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.

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Ableton vs Bitwig

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Comments

  • @krassmann said:
    Just a little fun fact. Both companies are my neighbors. Ableton is located just a few steps from my house and Bitwig is just opposite of my kid’s school. Not that it helped me in any way but funny. BTW and Sugar Bytes office is in walking distance as well. I wonder if the devs have lunch together sometimes.

    Please let them know that iOS exists.

  • edited May 2021

    @jolico said:

    @krassmann said:
    Just a little fun fact. Both companies are my neighbors. Ableton is located just a few steps from my house and Bitwig is just opposite of my kid’s school. Not that it helped me in any way but funny. BTW and Sugar Bytes office is in walking distance as well. I wonder if the devs have lunch together sometimes.

    Please let them know that iOS exists.

    LOL - good idea. Sometimes I could sit down with my mobile setup in front of their office under a banner that injects a subliminal message into their minds. Like “iPad music making is the future” - any proposals? I would have to do that on a working day and take a day off of course or starting an hour before end of working day 🤔

  • Bitwig was started by people who left Ableton.

  • @krassmann said:

    @Carnbot said:
    I voted Ableton but I don't really want it a normal daw on iOS any more, until one day perhaps when there's a very large studio desktop ipad version which is much bigger than 12.9 and iOs is much more mature. Hardware is much better than touch screen for controlling Live anyway.

    ipad + Ableton workflow works so well already I just don't think there's any need for it. :)

    Could you tell us a bit about your ipad + Ableton workflow please? I’m iPad only but I recently installed Ableton Live lite that was bundled with my new Launchpad and now I wonder what I could do with it.

    My workflow is usually sketching and building up material and ideas on iPad in a host like AUM, then recording out stems or often just parts using iCA4+ into Ableton using Link into the session view. Then when I decide I need to create a timeline based track I'll use the material I'v recorded as the basis for editing parts into the arrangement view.

    It's in Live where then I can easily combine stuff I've recorded (and have to hand loads of other material I've recorded in the past) and edit them together in a much more open environment than anything that ipad can give me at this point. The iPad is always attached as sound feeder/instrument.

  • edited May 2021

    @Carnbot said:

    @krassmann said:

    @Carnbot said:
    I voted Ableton but I don't really want it a normal daw on iOS any more, until one day perhaps when there's a very large studio desktop ipad version which is much bigger than 12.9 and iOs is much more mature. Hardware is much better than touch screen for controlling Live anyway.

    ipad + Ableton workflow works so well already I just don't think there's any need for it. :)

    Could you tell us a bit about your ipad + Ableton workflow please? I’m iPad only but I recently installed Ableton Live lite that was bundled with my new Launchpad and now I wonder what I could do with it.

    My workflow is usually sketching and building up material and ideas on iPad in a host like AUM, then recording out stems or often just parts using iCA4+ into Ableton using Link into the session view. Then when I decide I need to create a timeline based track I'll use the material I'v recorded as the basis for editing parts into the arrangement view.

    It's in Live where then I can easily combine stuff I've recorded (and have to hand loads of other material I've recorded in the past) and edit them together in a much more open environment than anything that ipad can give me at this point. The iPad is always attached as sound feeder/instrument.

    Thanks for sharing. I did something similar on the iPad by recording stems from AUM into Cubasis. But I must say that I have difficulties with this approach as it is a bit too static. For instance I have no way to further tweak the synths or the automation when doing the final mix. I mean I could tweak and then export the stems again but that seems to be quite a heavy weight workflow. What are you doing with the effects? Recording them when exporting the stems? Otherwise you could not use your iPad effects…

  • @krassmann said:

    @Carnbot said:

    @krassmann said:

    @Carnbot said:
    I voted Ableton but I don't really want it a normal daw on iOS any more, until one day perhaps when there's a very large studio desktop ipad version which is much bigger than 12.9 and iOs is much more mature. Hardware is much better than touch screen for controlling Live anyway.

    ipad + Ableton workflow works so well already I just don't think there's any need for it. :)

    Could you tell us a bit about your ipad + Ableton workflow please? I’m iPad only but I recently installed Ableton Live lite that was bundled with my new Launchpad and now I wonder what I could do with it.

    My workflow is usually sketching and building up material and ideas on iPad in a host like AUM, then recording out stems or often just parts using iCA4+ into Ableton using Link into the session view. Then when I decide I need to create a timeline based track I'll use the material I'v recorded as the basis for editing parts into the arrangement view.

    It's in Live where then I can easily combine stuff I've recorded (and have to hand loads of other material I've recorded in the past) and edit them together in a much more open environment than anything that ipad can give me at this point. The iPad is always attached as sound feeder/instrument.

    Thanks for sharing. I did something similar on the iPad by recording stems from AUM into Cubasis. But I must say that I have difficulties with this approach as it is a bit too static. For instance I have no way to further tweak the synths or the automation when doing the final mix. I mean I could tweak and then export the stems again but that seems to be quite a heavy weight workflow. What are you doing with the effects? Recording them when exporting the stems? Otherwise you could not use your iPad effects…

    Yeah that really depends for me, if the effects are "necessary" as part of the AUM session, then I record them as part of the exporting as a mix, sometimes I'll record stems and a mix at the same time to give me options later.

    In the end I want to give myself room for creativity but also reduce my choices in a DAW because there I'll always have too many options, but I think there's no perfect workflow for every situation, just depends on your style of working. :)

  • edited May 2021

    @jolico said:

    @krassmann said:
    Just a little fun fact. Both companies are my neighbors. Ableton is located just a few steps from my house and Bitwig is just opposite of my kid’s school. Not that it helped me in any way but funny. BTW and Sugar Bytes office is in walking distance as well. I wonder if the devs have lunch together sometimes.

    Please let them know that iOS exists.

    Sugar Bytes do know iOs exist.. and does a great job of it... Thesys-2 would be great.. Bitwig iOs would be ... wow..

  • @ocelot said:

    Maybe inspired by Elektron?
    New Operators for audio and MIDI: Chance, Repeats (ratchets with timing and velocity curves), Occurrence (trig conditions like Fill button ON, NOT ON, Neighbor event), Recurrence (More trig conditions i.e. only play 2:4).

    Don't think this video does it justice... it's much too busy to highlight its capabilities.. Hope for other videos...
    But, this is it..

  • edited May 2021

    Jeezus, I found something interesting. The upcoming Bitwig 4 will be native Apple Silicon
    https://cdm.link/2021/05/bitwig-studio-4-apple-silicon-m1/

    IMHO that makes Bitwig a strong candidate for being the first desktop DAW that runs on the iPad. If they have built it with Apple’s Mac Catalyst it might be not much work to make it a dual MacOS/iPadOS app. The edge that Bitwig has got over Logic or Ableton is that its UX already embraces multi touch.

    As I am not an iOS developer I can not judge if this is a possible development. What do you think @NeonSilicon @SevenSystems ?

  • @krassmann said:
    Jeezus, I found something interesting. The upcoming Bitwig 4 will be native Apple Silicon
    https://cdm.link/2021/05/bitwig-studio-4-apple-silicon-m1/

    IMHO that makes Bitwig a strong candidate for being the first desktop DAW that runs on the iPad. If they have built it with Apple’s Mac Catalyst it might be not much work to make it a dual MacOS/iPadOS app. The edge that Bitwig has got over Logic or Ableton is that its UX already embraces multi touch.

    As I am not an iOS developer I can not judge if this is a possible development. What do you think @NeonSilicon @SevenSystems ?

    Bitwig would be a natural for iOS. There are a couple of things that make me doubt them bringing it to the iPad soon. I could easily be out-of-date on this, but last I checked, they don't do AUv3 (or even v2) on the desktop version. They'd have to do that first before they could bring it to iOS. Not too hard, but they haven't seemed interested in the past. The second is that I really doubt if they've used any Apple GUI components. Maybe what they have used is available on iOS too? I'll poke around and see if I can see what they did use.

  • edited May 2021

    @NeonSilicon said:

    @krassmann said:
    Jeezus, I found something interesting. The upcoming Bitwig 4 will be native Apple Silicon
    https://cdm.link/2021/05/bitwig-studio-4-apple-silicon-m1/

    IMHO that makes Bitwig a strong candidate for being the first desktop DAW that runs on the iPad. If they have built it with Apple’s Mac Catalyst it might be not much work to make it a dual MacOS/iPadOS app. The edge that Bitwig has got over Logic or Ableton is that its UX already embraces multi touch.

    As I am not an iOS developer I can not judge if this is a possible development. What do you think @NeonSilicon @SevenSystems ?

    Bitwig would be a natural for iOS. There are a couple of things that make me doubt them bringing it to the iPad soon. I could easily be out-of-date on this, but last I checked, they don't do AUv3 (or even v2) on the desktop version. They'd have to do that first before they could bring it to iOS. Not too hard, but they haven't seemed interested in the past. The second is that I really doubt if they've used any Apple GUI components. Maybe what they have used is available on iOS too? I'll poke around and see if I can see what they did use.

    Really, so they just support VSTs? I missed that. I think you are right. Integrating a complete new plugin subsystem sounds like a lot of work.

    But I remember that it's written somewhere on their website that they have a scalable vector based UI, so it's true that it's not Apple GUI code but that sounds like they use their own cross platform UI library and that could be easily portable.

  • @krassmann said:

    @NeonSilicon said:

    @krassmann said:
    Jeezus, I found something interesting. The upcoming Bitwig 4 will be native Apple Silicon
    https://cdm.link/2021/05/bitwig-studio-4-apple-silicon-m1/

    IMHO that makes Bitwig a strong candidate for being the first desktop DAW that runs on the iPad. If they have built it with Apple’s Mac Catalyst it might be not much work to make it a dual MacOS/iPadOS app. The edge that Bitwig has got over Logic or Ableton is that its UX already embraces multi touch.

    As I am not an iOS developer I can not judge if this is a possible development. What do you think @NeonSilicon @SevenSystems ?

    Bitwig would be a natural for iOS. There are a couple of things that make me doubt them bringing it to the iPad soon. I could easily be out-of-date on this, but last I checked, they don't do AUv3 (or even v2) on the desktop version. They'd have to do that first before they could bring it to iOS. Not too hard, but they haven't seemed interested in the past. The second is that I really doubt if they've used any Apple GUI components. Maybe what they have used is available on iOS too? I'll poke around and see if I can see what they did use.

    Really, so they just support VSTs? I missed that. I think you are right. Integrating a complete new plugin subsystem sounds like a lot of work.

    But I remember that it's written somewhere on their website that they have a scalable vector based UI, so it's true that it's not Apple GUI code but that sounds like they use their own cross platform UI library and that could be easily portable.

    I downloaded it and poked around. Bitwig's UI is written in Java. So, that's going to make it very hard to port. One interesting thing about the way Bitwig is written is that it runs the plugins in a separate process. It's a good idea, but could cause issues in porting to iOS unless there are some changes coming up in iOS. You don't really need it with AUv3 anyway though since each AU is in its own process.

  • edited May 2021

    Does Bitwig do clip launching?.
    Whatever offers proper audio editing and clip launching + the ability to sync and integrate with the outside world (AUM).

    Edit: Bitwig does clip launching. Should have googled it first. The GRID in Bitwig looks really interesting. I vote Bitwig,

  • edited May 2021

    @NeonSilicon said:

    @krassmann said:

    @NeonSilicon said:

    @krassmann said:
    Jeezus, I found something interesting. The upcoming Bitwig 4 will be native Apple Silicon
    https://cdm.link/2021/05/bitwig-studio-4-apple-silicon-m1/

    IMHO that makes Bitwig a strong candidate for being the first desktop DAW that runs on the iPad. If they have built it with Apple’s Mac Catalyst it might be not much work to make it a dual MacOS/iPadOS app. The edge that Bitwig has got over Logic or Ableton is that its UX already embraces multi touch.

    As I am not an iOS developer I can not judge if this is a possible development. What do you think @NeonSilicon @SevenSystems ?

    Bitwig would be a natural for iOS. There are a couple of things that make me doubt them bringing it to the iPad soon. I could easily be out-of-date on this, but last I checked, they don't do AUv3 (or even v2) on the desktop version. They'd have to do that first before they could bring it to iOS. Not too hard, but they haven't seemed interested in the past. The second is that I really doubt if they've used any Apple GUI components. Maybe what they have used is available on iOS too? I'll poke around and see if I can see what they did use.

    Really, so they just support VSTs? I missed that. I think you are right. Integrating a complete new plugin subsystem sounds like a lot of work.

    But I remember that it's written somewhere on their website that they have a scalable vector based UI, so it's true that it's not Apple GUI code but that sounds like they use their own cross platform UI library and that could be easily portable.

    I downloaded it and poked around. Bitwig's UI is written in Java. So, that's going to make it very hard to port. One interesting thing about the way Bitwig is written is that it runs the plugins in a separate process. It's a good idea, but could cause issues in porting to iOS unless there are some changes coming up in iOS. You don't really need it with AUv3 anyway though since each AU is in its own process.

    Interesting choice. I'm a Java dev myself and I think it's a great software development ecosystem for server based applications, micro services running on Kubernetes and so forth but I wouldn't say it's a good idea for UIs. Because of the Java virtual machine (JVM) Java code is portable to other platforms without any code change but that has the price tag of the resources that the JVM consumes and it is not small. For instance it's hard to write a Java microservice that runs fine with max 256 MB RAM. Moreover if their UI library is vector based and draws the UI into an native canvas and I would say that could easily be done with C or C++, the same way as many games have got their game engine written in a high performance low level language and then the platform native part in a high level language that is common for each platforms.

  • @krassmann said:

    @NeonSilicon said:

    @krassmann said:

    @NeonSilicon said:

    @krassmann said:
    Jeezus, I found something interesting. The upcoming Bitwig 4 will be native Apple Silicon
    https://cdm.link/2021/05/bitwig-studio-4-apple-silicon-m1/

    IMHO that makes Bitwig a strong candidate for being the first desktop DAW that runs on the iPad. If they have built it with Apple’s Mac Catalyst it might be not much work to make it a dual MacOS/iPadOS app. The edge that Bitwig has got over Logic or Ableton is that its UX already embraces multi touch.

    As I am not an iOS developer I can not judge if this is a possible development. What do you think @NeonSilicon @SevenSystems ?

    Bitwig would be a natural for iOS. There are a couple of things that make me doubt them bringing it to the iPad soon. I could easily be out-of-date on this, but last I checked, they don't do AUv3 (or even v2) on the desktop version. They'd have to do that first before they could bring it to iOS. Not too hard, but they haven't seemed interested in the past. The second is that I really doubt if they've used any Apple GUI components. Maybe what they have used is available on iOS too? I'll poke around and see if I can see what they did use.

    Really, so they just support VSTs? I missed that. I think you are right. Integrating a complete new plugin subsystem sounds like a lot of work.

    But I remember that it's written somewhere on their website that they have a scalable vector based UI, so it's true that it's not Apple GUI code but that sounds like they use their own cross platform UI library and that could be easily portable.

    I downloaded it and poked around. Bitwig's UI is written in Java. So, that's going to make it very hard to port. One interesting thing about the way Bitwig is written is that it runs the plugins in a separate process. It's a good idea, but could cause issues in porting to iOS unless there are some changes coming up in iOS. You don't really need it with AUv3 anyway though since each AU is in its own process.

    Interesting choice. I'm a Java dev myself and I think it's a great software development ecosystem for server based applications, micro services running on Kubernetes and so forth but I wouldn't say it's a good idea for UIs. Because of the Java virtual machine (JVM) Java code is portable to other platforms without any code change but that has the price tag of the resources that the JVM consumes and it is not small. For instance it's hard to write a Java microservice that runs fine with max 256 MB RAM. Moreover if their UI library is vector based and draws the UI into an native canvas and I would say that could easily be done with C or C++, the same way as many games have got their game engine written in a high performance low level language and then the platform native part in a high level language that is common for each platforms.

    Yeah, I agree. They did start it back in 2009 when Java still had more push behind it as a client side/GUI dev solution. But, GUI dev in Java hasn't aged well.

    From the included JNI libs, it looks like they are using Cairo for the vector UI work. It seems like they could pull all that out into some other cross platform toolkit like GTK or Qt. Probably would take a bunch of work though. I wouldn't expect it soon if they did do it since they just did the major version release and I'd expect that they plan on sticking with that architecture for a while.

  • @krassmann you should prank them somehow. toilet paper abletons building and leave a note "you suck ableton!!" - signed bitwig

  • @shinyisshiny said:
    @krassmann you should prank them somehow. toilet paper abletons building and leave a note "you suck ableton!!" - signed bitwig

    🤣

  • You know there are Ableton employees on this forum yes? 😉

  • @Tarekith said:
    You know there are Ableton employees on this forum yes? 😉

    you such ableton!!

  • Bitwig 4

  • edited June 2021

    @RajahP said:
    Bitwig 4

    Looks great!!! I so much hope for it on the iPad.

    LOL, note Ableton Live on the dock of his Mac 😅

  • @krassmann said:

    @RajahP said:
    Bitwig 4

    Looks great!!! I so much hope for it on the iPad.

    LOL, note Ableton Live on the dock of his Mac 😅

    The conditional-triggers.. sets this apart…

  • Taking
    .
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    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    Forever
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    to........
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    ...download :neutral:

  • @NeonSilicon said:

    @krassmann said:

    @NeonSilicon said:

    @krassmann said:

    @NeonSilicon said:

    @krassmann said:
    Jeezus, I found something interesting. The upcoming Bitwig 4 will be native Apple Silicon
    https://cdm.link/2021/05/bitwig-studio-4-apple-silicon-m1/

    IMHO that makes Bitwig a strong candidate for being the first desktop DAW that runs on the iPad. If they have built it with Apple’s Mac Catalyst it might be not much work to make it a dual MacOS/iPadOS app. The edge that Bitwig has got over Logic or Ableton is that its UX already embraces multi touch.

    As I am not an iOS developer I can not judge if this is a possible development. What do you think @NeonSilicon @SevenSystems ?

    Bitwig would be a natural for iOS. There are a couple of things that make me doubt them bringing it to the iPad soon. I could easily be out-of-date on this, but last I checked, they don't do AUv3 (or even v2) on the desktop version. They'd have to do that first before they could bring it to iOS. Not too hard, but they haven't seemed interested in the past. The second is that I really doubt if they've used any Apple GUI components. Maybe what they have used is available on iOS too? I'll poke around and see if I can see what they did use.

    Really, so they just support VSTs? I missed that. I think you are right. Integrating a complete new plugin subsystem sounds like a lot of work.

    But I remember that it's written somewhere on their website that they have a scalable vector based UI, so it's true that it's not Apple GUI code but that sounds like they use their own cross platform UI library and that could be easily portable.

    I downloaded it and poked around. Bitwig's UI is written in Java. So, that's going to make it very hard to port. One interesting thing about the way Bitwig is written is that it runs the plugins in a separate process. It's a good idea, but could cause issues in porting to iOS unless there are some changes coming up in iOS. You don't really need it with AUv3 anyway though since each AU is in its own process.

    Interesting choice. I'm a Java dev myself and I think it's a great software development ecosystem for server based applications, micro services running on Kubernetes and so forth but I wouldn't say it's a good idea for UIs. Because of the Java virtual machine (JVM) Java code is portable to other platforms without any code change but that has the price tag of the resources that the JVM consumes and it is not small. For instance it's hard to write a Java microservice that runs fine with max 256 MB RAM. Moreover if their UI library is vector based and draws the UI into an native canvas and I would say that could easily be done with C or C++, the same way as many games have got their game engine written in a high performance low level language and then the platform native part in a high level language that is common for each platforms.

    Yeah, I agree. They did start it back in 2009 when Java still had more push behind it as a client side/GUI dev solution. But, GUI dev in Java hasn't aged well.

    From the included JNI libs, it looks like they are using Cairo for the vector UI work. It seems like they could pull all that out into some other cross platform toolkit like GTK or Qt. Probably would take a bunch of work though. I wouldn't expect it soon if they did do it since they just did the major version release and I'd expect that they plan on sticking with that architecture for a while.

    I'm considering to get a Windows tablet to run bitwig. iOS is still a fairly limited OS and its place in my workflow is mainly in the creative phase.
    What I miss the most is a number of great Kontakt libraries with all the scripting and effects.
    Two features of bitwig sound quite exciting to me: Touch operation and the modular synth.

  • edited July 2021

    @rs2000 I remember forum members writing that the performance of a windows tablet with Bitwig was disappointing. Probably due to the tablet’s hardware. I know that the well known techno producer Stimming created his new studio rig using Bitwig on a windows desktop with a touch monitor and is pleased with that setup. He also migrated to an audio-over-ethernet solution.

    https://djtechtools.com/2021/06/18/interview-stimming-on-his-new-album-pigeons-straying-from-functionality/

    From 33:10

  • Thanks @krassmann, that's interesting information 👍🏻
    Maybe I'll just stay with Ableton in zoomed UI mode because I know it's very CPU efficient, but luckily there's a bitwig demo version to try.

  • @rs2000 said:
    Thanks @krassmann, that's interesting information 👍🏻
    Maybe I'll just stay with Ableton in zoomed UI mode because I know it's very CPU efficient, but luckily there's a bitwig demo version to try.

    The first iteration of bitwig touch capability was specifically aimed at the Surface pro (3 at the time)…still smooth as one could hope on that device (I have the i7 of that era). Likely smooth(er) on the newer machines.

  • edited July 2021

    For some reason I could never got on with touch controlling Bitwig felt clunky and was always reaching for the mouse. It was a good try by the company, I just felt the GUI was to complex for touch or pen control on my old surface 3. Ended up with a MBP and logic as was missing the keyboard. Zenbeats is probably the best touch experience I had for a DAW on a laptop.

    Let's face it desktop DAWs verses ios DAWs are so much more complex beasts so you expect a lot more menu diving to do to get the most out of them.

    That's the real reason we never see Ableton Live or Bitwig or Studio One come to ipad there just different beasts compared to Cubasis or BM3 or Auria Pro.

    Oh and the pricepoint wouldn't suit the casual user.

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