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.
IAA to AUv3
Would someone be so kind as to explain in very basic terms if and why it is hard to turn IAA apps into AUv3 apps?
Since hearing about Apples IAA deprecation, I’ve been avoiding purchasing IAA only apps and I’m concerned about the future of my favourite IAA apps.
Deprecation
In several fields, deprecation is the discouragement of use of some terminology, feature, design, or practice, typically because it has been superseded or is no longer considered efficient or safe, without completely removing it or prohibiting its use. It can also imply that a feature, design, or practice will be removed or discontinued entirely in the future.
Comments
Developers would have to recode their apps and redo their GUI. They can’t simply press a button to have this automatically done for them. In addition they won’t be able to recoup the work they put into such an update by charging for it on the App Store
Some apps are even more problematic as they can have issues with the AUv3 memory limitations.
Got it. I figured it was probably a lot of work. I assumed releasing the app as a v2 and charging full price would be good incentive, but based on what you’re saying, maybe not. I wouldn’t hesitate in re-paying for my favourite apps - especially now I know the amount of work involved making them AUv3. AUv3 is leaps and bounds ahead of IAA. Thanks for answering my question.
Audiobus should still be around, even after IAA support is gone.
I don’t expect that much to change, except maybe some IAA only apps will get Audiobus support, finally.
And some IAA only apps will go AU, too. But Audiobus is still an option for apps that cannot be updated for AU support easily.
Previous iOS updates have rendered some apps useless, until they were updated. Most of my apps have survived so far, even if I lost them for a bit after a System update.
Yeah I’ve lost a few good apps over the years after an iOS update.
IAA is in the upcoming iOS version. Deprecated technologies sometimes continue to be supported through many OS releases.
A lot probably depends on the rate with which "important " apps make the move to AU.
I have too many great IAA apps to just abandon. I plan on freezing my current iPad when IAA gets dropped.
I kinda wanna buy Thor but I want it to be auv3, anyone heard anything about this ?
I think Propellorheads have headed in a different direction with Reason Compact. I wouldn’t hold out for Thor to be updated to AU but who knows?
Ya that's kind a what I was starting to think as well... Seems like a great sounding synth but...u dunno lol maybe they should drop the price
I lean your way. I’ll pay again for the good ones. There are several IAAs that I ended up not using much. I won’t buy those again (unless being AU has really improved the app). It might get expensive, but so is coffee.
Just for some clarification - if IAA doesn’t work anymore, but I have an IAA app, can I still record audio out of it using Audiobus? I guess I thought you needed IAA to be working for Audiobus to work, but maybe I’m just a noob when it comes to this stuff.
Audiobus pre-dated IAA. It was merged with IAA when Apple made it necessary to do so. If IAA goes away, worst-case, Audiobus will revert to the way it was. Michael has promised AudioBus will continue to do what it was designed to do regardless of Apple’s direction shifts. (At least as far as humanly possible, of course.)
There’s a thread around somewhere with Michael’s official word on the subject. Maybe someone can find it and link it here?
A few things of possible interest:
My understanding is that it would require developers to use the Audiobus SDK rather than IAA OS calls (since the IAA OS calls will be gone).
@wim @espiegel123 thanks guys. Yea I remember seeing @Michael sayin something like that. And I know it will take a while for the deprecation to be “complete” but I move slowly as a full time working dad also trying to finish a degree. So being able to record with the apps I have now in 2-4 years would be great. Obviously the landscape of iOS will change by then too...my main concern is BIAS. I use that mainly for my guitars and hope for something AUv3 for future proofing. @PositiveGrid anything regarding AUv3 in the pipeline?
Here you go: https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/33215/the-future-of-audiobus-spoiler-alert-fine
@Michael thanks again!
No worries!
For what it's worth: I'd be very surprised if IAA was turned off any time in the next five years or so. AUv3 is great, but it's really hard to implement into an existing project (I'm just attempting it with Samplebot, another of my projects, and after days of work I can't even get the thing to start up!), so there's always gonna be plenty of apps that just use AB/IAA because it's trivially easy to add support for it. I doubt Apple will want to pull the rug out from other those.
Currently, I can IAA Cubasis into GB and it records in GB as audio track. When Apple unplugs support for IAA, I won’t be able to do that anymore
I guess I won’t be able to IAA for instance Sound Canvas and other apps either that do not have AU. They should at least advertise/expose stuff in GB to other apps instead of hiding them.
I guess there is no reason to discontinue IAA - they could retain it, freeze it and not enhance it anymore. It couldn’t hurt to keep legacy tech.
You cannot know that... in can for example depend on some low-level iOS libraries which are going to be refactored/changed or completely replaced by something else in future.. Existence of such libearies may block update of other related parts of code. Users have no idea how complex can be relations inside...
There are many potential reasons to deprecare and later remove some Api provided by operaring system, it's called progress and just rarelly it's only because some manager had wrong sleep last night so he decided to cut some OS feature :-)))
Is it ballpark a 50% rewrite in code? 80%? 20%? Or might it vary so much that one app might be 10% and another 90%? Perhaps certain app specific sections of code can be migrated but much of the ‘core’ code is completely different?
It’s not for me to tell devs how to write their code so I don’t complain, but I think that’s the kind of info people are curious about when their favorite apps don’t cross over.
It might very well be the case where the developer may need to start from scratch versus trying to shoe horn IAA app code into AUv3 code.
FWIW, there were MacOS calls deprecate around 2002 that have survived until now (and are only being removed in the next OS). I would trust @Michael's spidey sense more than anyone else. He not only has more experience writing iOS music apps than just about anyone else (over a long time scale) but he also has periodic contact with folks at Apple.
I really miss that 9-pin game port on my sound card for MIDI control. Still, 5-pin DIN endures on hardware devices as a gateway from USB. There's always a "horseless carriage" or "wireless radio" or
"IAA-less DAW" around the corner. The future is just a click away (+/- 24 months)... Drambo!!!