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
Sounds reasonable, though I foresee it being deemed "too late now."
Wishing you all luck settling this, so everyone can move on.
This, plus @espiegel123 's previous comment are legitimate concerns that should be answered, if your intent coming to this forum is really to answer questions and not just to stir the pot.
He likened Vitaly to a criminal who steals sandwiches, questioned his morality and stated as fact several disparaging things that are clearly opinions. Not sure how that doesn't qualify as "stirring up bad feelings". That said, I would suggest that @mifki should tone down some of the language he used in responses and stick to the facts.
Of course Andrew can come here to state his case, but it seems the reciprocal should be true as well. Unless Vitaly was abusive to other forum users, banning him and deleting his posts doesn't strike me as a reasonable action (and if he was abusive, keeping up the posts would be instructive).
To be clear, I don't own miRack, so I don't have a vested interest in its success, and when it first appeared I had a twinge of "hmmmm" regarding a commercial fork of an open source project. But the more information that comes out, from both sides, the more I'm inclined to think this is the proverbial "nothing-burger" with regards to any actual shenanigans, and more a case of resentment and acrimony because things didn't happen exactly as someone wanted them to. Those are not particularly appetizing condiments for a nothing-burger....
Obviously, the way to clear this up is to get the dispute mediated instead of lobbing accusations back and forth. Hoping, for everyone's sake, that happens.
Actually, it's entirely possible to route to another IAA app from AUM. The issue is that unlike Audiobus, which launches the IAA app, with AUM you need to launch the IAA app separately and then connect from that app to AUM.
E.g. in Garageband, create a track, select External/IAA as the input:
and then select an AUM port:
In AUM you need to then set the output for a channel to go to Garageband through that IAA connection.
There are a few limitations:
1- as noted, with AB you can select an IAA app for the output and AB will launch that app (pretty sure this is all happening because of the AB additions to the IAA spec), which is significantly quicker and easier.
2- many IAA apps don't have a way to select an IAA input for themselves. I know apeMatrix, Auria, Garageband and modstep can, but things like Blocs Wave, Samplr, Thumbjam that can live in the AB output can't get audio directly from AUM, because those apps don't have a way to select their IAA input.
Note, there are other IAA apps that accept audio input that do work with AUM, these apps are setup to work as IAA Effects and so can be loaded into an AUM insert slot (e.g. Borderlands, Fieldscaper). While it's possible to load those into an output of AB and not AUM, loading them in an insert slot in AUM is functionally the same.
AudioShare and Loopy are special cases.
While it's possible to setup AudioShare in the output slot of AUM, in the same manner noted above (set AUM as the input in AudioShare, then set a channel in AUM to the AudioShare IAA connection), as both apps are made by the same developer, you will typically just record the channel in AUM and it will automatically show up in AudioShare's files.
Loopy is made by the same dev as Audiobus, so it's connections are exclusive to Audiobus.
All this said, most people would agree that Audiobus is the preferred host for IAA apps. Most have the Audiobus extensions, so having controls on the Audiobus slideover panel (or Audiobus Remote) is a great feature, and Audiobus State Saving is incredibly useful.
Many people will thus run AB and AUM (which has a superior mixer and individual channel recording / stems) and connect between the two.
Anyone having sound issues with the cf buffer module?
You know, I'd been thinking in terms of either AB or AUM this whole time, and have opted to use primarily AUM when stringing apps together to get an idea going. However... the explanation you just gave here for using both makes perfect sense, and I think I'm going to start launching/chaining them. Get my AB Remote back in on the game, too. Thanks for that, @aplourde.
I've downloaded the new update and can load mirack into AUM; however, it is not recognised when I try to link any midi apps to it - is this feature not implemented yet?
For MiRack to accept midi it has to be able to see a virtual midi port. AUM doesn’t expose its virtual midi port, so MiRack can’t see it. The solution is to send the midi intermediately to something else like AudioBus or MidiFlow that does expose its virtual port. Or, just use AudioBus.
They're a great combination and work nicely together. Since AUM supports AB State Saving, your full setup can be retrieved from the Audiobus preset (but I still save the AUM preset independently... just in case).
It does make one wish for a way to hide channels in AUM, though (especially when you're routing send/returns chains to IAA effects hosted in AB); there are a lot of "extra" channels that end up in AUM for those routings.
Maybe they should unsink this thread now that the drama is over? Still a lot of useful questions and information here. @Michael
@wim thanks for that - got it to work now!
4Pockets Audio Recorder great for getting audio out of miRack.
Although I said I liked my app icon, I must admit it looks bad in AB
😂
Not as bad as all 4pockets icons looking the same
Audiobus is not allowed to be available as an in-app purchase. @Michael Is this, like, no-exceptions rule?
I've seen this with AUv3 support and advanced connectivity like >2 audio channels and CV input support, that's where I drew the idea from.
Feel free to make a case, but generally I don’t approve of this because it means the app just doesn’t work with Audiobus out of the box, which leads to confused and irritated customers. Often irritated with me 😁
[Disclaimer: this is just a discussion, may not mean anything about my current/future plans]. Well, I can see how it can make sense to have the vanilla Rack code as a free app, and everything iOS-specific and advanced as a single in-app purchase. However since AB/IAA is a major iOS-specific feature, there's no point for me to think about this if it's not allowed for AB.
Probably too late now, but I wonder if it could be done so that there was an app that was AB compatible that hosts miRack rather than building the AB code into miRack itself.
Then if there was any trouble down the road, miRack could be made free, with the host app generating the revenue. Perhaps other features such as midi out and recording could be added in the host as well.
Just thinking out loud here.
Another thought, though I don’t know how it would gel with licensing requirements or even if it’s feasible ...
Perhaps an AU Rack Player that wouldn’t support creating of patches, but could play them back - multiple instances worth if possible.
@wim There are options, but they are of course more complicated for development and for users - making the app free AND doing a lot of additional work for that is probably too much at the moment.
That reminds me, in either case I was thinking about AUv3-based read-only patch player, probably with an ability to choose what controls appear on screen instead of a whole patch.
that is a very intriguing idea!
Perhaps the IAP could be for multi-channel AB support, in addition to the 2 channel default. That might address the concern that @michael had regarding any potential confusion.
One pattern that exists in some apeSoft apps is (1) standalone for programming patches and (2) AUv3 for interoperability. Sugar Bytes, also, is only releasing apps with standalone and AUv3 versions. Since AUv3 is itself AB-compatible, I'm not sure what (deprecated) IAA support buys, but perhaps that ship has sailed?
In any event, an AUv3 patch player that exposes the most interesting AU parameters for automation would be a lot of fun.
This is exactly what I've suggested to and discussed with the Audulus dev team about two years ago. An AUv3 player version with mappable (and automatable) controls.
Would be all I need. And might even be much easier to handle visually.
A bit like the StreamByter or Mozaic controls.
They had announced an AUv3 release in Audulus 3 but I feel like their decision to make the AUv3 either full-blown or nothing somehow broke the AUv3 version's neck, plus a few issues with some AUv3 hosts...
This would be great! It could be a bit like the Reaktor Blocks Wired players where the modules show up without any wires/connections, but we would still be able to map the knobs and change the midi + clock settings of the patch so it syncs to the host.
Macro knobs !! Let's say configurable 16 macro knobs
-- you choose macro kbob
-- popup appears where you define start end end mapping values (so twisting macro knob from 0 to max will alter value of mapped knob lets say from 30 to 70 or from 70 to 30
Then, as you said, AU version will contain just those 16 macro knobs ..
You can sell this AU plugin separately as independent app, i will pay ANY price !
Alright, alright
First I need to implement audio input, I guess.
Something like this would be incredibly compelling. Building a patch in standalone would probably be better anyway