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
AUv3 Freezing would be similar to MIDI track freezing where the track is rendered to audio. In this case the output from the AUv3 would be rendered to audio with the following options.
Daw = digital audio workstation. Ipad/ios itself fits the bill if you use apps that can do the all the audio work you need.
Steinberg confirmed they have plans to build a new file management system for Cubasis but no ETA of it yet:
https://www.steinberg.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=183&t=157824
@InfoCheck - Hats off to you!
File Browser - subfolders, search, tags, search by tags, sorting, metadata (modified, size, format, duration/length, etc)
Audio - player with controls, glue, warping
Video - player with controls, import
Do not re-save on opening a project and touching the screen and mess up its modified date/sorting in the file browser (unless edited). LumaFusion works gracefully - it does not re-save a project on touching the screen until it is edited.
Export to MP3 (I guess this is a challenge for devs because they need opensource modules that cannot be packaged with a commercial software - unless they write their own modules like LAME MP3 encoder)
Export to sheet music
Detect - Tempo, Time Signature, Notes, Root Note, Chords
Chord Library - with ability to assign chords to chord buttons from the library (like in Cubasis chord buttons) and edit the assigned chord notes on the button.
Drum Library - similar to FLSM. For instance, in Cubasis, we should be able to browse through the kit sounds of all drum kits and assemble a kit of our own by assigning instruments to pads mixing-n-matching from across other kits (currently, we can only reassign instruments to pads from the same kit). This will let us have all the drum instruments on a single track instead of having multiple drum tracks because our preferred sounds are found in multiple drum kits.
@MobileMusic Thank you. The patents for mp3 have run out so there are open source MP3 conversions available.
But opensource code cannot be packaged/distributed along with commercial software (for conversion by users) unless the commercial software is offered for free. This will preclude them from using it until they write their own converter to go with their apps. I guess this is the reason why most apps don't have export to MP3 because of lack of their own native converter (copyright issue, not patent).
Obviously, that's a personal question—there are things on your initial list I don't really care about for example. Personally, these spring to mind:
And personal bonuses:
It's pretty crazy/cool that most of this stuff is currently available on iOS though no one DAW does it all. Fair enough—Logic does pretty much all of it but it's been in development for decades.
Presumably at some point a project like AudioKit will take on developing MP3 converter coding so other developers can easily add it to their apps as an option.
Hopefully. However, it has to come as a downloadable addon app like AudioCopy/AudioPaste (eg: LAME on desktop) as app developers cannot package and distribute opensource libraries/modules/apps along with their own commercial software. They can only hint users at runtime to download the supporting app for the conversion module in their app to work. Most desktop DAW apps can export to MP3 but the DAW apps on iOS cannot yet.
I wonder what the world would be like without these intellectual properties - copyrights, trademarks, service marks, trade secrets and patents. Many people protest software patents as ridiculous because change is so easy to make in software even after shipping it than hardware that is hard-baked.
Developers can use open source code to develop their apps. AudioKit is an open source project and people have made and sold apps developed using AudioKit code.
This site discusses open source licensing issues.
It depends on the type of license the opensource dev is offering it under. The permissive MIT, Apache and BSD licenses are more flexible than copyleft GPL/LGPL ones. Opensource software like Linux, MySQL, etc. are used widely on hosting services because they are hosted and no copies are distributed/sold to users. The issue comes when distributing (selling copies) of the commercial software that is using any opensource code. When distributing commercial software that is using copyleft opensource code, it is mostly a requirement to distribute the commercial project as opensource, as well.
License types:
https://resources.whitesourcesoftware.com/blog-whitesource/open-source-licenses-explained
https://sdtimes.com/cloud/open-source-commercial-software-development-handle-care/
AudioKit offers its source under permissive MIT license allowing distribution/selling (compiled without source) packaged along with commercial apps:
https://github.com/AudioKit/AudioKit/blob/master/LICENSE
https://github.com/AudioKit/AudioKitSynthOne/blob/master/LICENSE
All free AudioKit apps/libraries are offered under MIT license:
https://www.google.com/search?q=audiokit+license
The PHP Zend Framework is licensed under BSD that permits redistribution and use both in source and binary forms, with or without modification:
https://framework.zend.com/license
LAME is LGPL (copyleft):
http://lame.sourceforge.net/license.txt
There should be devs willing to offer converter projects under permissive license and earning no compensation for their work. Maybe AudioKit would offer one in the future for other devs to reuse and be able to distribute under MIT without many restrictions.
@analog_matt , your views/plans on this, please? Maybe, this could be your next exciting project!
If i should have stored on my haddrive all my music library in other than mp3 format it will definitely not fit there (i have 256 GB SSD in my macbook) - MP3 is only option for me (because of size)
There's currently no one working on anything MP3 related for the AudioKit project at the moment. Which means it's an excellent opportunity for someone to contribute. 😎
I always mixdown to WAV format for editing in LumaFusion and uploading the video to YouTube. However, when I want to quickly email a mixdown to some of my Android friends, WAV is not an option and also, my projects export to 100+ MB files in WAV format. Converting to MP3 on iOS is like going from pillar to post. Workflow app used to convert to MP3 but after Apple acquired and incorporated it into iOS, they also apparently broke it and it doesn't convert anymore (the last I heard).
This app does conversion by uploading files to their server, converting and downloading:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-audio-converter/id889643660?mt=8
If it is hard to do it on iOS, maybe devs could offer something like the above - use a server to upload and convert.
@LFS , here is an idea to quickly whip up an MP3 mixdown/convert solution in Cubasis:
This app does conversion by uploading files to their server, converting and downloading:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-audio-converter/id889643660?mt=8
If it is hard to do it on iOS, maybe you could offer something like the above - use a server to upload and convert.
I have added the DAW List of features into the AudioBus Wiki (and credited @tja as the driving force) at:
https://wiki.audiob.us/daws
I have not taken the time to read this entire thread, and don’t have a great deal to contribute, however, what I can say, is that even though I’m not particularly intelligent, or even talented, even I have been able to get on with Auria Pro very, very well. I had only previously worked shortly with the base model of Auria, and to a greater degree, Reaper for computer, I have ran into very few issues in being able to create in Auria Pro. I think the fact that Reaper is the kind of DAW that allows a person to work in many different styles, basically whatever suits your needs, has allowed me to adapt to Auria Pro. I was sure that I would be totally lost in Auria Pro, and be forced into giving up, and switching to Cubasis, for the sake of simplicity, however AP has proven, at least to me, to be very easy to catch on to. That makes me very pleased, mainly because, when I have some money a couple months down the road, and some more hands on experience, I’m going to go wild with all the FabFilter offerings. Auria Pro has just been an absolute joy to work with, and so far, I haven’t ran into something that I wanted to do, but couldn’t. I’m a very simple creator though, and I require very little to make me happy, and boy, has AP ever delivered!
The FabFilter plug-ins have been offered at 40-50% during some major Holiday spending
times so save accordingly. Until then try various FX apps to determine where you might want to invest: Reverb, EQ, Saturation, Tape Delay, Compressor, Limiter. There are useful FX in each of these categories that will also work in Auria Pro. Some are just a few $'s. I personally like the DDMF bundle that provides 5 excellent FX'es for $18 ($3.60 each).
Few notes to current list:
Wondering why grouping is marked as "no hard requirements" .. In my opinion grouping is far away more important for proper DAW than, for example, timestretch .. For years even many desktop DAWs were without time stretching functionality ... On desktop timestretch was for long time not considered as "foundation stone" of DAW ..
i know lot of people working with DAWs on desktop who never needed timestretch but they cannot imagine live without grouping, witch is totally essential thing for making proper mix in many music styles (actually most of them, except of few totally simple minimalistic genres in terms of average number of track in project) ..
I would suggest move this from "MIDI" features part to first paragraph with is about plugins/external syth/fx support and name it "freeze/bounce to audio track", that would be more accurate, freezing it'self is not directly relate to MIDI functionalities of sequencer. You can for example freeze audio track with insert FXs applied.
Oh and missing SENDS in list (which is different thing than groups). Totally crucial thing
. Probably divided to "audio sends" and "midi sends"
Also another suggestion, i would add to this first paragraph about plugins/external synths
And in "MIDI" paragraph i would change this -
To this, which woyuld be more precise (of course sysex and RPN/NRPN is no hard requirement, sadly no one current iOS DAW supports them)
Also - there is mentioned IAA (which is dying standard in my opinion) but completely not mentioned Audiobus (which based on last Michael's updates will stay with us for long time)
.double post.
Here’s some discussion about getting this information together to create a form and database for this DAW information on the wiki.
https://wiki.audiob.us/talk/daws
Here’s a not so slick hype video about the concept.
@dendy , feel free to improve the wiki page. That's the great thing about a wiki.