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.
iConnectAudio4+ Complex Setup
My bandmate and I are putting together a new live setup wherein we will be using some of our key pieces of hardware, but also each of us will be using an iPad Pro for other synths, instruments and effects. Each of us also will have our own audio/MIDI interface which our hardware will be connected to for effects processing and MIDI, and outputting our audio mixes. Then the idea is to have a centralized MacBook running Ableton Live to sequence some note data and a lot of the CC for our effects and instruments. It’s the master sequencer, and might also host virtual instruments and audio tracks. We are hoping to connect each iConnectAUDIO4++ to the MacBook too, setup and aggregate device, and use the iConnect config software to route both audio and MIDI between the MacBook and both iPads.
Is this possible?
Comments
Aggregate devices often work well. Your setup is unusual, but it is possible iconnect has tested using a couple iconnects as an aggregate device. You might search the iconnect forum for "aggregate device".
You may need to specify one of the iconnects to be the clock master, and one to be the slave, in your aggregating.
In case anyone is interested...
So I finally picked up one of these interfaces. It’s awesome! The iConfig software allowed each USB host device (iPad and MacBook) to receive 8 different sources simultaneously, which could be combinations of analog inputs, virtual outputs from the other device, or outputs of the internal virtual USB mixers.
Then... I upgraded the firmware to 2.02 and now each host device has 20 virtual channel sources!!!! This means I can have each iOS synth show up on its OWN stereo channel in Ableton on the Mac with virtually no latency. Further, with the internal virtual MIDI routing too, I’ve setup “external instruments” in Ableton so the MIDI clips and audio returns for each are on single tracks. This is awesome! Screw IDAM, this is THE solution.
Next step is to get another one for my bandmate’s iPad and aggregate it on the Mac. Then we’ll have a super setup.
The 20 sources you mention. Is it 20 inputs / 20 outputs per device ? Or 20 total per device ? Cause you could already do 20 total even in the older firmwares. I've been rocking 16 outs and 4 ins on my iPad for years now.
It’s 20 total as you mention. I got mine second-hand and so it must have had the ancient firmware on it that had only 8. Just wanted to comment on my excitement for how powerful this device is for routing audio between hosts. Only thing that would be better is even more host connections, so I could run multiple iPads alongside my MacBook.
Yes, I'm hoping that one day they'll release an updated version with at least 3 host ports too. Although I bought two iCA4s so technically I can do that. But on a PC you have to use Asio4all which puts me off using them that way.
The amount of ports is directly dependant on bitrate. I think once you switch to 96000 hz the ports drop in number significantly. If you switch to 44100 hz you can actually do even more than 20. Will need to test when I get back home. I'm currently over 1000km from my studio so will be a few days yet.
Interesting. Yeah I’ll look at that too.
By chance does anyone know how many channels of audio pass through there are in the iConnect MIDI interfaces?
Pretty sure it’s just 2.