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
Considering this for my next MIDI interface. Advertised as class-compliant, and includes USB hub
https://www.esi-audio.com/products/m4uex/
Oh wow, that looks awesome. Could also be the solution to getting jitter free MIDi out of iOS? The mention of perfect timing has me interested!
Hmmm - like all USB ports https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.gear4music.com/amp/us/en/Recording-and-Computers/ESI-M4U-eX-MIDI-Interface/2LPH
Impossible. 99% of MIDI Jitter originates from apps that need a fix inside. If an app sends jittery MIDI, no interface can fix it.
Take an app like Rozeta cells that produces 100% accurate results triggering an AU synth like Spectrum, look at that and then do the same with a hardware synth over MIDI.
I have the older model, not sure about Jitter free on my model but it is a very reliable midi hub and built like a tank.
i think the Jitter comes from the USB midi devices themselves
Sending MIDI to hardware is different.
Inside iOS you can use (and usually rely on) MIDI time stamps that are evaluated by the receiver and played at the correct time. As soon as sending MIDI messages over a hardware interface, the time stamp is lost and if the developer has not taken enough care to actually get these messages sent as quickly as possible, the jittery timing will be bad enough to become audible.
Not with the ones I'm using. Which ones do you use?
I use ESI which is great but I don't think its possible to completely remove midi Jitter on a USB device. Here is a nice little video showing some of the issues involve with USB midi devices -
Looks like an argument (in general) for iPad to CV instead of MIDI. I remember Vince Clarke proudly declaring his synth rig was MIDI-free and CV was more reliable for timing.
OTOH, I don't have much of a CV rig - got a Korg SQ-1, Korg MS-20 Mini, and Lyra-8 - those are the only CV things I have. Everything else is MIDI. So life goes on w/ MIDI for me, as imperfect as it is.
That video is from 2011, have USB devices not gotten any better? What about iConnectivity devices that have midi out?
I don't know about USB 3.0 but I believe that only increases bandwidth. I could be wrong.
I thought this might be a useful read, until I realized it was published in 2004
https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-usb-too-slow-midi-interfacing
I haven't noticed problems with sequencing hardware from iPad via my Roland Duo Capture EX, but then again, I haven't used my iPad to drive 10 different hardware synths plus 50 apps inside iPad at the same time.
OK, this is about 1ms jitter. Practically nothing. You won't even hear it except you have more than one interface triggering audio samples, then you might get phase cancellations.
How do you know the iPad to CV doesn't have jitter as well?
Analog usually doesn't have the "thread priority" issue because there's usually a dedicated circuit. There's jitter too but it's more likely in the microseconds range.
That's the thing - often we don't even have the choice so we try to find the best workarounds.
I don't.
I also don't know 100% but I think that video is by Expert Sleepers with the intent of selling their products.
Exactly as I mentioned to you before, 1ms jitter is enough for a transient to double or to be completely phased out. Im very happy using USB midi devices but they do cause jitter to my knowledge at least.
I think it really depends on the set-up. Sometimes, even 5 to 10ms are acceptable, sometimes half a millisecond is too much already.
Indeed, I agree with you about what latency is acceptable depending on set-up but jitter is present on the usb device as already mentioned. What usb midi device do you use?
iPad USB over Lightning to Mac, elektron Digitakt USB MIDI Clock to iPad (CCK3), Roland UM-One mk2 (CCK2), Zoom UAC-8 in class compliant mode (CCK3), UM-One mk2 attached to iTrack Dock USB host port, and sometimes an iRig MIDI via 30pin-to-Lightning adapter.
Did a number of soft synth and sampler latency measurements a while ago, and both latency and jitter originating from the app itself were so much higher than the difference of USB versus the iPad's line output.
5-10ms? That's insane.
On my MPC60 - MIDI TX Jitter - 1 sample (0.02ms)
Using an iPad to send a pulse signal for clock via my Motu 16A = No jitter and 5ms latency, but you just compensate for that by moving your pulse track 5ms early. All my analog gear is absolutely 100% accurate with this method.
The only other method I use is Ableton Link because it buffers the MIDI going out to hardware and I can fix it once recorded. It's also a very small amount of latency to begin with 0.15ms to 0.31ms.
There is a reason people buy Expert Sleepers, Sync Gen, USAMO, ERM Multiclock etc.
but midipace can!
https://audeonic.com/midipace/
It's cool if you have the freedom to do that (i.e. controlling outboard gear from the iPad and not the other way around like in my case).
Yep, 5-10ms from hitting the key on the keyboard until the sound leaves the headphones jack or the audio interface output is quite a good figure for iOS apps already, many synths/samplers have higher latency, independent from the audio buffer setting.
Guess our rig is completely different, I don't own any analog clocked devices.
LINK buffers MIDI sent to hardware? Sorry I don't understand.
Sure! Not for notes but at least for MIDI clock, yes.
Nic has some really great apps for MIDI.
I'm not sure how it does it. I discovered it a while ago by accident using Rozeta to trigger a Moog Minitaur and having Link enabled in AUM. When I can be bothered I'll make a thread with comparison pictures. Rozeta is usually my go to for testing how tight a receiving app is, because not all apps are the same. For example here is 3 different AU synths doing roughly the same sound which is a standard fast/snappy bass sound.
q> @BroCoast said:
It would be interesting to know your exact setup because the Minitaur has two inputs for MIDI notes (MIDI and USB) and three inputs for "clock" (MIDI, USB and GATE).
The only thing I can imagine is that if you enable LINK in AUM, it automatically stops sending MIDI clock, causing the Minitaur to behave differently.
No MIDi clock
This is with DIN MIDI, no link. Tight enough, but if I was doing something serious I'd turn Link on so I could get perfect on the grid rather than having a miniscule amount of jitter.
I don't know why but sidekick introduced some ringing/artifact on mixdown. Maybe too hot lol. Minitaur being sidechained, Animoog with some Blackhole.
EDIT yeah, shit don't listen to that I gotta back the kick off like 10db lol. Senheiser HD280 deceiving me. Should be better now.
Blackhole is really obvious. Cool stuff. Sure the ringing doesn't come from Blackhole?
As for LINK, that sounds like an interesting phenomenon. Technically, there's nothing LINK could change in your MIDI communication.
Hi, came down on this thread as I was googling about minitaur internal jitter.
It's old but just wanted to add my perspective in case someone else read this later on.
I'm using a minitaur and prophet rev2 and used to connect them via usb (still do for preset management via software editors).
I'm usually sending midi notes to my synths from ableton (to record perfectly quantized audio)
And I had on both +/- 5ms jitter (that's 10ms total) on my recordings, always (at 44.1khz / 512 samples buffer size. Reducing buffer size improves this figure somehow).
I finally figured this was happening because of midi output jitter and happened actually when the midi was leaving ableton to go through the usb cable (and the OS).
Actually ableton has an article describing this kind of problem: https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/midi-fact-sheet/
I tried different stuff (including the erm multiclock which doesn't work in my case because it's not handling notes only clock) and finally bought an USAMO by expert sleepers which transmits midi note via audio and not usb (same technology as the erm). It works perfectly and now I have 0ms midi jitter !
I don't know about their other products but this one is rock solid and it's only about 100 euros.