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
@midiSequencer noticed you said an iPhone version is coming. That’s nice, but your midi echo app only shows less than half of the interface on an iPhone SE. doesn’t resize and no way to scroll around to get to the controls.
Are you already aware of this?
Will this be a problem with Photon iPhone version too?
my solution will fix both, and midiecho will be where i start as its simpler
But thx for highlighting iphonese as an issue
The poblem is that with the new 3rd gen iPad Pros you cannot set 44100 it defaults to 48000. I think that this is a known issue. How does sample rate effect midi/host sync.
Set buffer to 1024 and the timing is still out .
Only had a chance to have a first go on this just now, really liking what's possible, going to be using this a lot
Will dig into the manual.
Am I right in saying there isn't a view where you can visually see the pad playing back the notes?
Might be quite nice if you could switch to a live playback view. Also being able to playback in edit mode, not sure if that's possible, so you can hear how and what you''re editing in realtime.
Makes capturing ideas in AB3/AUM/AM a lot easier
Agreed that live play mode would be great to add to the app. In due time of course.
yeah, not an easy thing to just add on I'm sure.
I actually didn’t know the iphone SE was a problem with MidiEcho until today. I mostly use the iPad but I’m traveling at the moment and not carrying my iPad around with me.
Stopped in a cantina for a cerveza last night and was trying to decide if I was going to buy photon. Had a quick play with Quantum and MidiEcho on my iPhone SE to get reacquainted with your interface style and noticed I wasn’t able to use MidiEcho on the SE.
Will the launch sale continue until the iPhone version is done? Seems a bit unfair to make those who don't have an iPad pay more.
I can confirm that. Only 48k is possible and 1024 doesn’t make any kind of difference.
@agezz, do you see the same issue?
Yes it needs some sort if visual playback so will add that to my list.
Yes, I do have this issue. I have been doing a bit more testing this morning. It seems that Photon is running slightly ahead of the clock in AUM (and I assume other hosts). Hence when synced to start on the bar quantum, it arrives at the end of a 4 beat bar slightly early and has to wait a fraction of a second before it starts the next bar.
If Photon is set to ‘Start Now’ then you get a loop that is seemless but is not running in tempo with AUM. If you start the AUM transport (with metronome enabled) manually the tempo relationship between Photon and AUM drifts, but will come back into sync - which tells us something, I think.
If we did a poll I think we would find all users with sync issues are running one of the new 2018 Pros.
@midiSequencer If you need anyone to beta who has this issue please PM me - I would love to help get this ever so good app fully functional.
@midiSequencer I got a simple Neo Soul Piano mid file, that I’m having trouble trimming back as there is a lot of silence at the end of the file. I tried cropping and trimming but to no avail! At the start I thought the Photon wasn’t looping properly then realised about the long silence at the end. I put the file in NS2 and it plays fine so can’t understand why I can trim it to loop on a pad? I put a Dropbox link for testing below.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sskmo3sg830ezwh/Neo Soul Piano 60 A - MIDI.mid?dl=0
Sounds very likely it’s a 2018 Pro problem. I would love tho help out Beta testing it as well. Maybe @Brambos has an idea of what might be different with the 2018 Pro (Rozeta seems to work flawlessly)
Doesn't ring a bell for me. I don't do anything specific to 2018 Pro devices in Rozeta, so whatever the problem is, there is a solution for it that works consistently on all devices.
Does Photon respect the timestamps of incoming MIDI messages? If not that could be a cause for messages to be recorded 'earlier' than they should have been. This difference should be fairly minimal though (in the order of milliseconds at most).
thx for the feedback on the 2018 pro issue.
i think im doing some of my own conversion sample to beat that may be the issue here.
@ageez & @NoonienS will send you a beta invite.
@brambos thx for the response, Im sure its me!
@Jumpercollins trim only trims the front at the moment as trimming the end was causing issues. I will fix that but for now use the length/apply
I do all my beat calculations based on the currentBeatPosition in the value returned by the host's musicalContextBlock. I find the accuracy to be generally excellent (at least sample accurate) in most hosts nowadays.
Cheers wasn’t aware of that.
Well well well, my most requested app type is finally here and it does way more than I initially wanted. Very exciting.
However, ive had a good around and read the manual and it seems it doesnt quite do what I wanted, which is to instantly loop the buffer.
My work flow doesnt require me exporting or importing midi however I am grateful that this feature is here on such a comprehensive scale. This is because I improvise with other musicians and am working towards being able to improvise a dancefloor set as if I was a DJ. Plus all my tracks are recorded live, multitracked for mixing and for fixing any terrible accidents in an otherwise satisfactory takes.
My suggestion is pre select assignments to a pad before you record, rather than after so that when the fixed length meets its end or recording stops, it begins looping immediately. Like audio loopers do generally.
Im really sorry if this sounds ungrateful, im so pleased this app exists. Just really hope this one change comes to fulfill my dream,
This is great @midiSequencer really fills a lot of gaps and the multiplier is a fantastic idea!
State saving so that a sketch or tune is automatically saved and recalled would be perfect. We're on our way to build your own DAW.
The one thing I don't get is the buffer. Why is this needed? Would it be simpler if all the operations are auctioned against the currently selected pad? That part of it is the biggest confusion for me.
Yeah when it gets visual playback, it’ll be easier to see what’s going on. I’ve had a problem where I’ve recorded some midi, trimmed it and it all looks fine, but the pad isn’t playing it all back, seems to be playing back only some if it...
Yes good point, but there are only 4 pads and then you’d need a lot more, so the buffer is useful unless we got unlimited pads @Jocphone
Useful for what @Carnbot ? I find it really unintuitive having to shift midi around between the files, buffer and pads. Is there a proper need for the buffer that I am not seeing?
For recording more midi, when you have 4 pads full up and you want to record and swap parts around, you need the buffer...unless you get the option to add more pads when you need them. I see what you mean though. But if you could only record to pads it’s needs a lot more that’s all.
No, any feedback is always good for improvement.
I have the ability to record & instantly loop on my list to deliver in the next update. This should make it more of a midi looper. Later I'm adding the ability to do multi-track takes (so set length and it records to successive tracks).
Yes state saving of buffers is on my list to do. I'd like you to be able to pick up where you left off.
The buffer exists because this is primarily a recorder. You need to put that recorded midi somewhere & when pads were created (+ the groove), these suit a buffer approach.
The trick now is to allow a workflow that makes those buffers hidden (auto load after record etc)
I'm adding visual feedback - I agree its not clear at the moment where it is in the buffer - you have progress bars & step recording has a red line for the song pointer, but this can be improved.
Your trim issue is related to the end I think - as mentioned earlier, I'm going to add back the trim to the end and prompt for the new length to be rounded. Midi files tend to be highly non-integer lengths (e.g. 19.99765435 beats).
I'd like to add more edit features (its why the buttons are sort of clumped on the lhs & space on the right) up to but not including a piano grid editor but this is only version 1.
There shouldn't be a problem to save MIDI data in the state. You could either embed the MIDI data directly in the state, or save the MIDI files in your app group container and just save the URL bookmark in the state (this is how AUMs FilePlayer does it).
I'm worried about extending this app with more pads because everything has to be done at audio buffer rates and we are taking midi files here (so midi cc, pitchblend, aftertouch). Overload it too much and you'll glitch (which is why bigger buffers are better)
.> @midiSequencer said:
Record and instantly loop (pre determined length - or drop out of record) would make this amazing.
I would love to record live various takes that instantly loop the moment I go out of record.
That could be a 8 min impro - plus a 2 second midi loop - plus a kick drum on grid - plus a held chord for 2mins 3 secs.
I'm not clear if this app is intended to be predominantly a looper, or a midi recorder.
I suppose I need to see some vids