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.

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Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

Recording Audio from Safari or Mc Tube

phonoquophonoquo
edited February 2013 in General App Discussion

Hi! I'm trying to figure out wether recording audio from browser or youtube (mctube better alternative) is possible using Audiobus. I've got Auria and was hoping there was a workaround to make it happen. Any ideas would be great!

Comments

  • mgmg4871mgmg4871

    The only way I can think to do what you want is cabling 2 devices together. I think Ryan touched on that subject in a post. Can't remember which post though.

  • jonmoorejonmoore

    We're also straying into grey area's of legality here as to do stuff of this nature will enable people to record copyrighted material from YouTube/Spotify/Soundcloud etc.

    If you want to steal stuff (not suggesting that you personally do) why not use Wiretap or Hijack on OS X. They do the job perfectly well.

  • phonoquophonoquo

    Being able to do it on OSX is not the problem. I like the idea of being able to source a sample quickly when inspiration strikes and get it into a sampler for mangling without having to sample first on a desktop or laptop and transfer etc. I'm looking at youtube or grooveshark as a huge record vault that i can source on the go with one machine and minimum fuss.

  • jonmoorejonmoore

    As I thought. Copying copyrighted material through YouTube or Grooveshark is classified as an act of theft. The moral aspect of the actions aren't really a discussion point but if the developers of Audiobus enabled this feature they could very well be contravening Apples terms of service and Audiobus would be withdrawn from the App Store.

    As I say, I'm not attempting to moralise on the issue but instead explain some of the considerations at hand if this feature were to be offered.

    Hope this makes sense.

  • phonoquophonoquo

    Yes, you're right.

  • echolevelecholevel

    Aside from the ethical concerns (which are only raised by one potential usage-case of this functionality), the point is surely moot given the availability on App Store of two Audiobus-compatible apps which offer variations on this: Beatmaker 2 and CloudDJ.

    Beatmaker 2 allows full tracks to be imported from iTunes, providing the opportunity to copy wholesale large chunks of copyrighted material. CloudDJ allows the routing of streamed audio from Soundcloud into any other Audiobus Output app. I've used CloudDJ to sample some of my own Soundcloud material into BM2, which saved me from syncing my own tracks into iTunes and then decoding/loading the entire tune into BM2 for editing and chopping.

    Given that the precedent is pretty firmly set, particularly by BM2, and that jonmoore's warning is really from a worst-case, devil's advocate position (no offence, jonmoore - it's a valid concern, but it assumes the worst of the user; we're all, hopefully, ethically-minded creatives in here!), I think it should be an Audiobus-native option to choose 'system audio' as an input. The possibilities for sampling Creative Commons material - musical or spoken word - from HTML5 players on all sorts of resource archive websites are huge. Perhaps this would also facilitate the (consented) recording of Skype conversations, for instance.

    One resource I use a fair bit on my desktop machine is freesound.org, and to be able to sample directly into an Audiobus-capable app simply by finding a sound in Safari and hitting 'play' without having to download the file (which I think is impossible if not tremendously difficult in Safari) and fiddle about loading it into an iOS DAW would be fantastic.

    Sure, Apple can be capricious and a little opaque in their app-approval decision making, but I'm fairly sure that BM2 and CloudDJ, as well as many other non-Audiobus apps, set a strong precedent for this being acceptable. After all, Apple are surely more concerned about the unlicenced copying of material bought from iTunes than about other providers' content (especially Google's), so I think this shouldn't be overlooked as a feature that would really unlock Audiobus' potential for open-endedness.

  • echolevelecholevel

    (Unless of course it's technically impossible! sonosaurus, elsewhere on this forum, suggests that system audio isn't available at the API level...but I recall seeing something on stackoverflow that pointed to a (possibly deprecated) call in the API that might allow it.)

  • Michael_R_GrantMichael_R_Grant
    edited February 2013

    Another option currently available: LiveFX (and iFretless, actually, come to think of it!) can play tracks from your iTunes library, and if you have no FX running then you can record them in "pure" form into any Audiobus capable recording app. This ship has already sailed, therefore - I'm sure there will be something along soonish that can play Youtube videos, and as with everything else, it'll be up to the individual user how to use it in Audiobus.

    The countless music/video download apps on iTunes show that Apple aren't particularly bothered about people being able to record copyrighted material, as long as it's not the primary stated aim of the program.

  • echolevelecholevel

    Ah, I didn't know LiveFX and iFretless did that - thanks for the tip! Do any others? I'm hoping for something cheap and iPhone compatible (the iPad has become de facto property of our 18 month-old, since he learned to unlock the screen...).

  • AkaMarkoAkaMarko

    I guess one can add JamUp pro as another app that can call up anything from your iTunes library and get routed through the bus.

  • [Deleted User][Deleted User]

    Provided an app is playing audio in the background, I think there is an API call to retrieve it and mix it with the foreground app's output. However, I'm pretty sure that Safari and YouTube, etc. do not run in the background, they get suspended instead.

  • echolevelecholevel

    Thanks AkaMarko, grabbed that.

    Ah, thanks for clearing that up, PaulB. Still, I wonder if it's possible to set away a background audio app recording, then switch to another app in the foreground to mix/record its output. I'll do a bit more research...

  • j_liljedahlj_liljedahl
    edited March 2013

    I'm pretty sure the mixing with other apps happens at a very low level, unavailable to us developers. Grabbing audio from other non-audiobus apps is simply impossible, or at least not with official API's and non-jailbroken devices.

    But, using an audio interface and a cable, it can be done in hardware :)

    PS. Note that AudioShare can also import from iTunes music library.

  • [Deleted User][Deleted User]

    http://docs.madewithmarmalade.com/native/api_reference/api/Examples3eIOSBackgroundAudio.html

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