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.
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The thing that is hard to do is get individual track audio out of Cubasis. I haven’t figured out if it is possible. So if I have a track I need to use a buss setup for, I will set it up in AUM. I host the instrument in AUM, if it is AU or IAA. If the track is an audio file, use AUM File Player instead. If the track is a Cubasis native instrument, then freeze it, export it, and use AUM File Player. If the track is a Midi Track, send the midi to the instrument, while hosted in AUM. Use presets to easily move your instruments, when possible. If you know you are going to need busses, just start off setting this up in AUM instead of Cubasis. If you always use busses, just always host your instruments in AUM instead.
Once you have the stuff in AUM working on one track, do your buss thingie, and send it back into Cubasis on new tracks, or record the Audio in AUM and import it into Cubasis.
This is describing more of a parallel buss type of setup. If you need to have a master buss setup, where you send multiple tracks to a buss to get the same fx processing, Cubasis already has that.
I have been liking the duplicate track way since it is way less hassle, and you don’t have to plan as much ahead of time. But the arranger can get crowded pretty fast if you use it a lot.
@CracklePot thank you for the explaination. I will experiment with this.
I'm sorry but that's not a good workaround. The most common use for busses are organizing and processing audio tracks. Currently Cubasis doesn't have any routing options for the so-called bus sends (it doesn't appear on the mixer, no pre or post fader modes, etc.). If you're trying to mix background vocals, drum tracks, or stacked instruments the way recording engineers have done for the last 50 years, you're basically shit out of luck with Cubasis.
Normally this wouldn't be that big of a deal but I'm also continuing to find the freeze/rendering in Cubasis to be temperamental. Sometimes it works correctly, sometimes it doesn't. Last night I had a drum track (once again using the classic machines IAP) that I soloed, rendered, and imported to a new track (since freeze didn't sound the same).
It was a simple 16-bar loop at 16-bit 44k. I then copy/pasted it to the length of the song (5 min or so) and played it at the same original tempo (no timestretching or anything). Randomly, sometimes the first kick (start of the loop) would flam, like the audio engine couldn't keep up. I wasn't running anything CPU hungry, the meter was barely moving. I only had about 5 other tracks of just audio.
On a whim I tried freezing that track (although there were no added FX on the track). Now there's a 5 min long audio track and the flams are gone, BUT every kick at what was the start of the loop (every 17th bar) is noticeably louder than the other kick drums. I had to add a compressor to bring it back down to normal. Ughh.
With that said, I'm still on iOS 10, so I wonder if that's the culprit. The reported performance hit of iOS 11 made me hold off (i'm still on an Ipad Air 1). It might be worth the trouble to jump in, especially with 12 on the horizon.
agreed. the track duplicate is a great feature if you have a pro ipad.. except it does rather point up the topsy turvyness of having 5 insert fx slots available but ONLY 3 sends?? surely the send slots being global shared resources should allow for more slots as a kind of BUS fudge?? and inserts be the restricted slots?
i get it, before the recent update we only had 3 of each realistically, but the update has made this point more apparent I think..
@LFS
also the pre and post fader aspect would ideally be addressed eventually.
Sorry you are having so many problems. Have you contacted Steinberg support about all of your problems?
I think my workaround is just what it is, a workaround. It sounds like you a looking for a solution, rather than a workaround. If you want to work like people have for the last 50 years, the solution is to use a real studio, like people have for the last 50 years. If you think Cubasis on an iPad is ever going to match a real studio, you are really expecting too much.
If you find a better way to do this buss stuff on an iPad, or find a better iOS DAW than Cubasis, let us know.
TBH I actually do think an iPad can rival a studio. In fact the recordings I make at home now are better than the studio recordings I made in the 90s when I played in various crappy bands, mainly because in a real studio the clock is ticking and you are paying for every minute, so when you are on a budget it's all done in a rush.
In terms of mixing and mastering an iPad is right up there, the quality of what you can achieve comfortably rivals a studio, as long as you can find somewhere quiet enough to record.
Anyway, as has been discussed you can run busses in Auria, which is one reason some people prefer it to Cubasis (amongst other reasons), but I would say that objectively Auria is a more fully-featured and flexible mixing environment, particularly for audio. Cubasis has the edge for MIDI, particularly sequenced MIDI and MIDI FX. Maybe the best approach is to use both.
I agree with all of that, but most of it depends on the person. As far as all of the things you can do with real studio, the iPad is not even close. Quality wise maybe. But not features and capabilities.
It is good to a certain level of complexity, but can't compare to a real studio for large complex sessions.
It is also unstable, like most evolving tech. AuriaPro may have Cubasis beat on bells and whistles, but if it crashes all the time then what's the real advantage? Same goes for BM3 in its current state.
I really love the iPad. But I am aware that it has its limitations. I also love Cubasis. But it ain't no Cubase.
Auria Pro almost never crashes on me. I say "almost", because the only way I had it to crash was by using third party IAA (and only IAA - AU seems to be solid). Cannot talk about BM3 because I have it but never took time to learn it.
Same here - Auria never crashes for me. I use it all the time, mostly with audio (I tend to do the MIDI stuff in GarageBand or Gadget) but I do use a smattering of MIDI and AU/IAA but I bounce stuff down to audio as soon as it's recorded.
This might be way out there, but are you sure the parts weren’t overlapping at all? Is there any possibility the clips were just slightly longer than the bar length, and/or that when you copy-pasted them you had snap set to bar? Because, something like that could cause similar results to what you described.
There’s always a little bit of latency when recording, or when going from midi to audio. Often when I look at a render, a few ms of silence needs to be trimmed from the start of the sample, or it needs to be nudged back just a little. I have also pulled my hair out many times over messed up sounding loops only to discover that I had some overlap.
I’m not saying that’s the problem, but it struck me as a possibility. I also suspect being down-rev on iOS could be contributing. I seem to remember some talk about that back when there were indeed serious rendering problems in Cubasis after an update, though I could be misrememberating (misrememberalizating?) there.
@theconnactic @richardyot I have the feeling you guys don’t push your luck, or maybe learned to avoid doing things that are plagued by bugs.
Maybe you guys are just lucky, like the couple of people who never get crackles when screen switching in AUM.
I don’t know. Back to Cubasis for me. See ya’lls later.
Lol! Perhaps it's the fact I use an iPad Pro 9,7''...
My point is that the tools have changed with technology but generally speaking...basic proven recording techniques haven't changed. Not having busses in Cubasis interrupts that workflow. Don't get me wrong, I still love Cubasis and I'm still getting work done. I just wish it was a little bit better.
Overlap was the first thing I checked and on some tracks even added unnecessary fades to make sure, but it's seem to be a random glitch. Few people seem to be having the same issue so it's probably something specific to my setup. Oh well.
Hi all,
As of yet, Cubasis comes with insert, send and master effects slots.
Descriptions and effect routings can be found in the Cubasis in-app help and the additional online version of the help. Additionally, it is planned to add group tracks to Cubasis at a later stage.
Best,
Lars
This is big news....thanks
Good news - the sooner the better, it is one of the major omissions in Cubasis.
Agreed! 👍🏻
This will take some time still, but it is on the list...
It must be a very long list if that hasn’t got near the top yet! 🤣
I’m hoping that the improved sampler is not far away from it 🤞
I’m spoilt by Cubase on the PC, which I’m still trying to learn to use!! 😊
Hey @LFS will early 2020 bring busses to Cubasis?
In the meantime, I suppose you can use the Send/Receive AUs from ApeMatrix inside Cubasis to get busses? I guess this was not available when this old thread was being discussed.
Yeah, it took me a while to work it out at first, but you can add ApeMatrix Mixer Send Receive to any Input effect send on a source track, choose one of the 16 busses and then add an instance of the same AU to the Input effect send of a blank audio track and select the same bus that you selected for the source track. With the source tracks muted, any audio fed into the buss appears as an input on the blank track. You can’t premix using the source track faders because they’re post insert, but you can set individual levels by selecting clip graphics and dragging down the top bar. You can then control the level of the whole bus with the single fader of the output track.