I used to use MusicIO (and loved it, and they fixed their creeping latency issues), but then after Oct 2016 it developed audio glitch problems, and they stopped answering my emails, so I had to find other solutions. I don’t know when it was last updated. Looks like over a year and a half. Might be good for MIDI only. ?

    So for me currently, Studiomux best, then IDAM, then MusicIO.

    @1nsomniak said:
    For midi only I use midimittr combined with IDAM for audio (since im not on iOS 11 yet).

    Thanks guys!

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