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 Store

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

Audiobus Thought.

I was thinking about the difference Audiobus has made in how IOS music apps are connected, and its just awesome. If that's not enough, Audiobus has accomplished something even greater. It has forced (whether inadvertently or not) Devs to revamp their apps to optimal performance, and in many cases, in record time. This benefits musicians like nothing else I've seen in IOS music production. Also, apps that sat idle on my Ipad have become useful post AB. So these AB guys get a triple thanks from me.

Comments

  • Apple should build it into the firmware me thinks

  • Then it might only work with Apple products. Lol

  • Dev's can start to work on specific apps like reverb,compressors,etc the way Echo pad, Remaster, Live Effects and others do. Things are going to get real interesting.

  • I agree that it is awesome! Just a thought - will it is possible at some stage to use the audioBus fx as a send effect? For example, send audio out of your DAW, through an audiobus fx and then record the result back into the DAW? That could be very powerful. You can achieve it now by copy and pasting into something that could just play back the sample, but having it as a send effect would be neater.

  • Indeed. It would be even more interesting if you could have more effects loaded at once and route different sends to different effects in AB. I would only assume the connection panel in AB is designed just for this type of advanced routing.

  • You can load a couple of the DAWs in both input and output slots already. That allows routing through the effects slot apps.

  • edited February 2013

    @philW Like Paul said, but furthermore some apps can be the input and output at the same time. This would essentially do what you want. I know Loopy HD can record the output of a selected Loopy track going thru Audiobus fx and recorded to another Loopy track. I don't know if any of the DAWs can do this

  • Auria can do it, but Cubasis can only route its whole Master Output through the AB input, meaning you have to solo each track one by one to apply effects. Audiobus Aux Send FTW! :)

  • edited February 2013

    You can't have Cubasis as the input and output at the same time, it blanks out the option once you selected the first one.

  • You can, if you don't load Cubasis, just add it to Audiobus input and output. THEN load it by tapping on it either in input or output slot.

  • @niklas, we didn't even envision that to be possible right now. Impressive. :D

  • Wow didn't even know that was possible,Sebastian he got u on that one.

  • Niklas - great tip!

  • Thanks guys! @Sebastian, at first I thought you were referring to my comment on the Audiobus Aux Send bus idea. :)

    Considering this possibility of having Cubasis as BOTH input and output, you would think the people at Steinberg would have done more to the implementation as an input slot than just having the Master Output as selectable input.. (I've posted about this at the Cubasis forum)

    Anyhow, @mgmg4871, sorry for derailing the thread. All cudos to the AB team! You rock!

  • @niklas Its all good. Good info.

  • Not only is Audiobus and the guys that created it Awesome; But also the members on this forum have proven to be an invaluable source of help and advice to me and each other as we explore these great new advances in music creation! Thanks to all!

  • edited February 2013

    @niklas:
    There's only so much time in a day. I've talked about implementing this with them and they didn't want to add it to this version of Cubasis because they would not have had enough time to implement and test it thoroughly. I strongly believe they made the right decision there.

  • Sebastian: you and your team rock! If only ALL developers had the same care for customer service that you do...there are a few company's that won't even return emails for legitimate issues (ahem...intua).
    Thanks for being some stand up folks!
    Cheers!

  • ahem strange agency

    it really seems like they've abandoned their apps with no audiobus support in sight.

  • General comment:

    AB begs that Apps move away from monolithic monsters and focus instead on one part of the workflow each. Then each could be lightweight - like BSi - and one can build ones' own workflow. Currently using one part of Auria, one part of BM (when their AB is released from Apple), and possibly one part of nanostudio (if they ever fill out their MIDI implementation) is going to seriously load my iPad 3. However, to fully realize this would also require AB to become a patch bay in a much more generic way than the current single flow it implements. The BM2 AB hints suggest there may be some movement in that direction already.

    This is driven by the slippery slope towards attempting to use the iPad as a complete production studio. When really it is (currently) really better treated as a single complex instrument. But I still think something like AB (+MB) as a backbone with VST like thingies hung off it in some usefully configurable topology is very attractive.

    note: I come from a unix toolmaker background - lots of single purpose tools that do their job very well and pipes to connect them together. As compared to the M$ philosophy of monolithic apps that attempt to do everything anybody ever asked for up to whatever the current limit on computing resources is. So their stuff is always loading down the machine regardless of compute power advances. Parkinson's Law in action.

  • edited February 2013

    Yeah, when can I use audiobus with ffmpeg and sox? :)

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