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.
Get it together iSymphonic
I shouldn't have to re-download the 1.4GB sample bank every time there's a small bug fix in the player.
Comments
Dayum. That might be costing them money too.
They aren't stingy with the updates either
Isn’t this more an Apple Store issue that an individual developer one? Why call out the dev for fixing a bug?
Because their update process is inefficient, I have games that can update without redownloading all the assets every time. And apps like Blocs Wave dont make me download all my samples again along with every update.
I hear your frustration and understand it. Hafta say I have every pack for this app, but have not suffered the same problems. Perhaps different version/machine, who knows...
You know it did download pretty quick, maybe the reported size is just off and it's not really a problem.
Much as I love iSymph sounds, for me it is the most glitchy app I utilize.i rarely use more than one instance because of it. I hope Crudebyte realizes this if it is a common complaint.
Funny. I have no problems with it, but it can (sometimes) take an inconsistent age to load (which is a glitch in itself I guess...)
@JohnnyGoodyear no problems loading and reloading. Just a frequent crash buzz.
THIS! It will be fine and then all the sudden it will just make this loud noise. Like a solid BWAAAAAAAAA sound. I have to close down NS2 and reload.
There are 2 related problems with iSymphonic and the Colossus Pianos. The use very large samples that were tested to run alone and not with other apps. I call these AUv3 instruments "Hairdryers" that use a lot of resources and blow circuits when used in DAW or when more than one are used.
Who tests these Apps we pay so much for? Apple? The Developer? No. It's me!
Think of an App as a household appliance like these analogous devices:
US home systems allow the use of up to 15 Amps from a wall plug (power strips can have 8-10 ports) before the line draws too much current and it will throw the breaker to prevent the wiring from melting due to heat. Yes. To prevent fires. Think of that "BWAAA" sound as smoke before a fire. If it goes too long then the DAW failed to throw you circuit.
2 hair dryers can't use the same power strip but you could use 14 drills (using 2 power strips into a power strip for 19 free ports)
So, thought experiment, using Apps:
Try using iSymphony Strings and the Perfect Piano at the same time. They crash the DAW (10 + 7 = 17 Amps. BREAKER)
Use 2 Pianos without issue but probably little else at 14 Amps
Switch to 30 Tiny Pianos... 9 Amps.
"Now why does the Perfect Piano I paid $50 for crash in my DAW and the $5 Tiny Piano work? Doesn't Apple test this crap? I want my money back."
Apple tests the breakers for AU's at 340MB - they try to help. I'm only considering one resource in my analogy. Most DAW's show CPU use but few show RAM and the interplay between RAM and CPU is exactly what the DAW is managing for you to create.
So, most DAW on IOS complaints are due to resource limits. More RAM and faster CPU's provide more resources and Apple appears to be raising the AU resource limits for newer iPads since they have 4GB's. The big dog has 6GB for $2000.
It's not a problem with IOS. It's just a boundary condition on a mobile device. Just seek a compromise with the Apps you love (understand their needs) and try not to throw the breakers and ruin your work with outages. It is a challenge worth the effort.
There are many rules to live by but these are my top 3:
Freeze heavy RAM/CPU Apps to audio early (free up RAM/CPU use)
Don't expect a project to support 10-15 AU apps (if they do it's a "Tiny Piano")
Try to Apply FX carefully to avoid wasting excess resources when they could be grouped or applied in post production.
NOTE: Many Apps are synths/FX/Sequencer combos (I'm looking at you Aparillo). They are definitely Hairdryers. More and more we're getting seduced by hairdryers. So, things will only get worse without knowledge of this limitation.
THE DOWNLOAD PROBLEM doesn't bother me because I leave my iPad on all the time with automatic updates turned on so I didn't know about the problem and I also have the Colossus Piano product which is even worse. The biggest piano takes 8 hours to download. They throttle back the download speed to have more customers.
@drez ....yes, I get something like that, but a little harsher, and it stops, notifying me the app has seized up. Your noise, if it is continuous sounds possibly like hung notes? Either way a great app that is difficult to use. However, working several months on an iPad4 taught me patience. I just put up with it and limit the usage to one instance, or freeze.
@McD That is one of the better analogies I’ve seen to describe the problem. You could copy and paste this into dozens of threads here and just change the apps to match the topic.
Yes. I started a FAQ thread and it's one of the questions in that thread along with these:
Q: How can you split MIDI input [chords] notes across multiple MIDI Channels? @_Ki knows.
Q: What's the difference between a Limiter, Compressor and Normalizer?
Q: What is Granular Synthesis? (@aplourde's excellent answer is worth studying)
It's in there with this Q prompt:
Why are IOS DAW's so fragile? Everything crashes around me when I make my projects.
Who tests these Apps we pay so much for? Apple? The Developer?
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/30108/faq-thread
@McD. Thanks for doing the leg work. iOS music making is an intriguing and unpredictable place. It’s really satisfying when you strike gold. Even if it only lasts until the next update.
So I have been working for a few hours on this string section in NS2 and I can confirm that it’s some sort of stuck notes phenomena. It’ll be chugging along and then on one of the iSymphonic channels I get the BWAAAAAAAA and I go hit the MIDI Panic button and it stops. BUT, once the problem manifests itself (which doesn’t take long) it comes back faster so the only thing I can do is close NS2 to clear the issue and then it’s fine for awhile.
So frustrating. I’ll bring it up in the NS2 forum, but pretty sure this is an iSymphonic problem. Thinking I had this same issue in BM3 on a tune I was working on some months ago.