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
It's quite brilliant, @Michael. I now have a handful of my most used channel configs at the ready to easily build up a new preset.
One other feature I hope you'll consider at some point is "snapshots". It would be so cool to set up a preset with different combos of mutes and volumes (maybe even tempo?) and save it to a snapshot and allow MIDI bindings for the snapshots. It would really streamline the composition/live setup workflow!
That sounds like a nice feature. I do somewhat the same by using the same base preset name with version numbers after them. But that’s a three step process. So a one-step snapshot option would be great.
Do you get a little pause when you switch presets? That's the main issue I have with using presets to achieve snapshots. Even when apps are exactly the same and I only make modest tweaks I get a little glitch as I change presets.
Sure, but I expect that. There’s a lot of housekeeping that has to be done unloading and loading apps. I doubt Audiobus can know whether all the same apps are used, and restore there state instantaneously. It’s not like AudioBus has Uber control over every app.
Perhaps @Michael, genius that he is, could achieve that, but honestly I doubt that anyone could.
Maybe ... if a snapshot was a special save that only applied AU parameters and didn’t do any app initialization. Certain apps would always glitch though, I’m sure.
Sure, understood. My point is that I'd leave the app states static but change the AB state with quick snapshots. I'm fine loading a preset per session/song but I want to quickly capture scenes/snapshots that don't cause the sound to drop out.
Late the party here but I vote for ADD.
for my long answer I feel like “LOAD” and “ADD” both leave some ambiguity . “Load” could be a problem because both options will actually be loading the preset. The word load is too broad. With a second option in addition to load, the assumtion is that you aren’t loading anything if you select the other option.
For totally new users I think “replace” and “merge” could be the more logical label choices. Or it would be more clear if you could tap on “load” and have a choice of replace or merge, but I don’t like that either because it adds another step.
So... yeah I think add works best if you are keeping the “load” label. Add is more clear that you are doing something in addition to loading.
Another idea: what about a simple “+” label in addition to load. Then have a pop-up box “append to current loaded preset”? Yes/no
For adding presets together, that will be more of a building/ tweaking stage of the process, so having the extra pop-up box won’t be a hassle, and would provide additional info for those who don’t know what it is.
I'd prefer Insert but will be ok with Add.
That would indeed be awesome if it could be pulled off. There are lots of potential pitfalls though. For instance, what happens if you do add an app or an effect between snapshots? I’m not trying to shoot anything down - just thinking out loud.
Yep, good point! Maybe restricted to mixer snapshots?
@lukesleepwalker said:
I think it should be AB settings + AU presets + AU parameters
It'd up to the user to not add apps if they want snapshot performance.
The other way is just automating all the individual AU presets changing which is effectively the same thing, it's just being done as a batch snapshot save of all the AUs states at the time of saving.
Hopefully it should be possible to get good performance here unless you're suddenly changing a preset to a big multi-sampled instrument or something like that. It just needs a bit of common sense by the user.
I'd mostly use it for changing AU parameters and changing AU sequencer presets.
I've been trying this in AUM recently and it works well...
Regarding snapshots: this is indeed on my to-do list. I think it's going to be basically presets within presets, which means fixing that little glitch when loading, something I'm confident I can do. That way, too, one can change full presets as well without issue, if that suits the workflow better.
So useful, @Janosax: Every time I'm looking for a time saving tip you're there to slip me some clues.
We need a new term for this rather than "Preset" and it's baggage since everything has presets, projects, configs. This is a sub-preset and an "Add-ins".
"I have some base presets and a library of add-ins."
"I have presets and the folders of sub-presets I use to make them."
@Michael is always 10 steps ahead on some effective implementation for us.
Buy SampleBot just to say thanks. The Apple Store referral money is gone.
Maybe Jimmy Fallon will pitch in with another TV demo.
@Michael I think I have found an odd bug with saving presets in today’s beta version. I named preset with the last letter being accented é. On making changes and returning to try and save again, the preset is no longer selected. It’s as if I haven’t saved the current setup.
Is this a good place to report beta defects or should I email?
😄❤️
Thanks! I'll check it out. Email is best cos it works a bit like a todo list then. Hard to keep track of forum posts
One option for smooth preset switches is to load up 2 AU of the same instrument if that works for you. Map the MIDI just right and while playing out one AU, you can switch the preset of the other, then switch over to the other AU, etc.
Your "snapshots" idea gave me an idea. Imagine if you can load a preset, then execute a "sub-preset" which will begin linearly manipulating the synth's controls over time via MIDI. Let's say you can set the transition time as short (1 or 2 seconds) or long like over 10-15 seconds. And the preset will automatically switch smoothly to achieve the new "sub-preset" sound.
Any MIDI-controlling software like this exists? Anyone think this is a cool idea? A lot of possibility I think!
Omg I think I got an idea -- You could map an LFO such as found in Rozeta suite to translate to the appropriate CCs which would bring you to where you need to get to the new preset (and make sure you match the LFO's amplitude/range to correspond where it needs to end up for the new preset) and the just let the LFO play and the synth will switch smoothly back and forth between two presets!
But I guess at that point you could also just map the LFO to crossfade between two channels with two different presets loaded for the same instrument as an AU.
Ableton allows this sort of smooth transitions between scenes and it is very useful.
The problem I forsee with attempting this type of workflow is RAM. On the desktop you can afford to have multiple AU/VSTs loaded in the background ready to be swapped scene to scene but until Apple are more generous regarding the RAM we get in iOS devices, this type of workflow could lead to lots problems.
It's worth being in mind that most regular users of the forum are far more aware of the technical limitations of the platform but the vast majority of individuals using iOS for music either expect iOS to perform in just the same way as desktop environments and some will have no existing benchmark but simply lack the technical understanding to inform them of where things might be going wrong.