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
Didn’t see these posted in this thread yet... interesting demos, screen capture. (Not mine).
Couple of other ones on his YT channel, not sure if active here? Anyway, good job. Thanks!
Great sound. Didnt realise it sounded so nice. Only checked Jacobs sequences.
The synth sound does actually suit Purple.
Beta 1.0.2 corrected everything
@ka010
Confirmed also. Had this before and wanted to try again.
Same device, same OS version
It took awhile, but this one is has started to grow on me once I dug in. The key has been learning to exploit the modulations and the different ways of triggering things such as envelopes. It’s taken this in a whole unexpected and unique direction for me.
At first I was really wondering what the excitement is about. I mean, for just plain ol’ synth type patches it’s really simplistic, mono, and well, somewhat mediocre. I can see a lot of people dismissing this. I don’t think I’d recommend it for casual users. Thankfully, seeing the enthusiasm of people who “get it” inspired me to figure out what is unique about it.
So now, instead of yet another synth in the pile of things that do roughly the same thing on my device, I have something unique and useful in ways I didn’t expect.
Thanks Jakob and AB Forum people!
I do wish the AU version had the keyboard though. I know hosts are meant to supply the keyboard for AUs, but the keyboard in this, like Animoog and Volt, is unique.
Unless I missed some way to bring the keyboard up?
No, but do you have his kB-1 keyboard?
It took me a bit in beta to “get it”. Once I did, it just keeps revealing more possibility.
I tend to have a bit too short of an attention span with apps. The ones I really like can hold my attention for a good month.
This one has held my attention throughout development for several months and hasn’t waned a bit even now. I sort of approach it less like the synth demoed in Jacob’s video, and more like its own modular environment that can easily interplay with lots of external apps too.
Sure, but then I have to do window juggling. I try to avoid that when designing sounds.
It’s not a must have, but would be nice.
Most of the time I use it in standalone mode with the keyboard. Once I get a sound and/or sequence generation I like, I save the custom preset then bring it into apeMatrix to connect it up with more instances and/or effects.
Yeh, that’s not how I roll. When I design a sound it’s usually in the context of a piece of music I’m working on. Sometimes it’s the catalyst for that piece, the piece is the catalyst, more often it’s interactive.
This is exactly how I work. I’ve never seen anyone else mention doing things this way!
It's simply time for AU to offer a full screen experience - otherwise it can never replace IAA
It does have a full screen experience. Not totally full screen, but close enough for my purposes. I’d rather trade just a little screen real-estate for easy access to the host than have the equivalent of app switching. Apps like AudioBus and NS2 get this right IMO. I think AUM sacrifices too much by things like always adding a title bar to each window, and covering up the tempo adjuster when it could be placed differently to always be available.
I actually think ShockWave gets this very much right. It adjusts down sensibly when not full screen, allows optional scrolling (that can be disabled) with two fingers, and gives buttons always available to switch between compact views in either mode. My only preference would be a small scroll bar on the rather than two finger scrolling, but that’s not a biggie.
As mentioned earlier though, I’d like to see the in-app keyboard available in the AU.
Okie doke.
Wasn’t suggesting you change how you work. Just saying that the way I personally use Shockwave doesn’t really require a keyboard in the AU version.
Run it by the dev. He’s pretty skilled with interface design & magic. Maybe he’ll share your desire for the keyboard in AU if it can be squeezed in.
Glad you’re enjoying Shockwave and that it’s opening up for you though.
That was what I meant, the "regular full screen" experience, of course including the keyboard.
AU needs to offer such an experience to be able to replace IAA finally.
I think this may not possible right now... and fear it never will be possible.
And yes, I also don't like this two finger scrolling.
Sure it’s possible. It’s just a design decision to leave the keyboard out. On one hand it makes sense to leave the keyboard duties to the host since it’s redundant to have in both. On the other, some apps have unique features in their keyboards, whereas hosts are (sadly) usually pretty basic. In that case I think they should be included.
Sunriser is an example of an AU with full-screen experience that includes a keyboard. It can definitely be done if the developer feels it should be.
Hey, no, I was just explaining. I didn’t take it as trying to change my mind.
I will contact the developer. I thought I’d toss it out here first to see if anyone else felt the same, to see if there was any potential interest. Feedback like yours was exactly what I was looking for, so thanks for that.
-cheers!
The modulation is ace, I love being able to click a pot and assign modulation - using the sequencer to modulate brightness for example, works really well.
Re. keyboard, I can understand the request, but since Kai provides a great keyboard AU, as mentioned, isn't it a good trade-off not to add a keyboard to every one of his AU instruments?
I don't think Sunrizer AU's UI is a good example. It was not AU for the longest time and then when it went AU (thanks!) the dev just copied the old UI and added scrolling instead of making it scale to the frame. Similar to a SugarBytes port, I might add... On my iPad, I have to scroll up to find the edge of the keyboard. In fact, the keyboard pictured above is cropped at the bottom.
MPE!
Couldnt really setip velocity keyboard tbh.
This is great.
This honestly isn’t that interesting or important to me. But for the sake of my logical side ... but why take it out if it’s already there in the standalone? If the other app argument was the reason then you’d take it out of the standalone as well.
And Sunrizer is a good example in my mind because it was there, and there was no reason to take it out though they could have. Anyhow, I didn’t bring up Sunrizer as an example of why the keyboard should be there. I brought it up to show @tja that full-screen “experience” is indeed possible, as he wasn’t sure that it could be done. Different discussion.
Last post on this subject for me. The subject is too trivial to expend more thought on.
Of course it's possible. It just doesn't make sense to replicate functionality which is also offered by the host - most of the time.
This is f’ing dope with Pure Acid, Noir, and Future Drummer
I see your point and it's a good one, but I feel there is something more to what @wim was saying. In my understanding, for some workflows, it conversely feels as though the host is replicating functionality also offered by the AU app (hidden in its standalone form).
There were two arguments made here:
When looking at from the perspective of both arguments, I feel like it makes sense to offer the option of showing native keyboard within AU apps window. Quite alike what Shockwave already does wIth the sequencer, weather it's with a button, scrolling, sidebar, what have you. A number of apps already do this, like: Magelan (though they do it inversely, keys are there by default, and you can opt to exchange them for their expert mode), Neo Soul Keys, Synthmaster One, etc..
And this (offering said option) would take care of the third aspect of this, and in my opinion most important. Music, making it or enjoying it, is not just an auditory experience:
This becomes especially the apparent when the keys are well thought out from a UI and/or UX perspective, as is the case in the aforementioned apps.
It is not by accident that this option (keyboard within AU app) is currently offered mostly on keyboard specific apps. Try switching your playing of Neo Soul between the native and AUM keyboard for example, and you will understand very quickly what it's about.
And when thinking that leaving the keyboard in, is very close in work to cutting it out, maybe such an option truly does makes sense.
(And this brings me to What's truly bewildering my brain at the moment: why the hell does iMS-20 have two keyboards inside the app? :-))
In fact, at least for me, Jacob’s patches are very far from the real capabilities of Shockwave.
Any suggestions where I could find/import some pathces? Still coming to grips of how to effectively d esign them :-).
As a UX designer myself, I fully agree with everything you said here. That's why I added "most of the time" to my statement. For bread-and-butter synths the host keyboard is fine, but nothing in the AU standard makes it impossible for a plugin to bring its own controls should the concept ask for it.
Apple also acknowledged this, by making full-screen AUs possible (originally all AUv3 had the infamous letterbox dimensions to give the host sufficient space to add keyboards and pads) and adding plugin support for MIDI-out from internal keyboards.
I was mostly responding to the suggestion that AUv3 was not able to fully replicate the full IAA experience. It (technically) can, and it also solves a lot of the traditional hassles of IAA apps by standardizing things like tempo sync, transport control, state saving and MIDI configuration, etc.
So to say that "it never will be possible" is a pretty strange statement as several plugins out there already do this (e.g. Model 15).
I made a patch thing. The Lost Mermaid. I actually like it apart from being a bit ear piercing at times. Cant replicate performance so it is what it is. Might just EQ it at the end. Obviously it might just be amatuer enthusiasm. Was made from an init patch though using the sequencer and no mpe or keys but listening to jacobs patches, you can sort of hear some similarities, which may define its overall character.