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
Yeah. That's the kind of detail a developer has to isolate and workaround to make an app stable.
It's this developer's war story of a tricky detail he had to comprehend and repair. It's not really relevant to
the issue of horizontal scaling for you DAW's.
Maybe but developer's really prefer to turn off the world and go deep into the abstractions they are trying master to make these apps work.
New hardware often has new features that can cause a perfectly stable application to start behaving in unexpected ways and require an update. many developer's do this work for us without us spending a single penny for the work. Sometimes they just stop trying and apps die.
It's been asked many times on multiple threads but not sure it's been answered.
What DAW do you use? A war story from an FX dev or 2 doesn't really shed much light on the quest for
making progress making the iPad Pro "work" right. This is the classic "How you define a successful solution?" that isn't something as vague as "I'm happy." but something that could be measured.
I find the information from the devs very valuable, if only I could understand it.
As of now I’m pretty sure I can’t get a reasonable performance out of my iPad Pro myself.
I won’t consider crazy workarounds like sampling each track, so I would collect info.
For now I know at least about variable callback, whatever it means.
I’m also interested what was the root of the problem which caused Moog synths crackle and how completely was it solved?
Moog synths in parallel in a DAW? Still waiting. Solving a problem requires defining the problem statement.
If the problem is "I'm not happy." I wish we could move the ball forward and get the really start people to
slip us clues about using our equipment better. Most Moog synths won't scale beyond a few instances without problems. This is another reason so many just NanoStudio 2. A high quality synth embedded in an optimized DAW under the control of a single developer... nothing else comes close for using an iPad for parallel processing without cracking or crashes. Problem solved. Might not make you happy but not my problem.
I didn’t find any embedded synths that would suit my needs, except for Korg, but the Gadget fx are not so good and it’s a closed environment
@vov: none of the technical info from developers will help you. Please, if you are serious about wanting to improve your experience making music, give us a specific thing you need help with. Even better, post a video demonstrating the issue.
Many people are making successful of these machines. So, while you can't have the desktop experience you want, you can still be productive. To get there, you need to show us what isn't working for you so we can advise on how to make it work.
If you aren't willing to give us specifics you won't make progress and you will continue to get the frustrated responses you have been getting.
We want to help. Understanding a developer's mistaken assumption about buffer sizes won't help you.
Which synths have you tried (be specific)?
What hosts?
What are you trying to accomplish? Provide as much specificity as you possible. Are you hoping to 16 synth tracks at once? Whatever it is, provide details.
It must be time to start a new thread. See you there then.
This s only fun if we learn something in the process.
I had no idea buffers could get a rounding error on calls backs. That's something I'll
keep on top of mind for a good 48 hours but it's documented in this series of threads about
why you should never go Pro unless you are really a Pro. Having a lot of money to loose
is not the same thing and using hardware to make money. You're going to wish you
had that money and be irate. There's just no profit in being irate.
I tried quite a few hosts - all DAWS - I need a built in sequencer - I liked BM3 and NS2 feature wise. NS2 is more stable, but the processor runs out of juice just as fast. So I’m sure it’s something to do with newer Apple processors, or how they utilized (not) by iOS audio.
As to synths I like hardware emulations(Moogs, Sunrizer, Korgs) which adds to the problem because they are processor heavy so I’m limited with 3-4 tracks.
If you want more than 3 or 4 tracks of CPU-intensive AUs then you need to use a DAW that can freeze tracks such as Cubasis or Auria Pro. You can get lots and lots of tracks that way. You can unfreeze at any time if you need to make changes.
NS2's Obsidian synth is quite CPU-efficient. So, if you can bend Obsidian to your will, you can get many tracks at once. But if you want to use those others, you will need to switch.
You will need to adapt how you work. That is just a simple fact of life -- and the reasons are irrelevant.
With such synths you will be limited to 3 or 4 tracks, this is how iOS music works today. Perhaps it will be better optimized in the future. You have absolutely to manage ressources, that means freezing/rendering. No other choice, or you will not be able to finish anything. Daws offer freezing, you can also use Audiobus and various recorders such as AUM/file player, Blocs wave, Loopy, Grouptheloop, Enso... this is iOS workflow, no way to avoid it. It can be frustrating for sure, but it’s perfectly possible to finish songs on iOS. iPhone/iPad music production best strength is all in touchscreen, mobility and new kind of fingerable apps/dawless hosts workflows. All is about keeping things in balance if you want to succeed in iOS music making.
BM3, Moog and Korg Synths?
I can see why you having problems with scaling up past 3-4 tracks.
It's not likely Apple can change much to make these specific apps behave differently
with the exception being the 340MB limit for shared AU system use which I believe the
DAW's are coded to enforce by terminating the instance that exceeds the quota.
There's a strong rumor that IOS 13 will raise that limit.
There's also a rush by active developers to qualify their products for stability with IOS 13.
So, there's some hope that IOS 13 will bump your track maximums up to a bigger number than 4. Maybe 6? A beta tester might be able to share some test runs with NS2 and one of the Moog's which would indicate if the 340MB has been raised and Moog doesn't even need to re-code or NS2 to see some relief.
The problem is other platforms already have touchscreen and mobility, while Apple lags behind in performance, and not because their lack in hardware but because iOS engineers couldn’t utilize it properly.
I tried other synths, the situation is the same across the board if you want sound quality. The rumors usually come to nothing with Apple.
@vov: as we have said, you will need to use a DAW with freezing or capture tracks as audio if you want many CPU heavy synths at once.
Many people record that way. you can have loads of tracks that way.
If you won't adapt your workflow, it simply won't work out. We know you wish it were different, but it isn't.
If you aren't willing to adapt, you are wasting your time and ours.
We are happy to help, but you also need to be willing to make a good faith attempt to adapt.
If your response to a suggestion is "I don't have to do that on my desktop" maybe this isn't the best place to ask for help.
Like what? MS Surface?
I don't think you can back that up with any facts. Certainly not another mobile device that could run more than 4 Moog synths which is your only accepted definition of performance here. I wouldn't mind being wrong about this... but you think such a solution would be well known here and musicians would be recommending the solution for parallel process music
making.
OK. You have your conclusion and are on the hunt for any facts to support it.
@vov Apple has GB DAW on iOS and they knew very well why they had to limit the AU instance memory so far. We cannot arrive at conclusions or challenge their decisions like we know more and better than their thousands of engineers, marketers, sales pros, C-level executives as to how mobile devices should be designed and function. Unless you are comparing iOS devices to desktop ones on other platforms, there is no other platform as FLUID and lag-free as iOS/iPadOS. Since hardware and software are both developed by them, they could tweak it and squeeze every drop performance from minimal specs. The one-size-fits-all Android doesn’t have that luxury and result in bloatware. Android tablets come to a crawl with no resale value in a year but iPads last over 6-8 years with resale value!
Apple couldn’t care less about specs/features and they always lag behind competition deliberately - for years - before catching up. And when they catch up, they NAIL it - sending copycat competitors scrambling to beat Apple. It would take years for competitors to remotely mimic the FaceID - and no competitor could develop a tablet even half as good as Air 2 (from 5 years ago) - so far. Touch screens and tablets existed years before iPhone and iPad were launched - only Apple perfected their UX and nailed them and made them more usable.
If you want great hardware with higher specs, go for Android.
If you want great apps and ecosystem, go for iOS/iPadOS.
But again, no amount of great hardware is any good without the availability of cool apps to consume the hardware. I wonder at Galaxy keynotes what the users are going to do with those great phones with cool displays, kickass cameras, huge RAM and bigger battery without any cool apps to use them. Maybe use them to just take videos and hi-res photos? Their O/S itself is so as ugly as their hardware - to start with. I don’t want one even for free.
Microsoft Surface Pro 6 is not able to run heavy desktop VST synths like Serum polyphonically and you will have to freeze others tracks at some stage too, you don’t have touch optimized apps except for Bitwig and StageLight, you will need a pencil AND an audio interface for usable low latency. Sounds good on paper but just look at Molten Technology Youtube videos. Lenovo Yoga are more or less in the same boat, they all throttle under load. It’s all about compromise, if you want full power go desktop as even laptops can’t do anything without reaching limits (aka freezing!!).
If you compare iOS to Android surely iOS wins, but I’m not talking about phones. I’m talking about iPad Pro which is comparable to Win tablets in size, price, and battery consumption but lags in performance dramatically.
PLEASE, you have made your disappointment with iOS clear. You do not need to post any more about your disappointment and the ways in which your iPad does not do what you want or about its inferiority compared to a laptop/desktop.
We all know how you feel about that -- and there is nothing to be gained by you from continuing to post about -- except reducing people's interest in helping you out.
Like a terrier with a rat. The rat is long dead, but the dog continues to shake the sh!t out of it.
You all? How many espiegel123s are out there?
Wow trolling is not throttling at least!!!
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Sorry, I don’t know who posting here and why anymore. Please refrain from general comments and advice and share only your experience with synths and DAWS on iPads Pro 2018, as I asked in my first post.
We can have a meaningful conversation if you stop comparing iPad to laptops based on their price (and size and battery). We all know they are not the same. An iPad runs for 10 hours on battery - a laptop does not.
Only one. His contributions to this community are without peer.
He has taken a leading role in defining and posing to the Community Wiki.
He has created YouTube videos to help members use their iPad in the best
potential configuration (AB3+Xequence 2+AUM+Loopy).
When he speaks here it carry the weight of significant karma built over 80 discussions
and 3,000+ comments. I would expect anyone here to value his advice.
His advice to you echoes a long pattern of folks here suggesting your wasting your time,
the developer's time trying to educate us about IOS internals and ours.
You have every right to ignore him and continue to tilt at IOS Windmills of Discontent.
I find it all entertaining and a challenge to see if I can move the needle a bit towards
a rational discussion of scalability.
I am @espiegel123!
Mr. Vov, what fascinates me about you is that you express no human feelings, are utterly humorless and share nothing of yourself or your own musical experience other than your petulance. As a result you are quite a unique attraction at this flea circus. And worth an ogle now and then.
As to your request that others refrain from making comments astray from your particular interest (never getting enough tit, I am thinking).... well, you really don't understand how a community like this works. You are clearly deficient in every aspect of adaptability... and that is why you will never have a feeling for iOS or ever get beyond four tracks on the platform. It is, unfortunately, your personal deficiency.
@McD : Thanks for the kind words. I am hoping that "I would expect anyone here to ignore his valuable advice." is maybe a typo