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
The new Beta is out now
@mekohler What are the particular changes ? Just listed as general functionality.
Cheers is always handy to know what to test if beta a app, thanks for the update.
I submitted a beta report, but just for the discussion, I requested some way to record the audio generated by the excellent built-in synth. I can’t seem to make it load in any other app as an audio source.
Plus Link of course!
I received your email this morning. I am in the process of reading the AudioBus / IAA / Link documentation. AudioBus seems to be the easiest, so I will probably try to tackle that next (along with CC control of parameters). I just started coding the app in the Fall, and it was meant to be a simple stand-alone app, so bear with me as I learn these other frameworks
I think that AB support with state saving would ensure a launch with fanfare. This is a really clever and useful app and will be much discussed at launch. As a standalone app you'll get a fair bit of your addressable market, but I imagine you'll also get a substantial chunk that will pass until they see a way to integrate it into their workflow.
I did update through the testflight without deleting the previous one...I find the Loading of the demo tracks crashing in my ipad Pro 2016 ios 12.1. anyone same bug or should have delete the old beta first?
The internal saving structure changed so you need to delete the old version. This was done to make it easier for future features / CC Control
I added basic AudioBus (Audio) support tonight. No state saving or controlling from AB yet, but you can at least load it in AB and route the audio for processing / recording. I'll push the next beta out over the weekend, and will explore AB MIDI support and external control next.
Love this thread!
Nice work @mekohler - looking forward to the release.
!
Wow! Great news...
New Beta is out. This adds Audiobus (Audio & State) and IAA support.
Note: Because it's still in Beta, PolyPhase won't show up in AB without being opened first.
@mekohler Is it audio only in Audiobus was hoping to use it as a midi sender and not seeing it listed in midi only as audio ?
It's Audio only for now. I need some time to implement MIDI, and to make sure it plays nicely with MIDIBUS.
@mekohler Ok cheers, just tried it with 3 instruments playing with all settings inside AUM works great no problems. As long as you remember to select AUM as your virtual destination and not PolyPhase which I’m always doing!
Whoa that was fast! Will try it out a bit later. Thanks, @mekohler !
I'll post another update by tomorrow night that will address the MIDI hiccups when switching apps / moving to background...seems to work perfectly (!), I just want to test for one more day.
Nice work
I've noticed that state saving doesn't save the midi connections so far, that would be nice if so. It defaults to just network out when I reload.
Also would be nice to have IAA sync so that Audiobus and other IAA hosts can sync to the tempo. Unless you plan to add Ableton Link...no idea if this is difficult to add though.
Also any plans to have presets selectable by Midi program change? I've been using this feature with apps like Fugue machine and Gestrument Pro to good affect. Would work equally well here.
Yeah the MIDI connections are not saved because there is no guarantee that the interface will be available...I guess I could save them and check to see if they are on. Added to the list.
I didn't have any Program Change featured planned, but I could. Would the Program Change launch a Snapshot or load an entire Preset? Snapshot would be easiest, as I don't have a UI currently to link named Presets to Program Change #.
I'm using MIDIBUS for my clock generation, so I'm currently tied to that for syncing options. I reached out to the developer to help me out with Link integration though. You can sync in AUM if you send clock from AUM to PolyPhase (make sure to disable PolyPhase's Clock Generation)...other apps will have to wait for Link support or have a way to send / receive MIDI Clock. The worst case scenario would be me having to abandon MIDIBUS and use some other sync framework.
For the midi connection, when I just enabled the Polyphase port it wouldn't remember that either, so that would be useful if easy to add that one.
I personally would want to select snapshots by midi cc, and select session presets by midi program change.
In this way I find that when using in a host other than audiobus it's possible to recall a session preset easily with a PC message and also means changing set via automation.
Maybe you wouldn't necessarily need a gui for PC messages other than switched "on or off" in settings. Think Fugue machine just has an on or off switch. Sugar bytes egoist just has a setting for "ignore program change" etc
Fugue Machine orders presets by # which makes it easy to recall...my Presets are just names and are broken up into categories...I need to think of a way to handle Preset Program Changes. Snapshot recall and MIDI CC stuff will come soonish.
I just added Audiobus state saving for the interfaces, you will see it when I push out the next Beta (tonight / tomorrow)
Great, look forward to that
Man, this app is great. Another slight nudge for snapshot control via midi. Also link.
That said, it's inspiring and an instabuy.
Played with the latest beta in AB last night and it all worked as expected. I did have one AB crash but I guess impossible to say what might have caused that with so many variables I had going at the time... A couple of observations that I have after working with this excellent app:
First, the secret sauce for me is in the chord filters and snapshots. As mentioned previously, this app is way more musical than most generative apps because of these features. It would amplify the value to allow the user to be able to assign a MIDI CC or note to the snapshots. That would totally crack this open for live performance.
Second, from a UI perspective, can you alter the dark background for the modal windows? There are times when I can't tell what I'm looking at because the modal background is black like the main window. Distinguishing the two backgrounds would help make this more clear.
Update:
Gotcha
considering the nature of this app, other than to retain channel settings, I can't figure out why anyone would WANT presets. Makes no sense to me with this app. The whole point of this app is to be aleatoric, right?
"I REALLY need preset for my dice..."
I agree. It seems more useful to record the midi of a part you like.