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
@scottsunn That is frickin' excellent. Sheesh, what a great demo for the instrument and a completely riotous fun piece of work. Enthused by the sounds I'm hearing ... No I didn't want any more apps right now.
@scottsunn Are you using the app in it's bare form or do you have the IAPs? Are they compelling?
Bringing this thread back from the dead just to say how i love the workflow in this app. The ease of automation is incredible, what a beautiful app.
I second this emotion. The longer I have it the more it reveals. A workstation unto itself.
Really good. Amazing how quickly 11 and a half minutes can pass when you're in a zone.
+1.
The sampler is really useful in this app.
Doug did a good vid on the sampler...
Bitchin cool track
I mean no disrespect to the 2 new drum apps which look cool. But in the midst of all the attention they're getting I checked in with Elastic Drums and Patterning 2 and decided I'm good.
Elastic has the added power of all those synth modules and a kick ass phone implementation
Woot!! Hey y'all, lots of stuff has happened since I wrote this first post about my first (well second if you count Samplr) iOS love affair... Still at about 90% iOS right now, (Maschine is the other 10%, haven't touched Ableton in over a year...). That said, the thing I have included in the most songs to date is Patterning.
One cool idea - repackage Elastic as a single (instead of 6 track) drum synth AU with sequencer, and keep all the per step locking, fx, etc, and you just make as many instances as you need.
If NI would give us a REAL port of Maschine as AU, as in plug in my Maschine hardware and have it work, I would probably only use the laptop for email. (keeping my iPad free from anything that could be construed as 'work related').
Man it would be cool to see Elastic come out as an AUv3.
I haven't even used the sampler option yet, it's very easy to get a good techno vibe going with the sounds in this app. I already have ruismaker and patterning and am good for now.
I am expecting the same but there is an annoying limitation with AU and drum machines. In fact, one of the issue I see is that it is not possible to have separate tracks from one AU instance. If you want to apply a different effect to each tracks then you have to load multiple AU instances and it is the mess to control.
The solution implemented in Patterning, Elastic and SeekBeats is to use a IAA per tracks with all of them centrally piloted in one app.
I think, that this is a challenge for the dev to develop a similar behaviour but based on AU
The point of using a drum synth vs using a sampler is to be able to morph the sound over time, at least that is how I look at it... I like making full tracks in Elastic, but usually half or more of the 6 tracks might as well be a sample, because I focus on only one or two sounds that actually morph over time. SO, to be able to select which of the 20 different synths available and have it hard wired to the perfectly adequate sequencer, a 1 track version as AU would be amazing along side something like Beathawk or any other sampler AU for live use. I would probably only use 2 or 3 instances max in a live set, but they would be important sounds.
As a sampler, Elastic isn't great, but as a drum synth, its incredible. The only other contender is SeekBeats, which should do the same thing IMO, make a 1 track AU version.
Here you have a point, it does stand out more as a standalone groovemachine.
I find the sequencer length button a great addition, so much variety to groove with fiddling this knob.
This is what I mean, the drumsynth without that sequencer might as well just be any synth... as a 1 track drum synth / sequencer it would make a great AU, no? Especially if you can send the sequencer data out to other sequencers / synths etc.
I know you can 'technically' do this with the Inter App, but it sucks to switch apps when you can just keep everything contained in AUM or AB etc...
Last comment of the night (maybe)...
It would be vrrry cool if in the AU platform there were a bit more attention placed on preset / pattern switching, so you could really easily 'sync' preset changes from one control point... So when you have 4 AU's each with their own sequencer, you could (without a really complicated midi setup) have them all change at the same time with one command. I see it as a setting, 'listen for host AU preset change' sort of thing. Then, in the individual AU's, you assign which presets are generically A, B, C, D, E, F or however you want to call an 'overall' change.
Better yet, keep presets as they are, but have, in the actual AU platform, a 'sequencer change' setting as well separate from presets... I know, its asking a lot... But what I'm constantly pushing for is more capabilities for live use settings, as there is plenty DAW 'preprogrammed' options for electronic musicians.
iOS and specifically AUM / AB / Ape is the first platform I feel like I can really make a truly 'Live Set' setup easily, so I try to keep reminding Devs that is why I love the platform over desktop music.
Good point, it would be less of a hassle.
+1 for a one track drum synth AU version. But I still hope that in the future one of our clever dev will find a way to split the tracks in multiple outputs from a centralised AU instance
Yes, but that isn't their battle to fight, its the AU platform itself that limits, not the devs. AU, because of the way it buffers audio, is only equipped to ultimately deal with one signal, even if it is multiple before it gets to the output stream... (or input, really, as the final stage of all AU's is a single stream).
What you want is a huge change to the AU platform, which, with the right hosts, isn't necessary.
Another option is to have apps like Elastic split into a sequencer AU and a synth AU, which would also be a great way to handle the crossover from IA xo
Multiple output support for AUs shouldn’t be too far off. It’s part of the main AU spec on the Mac.
I think some plugins already support multiple outputs even though none of the hosts currently do.
My guess based purely on the crop of newly released auv3s from major developers such as eventide and fabfilter is that there must be a new super host that is relatively imminent that also supports multiple outputs —and I’m hoping it will take iOS DAWs to the next level. but it’s just a hunch. I could be, and probably am, wrong! ;-)
I'm not certain on these matters either, but I have read devs speaking on these topics, and they are the ones who I have learned about the limitations from...
The thing is, AU is like any fx plugin - it is meant to process a single stream of audio. You place an AU between a source and a destination, or it is the source and is internally mixed down to a single destination. If you want it to go to multiple places, the DAW does that work. How would you parse out multiple destinations inside a single AU?
Once you have multiple outs on something that is supposed to occupy a single channel, you would basically be making a Daw within a Daw at that point... Which is exactly what AU's like Beathawk are, they have their own mixdown internally, but they still occupy only a single channel in the greater context. So its sorta like the IAA's, you can't, inside Beathawk as an AU, drop another AU inside of it.
This is why it makes more sense (to me) to strip older non-AU apps down to a single channel and instead of making complicated audio routing happen in the AU platform, give more universal control across all AU's and use more instances.
The more I think about it, I wanna see Elastic take their sequencer and make it a midi AU, and have a 'receiver' AU that is one instance of a drum synth. Rad
I’m not sure I get your point.
Of course a DAW has to handle multiple outputs, but there are loads of audio units on the Mac that support multiple outputs. Logic on the Mac handles multiple outs seamlessly. It’s dead easy to do.
Audio units support multiple outputs already. There’s nothing to stop a sampler or drum machine plugin from allowin each channel within the plugin (kick, snare, etc) from being output to different channels. The host just needs a way to route that audio. Logic does it with AUX channels.
It’s a solved problem on desktop. There’s no conceptual reason it can’t be solved on iOS too soon. We just need somebody to release a daw with multiple outputs to get the ball rolling.
Logic is a DAW, and routes plugin data. AUM is a DAW, and routes plugin data. I get your point, but if, say Elastic, was a 'multi output' AU, it wouldn't really exist on a single channel, it would be more like how IAA is currently working, (the ones that have multiple outs, like Patterning) and we are moving away from that model. I like the cleanliness of AU on iOS, but making it more complicated I guess is fine, so long as it can be simple as well.
I'd rather keep ios Au's on single channels and have more universal control over all AU's within a DAW, but that is very much for the 'live' aspect over constructing pre programmed songs.
Cheers.
ApeMatrix Mixer Send Receive app is not very far from the solution. If the AU drum app could send splitted outputs in its different channels, then the problem will be solved, isn't it?
My understanding is no, because ios AU's are restricted to single stream output. A DAW can pick up that single stream and send it anywhere it likes, to as many places as it likes, but to break it down upstream to multiple individual signals, as far as I know, it cannot do. From what I understand, it has to do with how ios AU's buffer audio. (DEVs, feel free to chime in here
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I think what would have to happen is a new 'category' of AU, like there are 'midi' AU's, would have to be created, a multistream category, and then channels in Daws could choose which stream it picks up on individual audio channels. Just like IAA currently works.
I have no problem with this happening, at all... But more than anything, I want to be able to easily coordinate preset and pattern changes across multiple AU's on the fly.
It would be cool, for sure, to have an AU patterning and process each sound separately, but that really isn't THAT much different than the IAA version is already. It makes more sense to make Patterning into a full blown DAW, that has AU slots for each track. (Imagine dropping a synth on one of the channels, woot!)
But fuck it, why not do it all! Oh yeah, because we have to convince Apple to do something, and that is a pain in the ass.
In Logic you have the option of selecting a stereo or multi out version of a plug in.
So when you want to keep it simple you just choose the stereo version and it works the same as always.
If you want a plug in like say a hypothetical elastic drums auv3 with Multi outs it could work the same way as a standard au with stereo outs until you choose different outputs for one of the elastic drum channels. Say you want 5 of the 6 synths outputting to the channel you’re on, you leave it as default. But you could route the 6th channel to an aux track (for example) and allow that to be separately processed and mixed.
It definitely adds complexity but it’s not insurmountable.
The host DAW would take care of most of the routing. So if you chose Outputs 3-4 for the snare, the daw would automatically make an aux channel and route the snare to it. Logix does this and also wraps all the channels into a folder so it appears from the arrange window as a single track until you want more control.
But when done right the complexity only occurs when required. It should not interfere with normal usage.
FWIW, I rarely use multi outputs in Logic. I almost always just use multiple instances instead. I find it much easier to control that way. I find setting up multiple outputs more work than just using multi instances instead and I’m lazy. ;-)
But even though I’m not particularly interested in multi output auv3s I can see where it might be useful. And as previously mentioned, it’s already part of the audio unit protocol on the Mac (and possibly even iOS? I think it is but I’m not an iOS developer so I can’t be sure) so there’s no technical reason it can’t be done on iOS.
It could definitely be useful for samplers and drum machines.
The concept can even be extended to any apps to become a huge modular ecosystem. Imagine you have different ins and outs in any app that is producing and processing signal...
AUv3 supports mulitple audio outputs, and has supported this since iOS9. The issue is there are no hosts which offer the feature. So it's a chicken-egg-thing.
Who knows maybe @LFS and his team will consider this if or when ever they decide to add groups and busses to Cubasis.
AUM could also benefit from this. It sounds like it's easy to implement but may be a lot trickier than we know?!
Maybe the guy of apeSoft (sorry I don't remember his name) can consider updating Mood and Matrix send/receive with such functionalities...Wouldn't it be cool to be able to route part of the signal from Mood to one track (for example the pre-processed signal) and another part (the post-processed) to a second track?
Well there ya go, lets get Elastic Drums, SeekBeats, and Patterning as AU's...