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
Hey Michael,
Sorry because I have a difficult time communicating MIDI stuff sometimes! The 'hold' thing was just meant as an example for making a MidiFlow Condition. So if CC47 is "held" with a value of 127, CC45 will instead send CC46 in my example above. The built-in hold you're referring to is the ability to specify the Trigger for the assigned CC, right? That's not what I'm after here, but side note that is a really useful feature and, man, that shows just how much care you have put into this stellar new feature.
So about my original problem, what I have found is that it does work when the MIDI input is specified for an AU for which a parameter is being assigned.
But in the cases when a MIDI input cannot be specified (for example if we are assigning a CC to adjust an instrument's gain in the mixer), it will listen to both hardware and any Virtual mappings simultaneously. You can see when it is listening for the MIDI value, it will flicker rapidly between both the remapped CC values and the hardware's CC values.
Is there no way to block receiving MIDI from hardware? Is Audiobus always listening globally?
Regardless, this is something I will make an effort to work around in my set up. What you have created is truly so, so, so cool and I will gladly remap my set up to accommodate for this.
Hope this makes sense!
Hmm, unless I'm missing something, that should only happen if you've created bindings for both devices (the hardware and the virtual port)... It will ignore any unbound messages. Would you mind sending your profile to [email protected] so I can see?
@Michael
I am packaging something together to send you, but I am having trouble reproducing the solutions I was able to come up with yesterday. In a new session, when assigning a MIDI parameter, it now appears that any remappings I've made and am sending via Virtual Ports are no longer being listened to; only the hardware's CCs are being recognized.
Unfortunately, I think I've written over yesterday's profile, and now I've lost any evidence that Audiobus will even listen to MidiFlow's Virtual Ports [in a way that gives a Virtual Port's messages priority over a hardware's messages] when making a new assignment.
Is there something that I'm missing? Perhaps something I should have set up in the MIDI tab? Please note I am using MidiFlow as a standalone app (not Midiflow for Audiobus).
Is there a way to specify what device/port Audiobus should be listening to when binding an action?
Without this option, binding actions with remapped messages via Virtual Ports will always be problematical given that there is no way to block the hardware's original messages. Having a means of being able to exclude/select MIDI sources across all of Audiobus would be really helpful for those of us who really want to take the new features to a high level.
Fantastic update! One thing tho, pop up animations are making me dizzy... personnaly, I think any form of pop up / transitin animation should be bannd and punished by law. 😊
And again, Am I the only one taping on the app icon wiling to switch to the app, to find out for the zilion time that it close the option to do so 😶
You can remove some of these animation effects, such as the zooming in and out, by going into Settings > General > Accessibility and turning on Reduce Motion. These effects will be removed system-wide though, so you may find other aspects of phone use jolting and somewhat confusing (seeing as how you still haven’t gotten used to the icon clicking thing).
@csng. Do you mean to assign sources to multiple hardware controllers? An example being sending choice of synth app(s) to midi keyboard controller and AB3 mixing parameter capabilities to a Nanokontrol mixer with global transport.
Sorry about the delay! Ah yes, not just yet, but I'll be adding more manual binding UI soon which will do this.
That is really great news! I hope I made sense with what I was saying, about controllers which are remapped to virtual ports requiring something perhaps more manual than MIDI Learn for the MIDI assignment process. Or, for my purposes anyway, this could also be achieved simply by blocking hardware MIDI as a source globally across all of Audiobus since I almost always translate everything into virtual ports.
The features implemented here are really, really cool. This is a huge step forward for anyone working with iOS for live music making (or MIDI control in general.)
Something else that I have noticed, but I just can't figure out why... Prior to this update, I was using AUM for my setup, but I'm definitely noticing I'm able to run a LOT more in Audiobus before my audio starts glitching. I have so much going on and it just makes me so happy that I'm starting to see my dream setup finally realized.
Cheers, Thank You, and Happy New Year Audiobus peeps!!!!
I've never tried sending anything from an app to my controllers (except just simple stuff in MidiFlow to change the colors of the lights of some of my Launch Control's pads.) I'm just describing simply remappings into Virtual Ports, and the problem there is that globally the hardware's MIDI messages are still being recognized when using MIDI Learn in apps. I've seen this problem before in Patterning for example. That's why being able to select a source (thereby specifying an app to listen to a Virtual Port instead of the hardware) is really, really useful for anyone who works with MIDI mapping via conditions, Virtual MIDI, etc.
Nice setup, I wish I could do that with my 1600$ 2017 ipad pro.
Thanks! Still working on it. I'm able to run this on a 2018 9.7" iPad here.
Edit: Based on what I'm seeing online, your iPad is actually more powerful. I have the A10 processor, you have the A10x, and I have 2GB RAM and you have 4GB. You should be able to do it!
To be honest, I haven’t tried big setups since I ran on stupid fast CPU spikes with setups my ipad mini 2 could handle easily, that was few months after I bought the pro. I was reading on this forum that many people had that same issu and I gave up on the damn useless expensive new thing with a problem apple has never aknowledged. Was it some problematic apps? It’s pretty random and happen from time to time so I keep it simple 3-4 apps max. Last apple device.
Back to topic, sorry!!
Cool! Yep, that makes perfect sense, once I figured out we were talking about the binding process!
Great!
Wow - it makes me very happy to hear that. Finally some good DSP news
Hi to all. This update is killin. Really handy one for y live setup. But havin a problem with value pickup. On reloop keyfadr still having value jumps when switching midi chanels on controller. Some ideas?
On my Air 1, iOS 10.3.3, the Buy It button doesn't do anything. Edit: Bought it on my later Pro and it went through Ok.
I’ve just realized that this means I can control Blocs Wave with a footswitch now!
And this place continues to cost me a fortune. Now I’ve ordered a Korg Nanokontrol 2.
Value pick up workin for anyone?
Can you tell me a bit more? I didn't quite understand what was happening for you
Have you tried the same binding with another fader/knob/continuous controller? I used to have keyfdr and found it buggy.
So could I load up a knob filled layout in MIDIDesigner and midi learn the knowns to AB3 to control multiple apps at once?
Yes, though you can do that with midi designer directly, without AudioBus, as well.
The advantage with AudioBus is you can do additional things like loading presets, switching to apps, disabling FX, and controlling the mixer.
Cool. I was thinking loading it all up as a preset would be cool.
I hear ya. Potential one screen control of everything one could need is finally a reality. One of these days I’m gonna take a crack at it.
This happens to me when using MidiFire and Audiobus... the virtual port CCs disappear, but I believe I’ve found a workaround by restarting MidiFire after changing any bindings settings in Audiobus. Why the virtual CC connection breaks is beyond me, but restarting (quitting the app and reopening) MidiFire seems to reconnect them.
I've had fun setting up my live set in AB3 after the MIDI learn release--the possibilities are rich! It is just a joy to zip around in my live set without having to tap at the screen, but still be able to quickly flip between apps to have a visual cue of what's happening. This is the stuff we've been dreaming about for a long time!
This might be difficult to pull off but I have a suggestion that I think could help make workflows more efficient: it would help to have scenes or snapshots per preset that could be MIDI controllable. Optimally, each snapshot would correspond to a particular section of a song and would capture tempo, muted tracks, fader position, etc. A simpler version might just allow the user to capture muted/unmuted channels. The latter can already be done to some extent with careful configuration of MIDI CCs but it is laborious and a bit of a brain puzzle. Anyway, hope this report of how things work in the real world helps, @Michael.
Wow, @lukesleepwalker, you've predicted my next big feature! Yep, that's on its way.
I think I'll change my forum name to "Claire Voyant". Can't wait to see how this turns out!
Is it possible @michael to add manual midi assignation?
For example, if I want to use Rozeta XY pad (with MF adapter) I can’t midi learn it as I can’t access it at the same time.
That will work great with Rozeta LFO too for quicker multiple modulations assignations.
Could be super useful really