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.

The building blocks of my ideal iOS music maker

[Deleted User][Deleted User]
edited June 2018 in General App Discussion

First I would like it to be as modular as poosible. By that I mean a mix and match approach to its components. I don’t mean a modular synth.

The Host would be similar to ApeMatrix, but have even more routing possibilities to be chosen by the user in as visual way as possible.

Input: keyboards, drum pads, controller designers, XY pads, visual drums with zones, touch screen centric and with ability to midi up to any other AU sources. A single piano style keyboard or block of drum pads just does not cut it in this day and age. AU Midi makes a myriad of controllers by many devs possible.

Recording: multiple midi and audio recording and playback AU devices. Sequencers, arps, single track stereo and mono recorders, loopers, samplers and creative devices as seen in Rozeta.

Timelines: similar to above, but timeslines that can sequence, record and control all of the audio and midi Recording / playback AUs. Linear or block timelines. Multiple timelines with a variety of visual feedback and positioning ideals for all types of instruments.

Fx: some simple built in utility fx devices, but mostly AU.

Templates: good save structures and templates to basically design the setup you want within a semi modular design host. So, some structure, but mostly free flow design with templates for easier access and use. Ability to save designs and share templates.

Good audio and midi input and output options that again are as modular as possible. This will help use legacy apps and keep options to use normal DAWS etc.

Nearly there. Just need expansion of some hosts and the recording, timeline and input AUs to materialise or expand. O and for Apple to make more powerful iPads at a cheaper price lol

Just thinking aloud. What’s your idea of the future you would like for iOS music making?

Comments

  • vitocorleone123vitocorleone123
    edited June 2018

    I'd add or expand on the ability to export tracks (instruments, buses, etc) and/or be able to play individual "tracks" from the mobile into the PC and the PC records the tracks individually mixing and mastering. We are talking "ideal"!

  • DManDMan

    Have you been following Audulus 4? I think I read they are working more toward making it more of a complete solution for iOS music. I haven’t been following it too closely. Audulus 3 is already very visual with infinite routing possibilities. Imagine if we could just load some AU stuff in there. Imagine if you had something that was the equivalent of an entire AUM session and you just grab it as a small part of your new session like it’s a preset template. I already get overwhelmed by Audulus 3 though. I usually just open up something someone else made.

  • [Deleted User][Deleted User]

    @vitocorleone123 said:
    I'd add or expand on the ability to export tracks (instruments, buses, etc) and/or be able to play individual "tracks" from the mobile into the PC and the PC records the tracks individually mixing and mastering. We are talking "ideal"!

    I sometimes get the feeling that the PC market ignores iOS to some degree.

    It’s a bit like gaming. The PC market thinks it’s ‘the One’ and so does the home console market. The poor 2nd class western hand held market sorta reminds me of iOS in some ways - those that know of its ways are fewer in numbers, but are strong of faith and keen to push its boundaries.

    Maybe the Nintendo Switch ideal could give us hope that a mobile iOS and easy docking solution to home PC / Mac would be supported - well it’s worth exploring all ideas.

  • [Deleted User][Deleted User]

    @DMan said:
    Have you been following Audulus 4? I think I read they are working more toward making it more of a complete solution for iOS music. I haven’t been following it too closely. Audulus 3 is already very visual with infinite routing possibilities. Imagine if we could just load some AU stuff in there. Imagine if you had something that was the equivalent of an entire AUM session and you just grab it as a small part of your new session like it’s a preset template. I already get overwhelmed by Audulus 3 though. I usually just open up something someone else made.

    Nope I must admit I haven’t. I did buy Audulus 2 and 3. I can definetly see the potential in the idea. If 4 could become that easy to design modular host, that would possibly be an option for those that want more control. They would definitely have to work on the user friendly aspects over version 3. It’s definetly not ready for prime time non science geek land yet lol.

    Thanks, will take more of an interest in it now :)

  • WillWill

    Good stuff. Agreed that we're really getting there. Good times.

    One idea to add to the timeline section. Given an AU Host like AUM, what if you could stave the state of your set up at any moment in time. I don't mean discreet preset files; I mean more like snapshots of all of the AU parameters within the preset/layout. And you'd just press a single button in the UI to capture it. No faffing about with dialogs and file names - you want to capture them quickly while your jamming.

    So... you set some AUs up and you jam around and whenever something interesting is going on you'd save the state. Then, after you have some collection of states you dig, you could put them anywhere you wanted on a timeline. The state would loop until another state was triggered. You could of course continue to jam.

    Come to think of it, if the states were available as a MIDI control target the host app wouldn't really even need to implement a timeline. Just point your favorite sequencer at it and send the state messages as midi notes or whatever.

    Can we start a kickstarter to send Bram and J Lilla away to somewhere nice on a working vacation? :)

  • [Deleted User][Deleted User]

    @syrupcore said:
    Good stuff. Agreed that we're really getting there. Good times.

    One idea to add to the timeline section. Given an AU Host like AUM, what if you could stave the state of your set up at any moment in time. I don't mean discreet preset files; I mean more like snapshots of all of the AU parameters within the preset/layout. And you'd just press a single button in the UI to capture it. No faffing about with dialogs and file names - you want to capture them quickly while your jamming.

    So... you set some AUs up and you jam around and whenever something interesting is going on you'd save the state. Then, after you have some collection of states you dig, you could put them anywhere you wanted on a timeline. The state would loop until another state was triggered. You could of course continue to jam.

    Come to think of it, if the states were available as a MIDI control target the host app wouldn't really even need to implement a timeline. Just point your favorite sequencer at it and send the state messages as midi notes or whatever.

    Can we start a kickstarter to send Bram and J Lilla away to somewhere nice on a working vacation? :)

    Yes I agree that snap shots would be a great idea. Copy and paste ‘snap shot’ sections would be nice too. Macros for building up the working environment with everything designed to work while it all plays - no stopping the flow of music making!

  • WillWill

    I'm not sure what you mean by copy and paste (or the macros actually). If you mean copy and paste on the timeline I guess I was thinking you would be able to insert any snapshot as often as you want. You'd tap some "Add" button and see your list of saved snapshots. So if you had snapshots for intro, verse, chorus and bridge you could build up a full track by placing those one or more times along the timeline. Basically like a pattern based song mode on drum machines where you can put patterns in any order you need to build up a longer, linear track. Or just a longer pattern chain type thing.

    If there was a UI for quickly selecting snapshots it would also be handy for live use because you could switch a bunch of synth/FX presets and/mixer states at once. If they're selectable via MIDI, you could even do it with a foot pedal or something. Bonus if you could use MIDI commands to trigger previous and next snapshot. Fun for jamming and zero fuss when in a live band situation you really just want to hit "next", not search for the correct button.

    Just to be clear, I'm not talking about snapshots having entirely different AUs. That sort of snapshot couldn't reliably be switched on a time line. It's one setup of AUs (and the mixer controls) and a bunch of different parameter states for the AUs/mixer in that setup.

    On that note, not sure the best way to handle adding AUs to the setup. Again, not talking about adding/removing AUs per snapshot but it's reasonable to think you'd be jamming on something and saving states and then decide that you want to add a new instrument or effect to the setup. What would the state of the new AU be for previously saved snapshots? I'm not worried, J and B will come up with something clever.

  • [Deleted User][Deleted User]

    @syrupcore said:
    I'm not sure what you mean by copy and paste (or the macros actually). If you mean copy and paste on the timeline I guess I was thinking you would be able to insert any snapshot as often as you want. You'd tap some "Add" button and see your list of saved snapshots. So if you had snapshots for intro, verse, chorus and bridge you could build up a full track by placing those one or more times along the timeline. Basically like a pattern based song mode on drum machines where you can put patterns in any order you need to build up a longer, linear track. Or just a longer pattern chain type thing.

    If there was a UI for quickly selecting snapshots it would also be handy for live use because you could switch a bunch of synth/FX presets and/mixer states at once. If they're selectable via MIDI, you could even do it with a foot pedal or something. Bonus if you could use MIDI commands to trigger previous and next snapshot. Fun for jamming and zero fuss when in a live band situation you really just want to hit "next", not search for the correct button.

    Just to be clear, I'm not talking about snapshots having entirely different AUs. That sort of snapshot couldn't reliably be switched on a time line. It's one setup of AUs (and the mixer controls) and a bunch of different parameter states for the AUs/mixer in that setup.

    On that note, not sure the best way to handle adding AUs to the setup. Again, not talking about adding/removing AUs per snapshot but it's reasonable to think you'd be jamming on something and saving states and then decide that you want to add a new instrument or effect to the setup. What would the state of the new AU be for previously saved snapshots? I'm not worried, J and B will come up with something clever.

    Yeah I was going off into other areas with copy / paste and macros. Problem is it’s the morning and my thoughts are wild and coming at me too quick for me to convey in any logical order lol

  • _ki_ki

    @syrupcore I like your idea of easy save and recall of AU paramter sets - but also think that this should not be a ‚stupid save all AU parameters’ - at least the ones already automated or controlled by other means need to be excluded from the snapshot or you get strange results. And there may be other reasons to exclude some of the parameters.

    But perhaps the exclude-list could be global and not per snapshot as in the Metasurface VST you showed in the apeMatrix snapshot thread. A global exclude-list would simplify the handling of AU parameter set save/recall to a single button press. For recall it would be nice to have an interpolation time slider to specify the duration of parameter morph and for midi recall this could be coded into the snapshots recall note‘s velocity :)

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