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
I have to travel to work each day like many. ios music on my ipad is amazing for being mobile. Also the touch interface is a really great way to interact with parameters. Midi generators and samplers seems to be my focus on ios as many are unique and are more interesting to interact with than on a PC. As far as production goes its not close to ableton or bitwig on my PC. Synthwise I much prefer analogue gear in most cases (This is limited by finances) and I love playing piano and real guitar/bass.
So my iPad is wonderful mobile yet integrated extension of a traditional PC DAW with hardware set up. What made this all possible was the ICA4+, the most important audio device I ever bought and allows my iPad to work seamlessly with my other gear.
@Carnbot I have the PC12 and honestly, I really like it, very robust. (don't know about previous models...)
First time I hear about it the Electra ! Thanks
Personally I don't like infinite encoders that much for live playing, but looks great anyway
@Svetlovska enjoy !
I'd say almost...
Sometimes I'm just too lazy and prefer to just sit with the iPad and noodle.
The opposite is also true, my MicroFreak and Volca Bass are nice to play with.
I do have a few more but they are honestly not that 'inspiring'(UNOSynth being one of them. I always get frustrated when I can't access all the parameters without the editor, like WTF!).
I know that more 'hardware' will not cure my creative blocks and the Korg NTS-1 will probably be the last piece of hardware I'll get since I lack decent hardware FX unit to process audio prior to sampling it.
And these days I look more forward to new apps rather than hardware.
(Bit Boy Studio from Sidtracker 64 developer is next one I'll drool over not to mention the new Korg app and the new synth from AudioDamage).
But yeah, I prefer to keep thing instantly available and for that nothing beats the iPad
Absolutely not. I find my hardware more immediate than the iPad, when I switch on I know exactly what I'm going to use and pretty much how I'm going to use it.
The iPad rekindled my interest in music technology, and I've bought WAY too many apps. Recently, I picked up an OP-1, and I love its mixture of limitations and inspiring design. Every time I twist a knob on that think, I feel like I'm learning something new. Having a piece of hardware dedicated purely to making music has changed my use of the iPad. I'm now thinking of it as a more of sound source and effects unit.
I made more music on my iPad2 when audiobus first appeared (and with Nanostudio and gadget) than I do now. I think I need the limitations, and am more creative when constrained by them. I'm thinking of adding a Synthstrom Deluge to the mix next.
In a roundabout way, making music on an iPad brought me back to hardware.
Interesting - hardware seems to be my weekend thing. I'm just too tired to go into the studio most nights after work. I can sit with the family, not be lonely and still make music on the iPad. Not to mention, the stuff that is landing on my ipad is just so friggin' exciting these days.
Not so much that hardware is "ruined". It just isn't my preferred approach any more. iPad is all about immediacy. I don't have to think twice and I can be making music. With hardware - I have to be where it is. That was fun back in the day, shutting myself up in my music room surrounded by my toys. But now I'd rather be sitting on the couch with my family with a great percentage of the capability I had in the old music room right in my lap. Wouldn't go back unless someone was handing me large wads of cash which ain't going to happen any more.
Ditto, I'm ten times more productive with hardware than with iOS devices, even though I enjoy using them both a lot. The only advantage iOS has for me is portability, nothing beats being able to to just grab my phone and some headphones and music music for hours anywhere.
The right midi controller/app combinations, an expensive dongle, USB hub, USB battery and a bit of setup and save Audiobus preset time is all that's required to have a seriously powerful iOS environment with hardware control over almost everything.
Hardware - Software, If it is of use, what difference does it make.
Maybe the user experience regarding real vs. virtual?
Isn’t that the point of the thread?
Maybe convenience vs. power/features?
Or simplicity vs. complexity?
Did you not read the other replies?
😉
Too many apps, or not enough hardware?
Hardware does limit you to the few options you own, and that does help being productive.
But choices and options aren’t bad, just not helping stay focused.
I always know what guitar FX pedals I will use, since I only own a handful.
But ToneStack is easy to get lost in, while getting nothing done production-wise.
I see your point here.
I may have too many things to play with, so I spend most of my time playing/exploring rather than working/producing.
But it is a hell of a good time.
Same. I sample the iPad, and use it as a synth engine controlled by my Digitakt. And recently it’s also the destination for hardware-created patterns. BeatMaker 3 is amazing for assembling all these parts, but I have a feeling I’ll end up in GarageBand or Logic, as usual.
Definitely hasn’t ruined hardware for me, They both compliment each other a lot, I’m always going to use my MPC , I use the IPad on its own and as a sound module for my hardware.
Really, I think it was Virtual Synths that ruined hardware for me around the turn of the century.
VAZ Modular and ReBirth gave me the ability to work with these types of synths for the first time ever. Before that, I had a Juno 60, and messed around with a borrowed Prophet 5, and that was it for my early synth experience.
Virtual Synths on a cheap PC opened this whole Electronic music world for me, and now the iPad continues to introduce me to new things constantly.
Yes, however, what I find is that the relatively small cost compared to hardware, is that apps often have a small attention span. If I had bought an hardware equivalant I would spend far longer getting know every last inch of the machine, whilst the app if you don’t get it after a few visits then it is left to rot on your Ipad.
Yeah, opposite for me. With hardware, I just focus on playing. Even if I'm using the iPad to record it, I know I've got a task I want to do because I have a heavy guitar on me or a heavy synth in front of me. I've gravitated back to hardware to the point of buying guitar pedals again just because I've gotten so sick of setting up projects in apeMatrix or Auria (menu diving for instruments, adding effects [menu diving], the screen switching while tweaking effects, the glut of choices [indecision/distraction] when you're not quite sure of a direction, the hassle of routing MIDI to proper channels over and over again....). All small tasks, but they add up, and the dread of doing it again and again fatigued me to the point where I was playing less and less with each passing week.
I’ve very much lost interest in hardware except for “that one” bit of hardware which one day will be the only one I sit in front of and master. Whatever that one is. I don’t think there is one. The Circuit wasn’t it, despite the superb wavetable synth engines, I can’t tell wtf is going on due to the lack of labelling.
Funnily enough I'm currently (on youtube) watching a lot of videos between these two units: Korg Volca Modular; Pittsburgh Modular Lifeforms Voltage Research Laboratory. Now, they're fairly similar in many ways, even down to the price (if you ignore one of the zeros on the latter unit), and yet I can’t help thinking that in all those demo videos or interminable aimless noodles, I've never, not once, ever heard anything remotely ‘nice’ from a Korg Volca Modular that I could actually use in a song (as opposed to film sound fx of the demented kind), whereas almost everything the Pittsburgh Modular Lifeforms Voltage Research Laboratory emits is quite pleasant and upliftingly interesting, of the kind that I could use in a song.
And yet I know I'll just stick to Gadget and the usual group of Odyssey, MS20, Wavestation gadgets. That’ll do me for the rest of my life I predict.
Apple devices are hardware (that runs customisable software). I don’t feel any differently about them than I do about any other hardware.
Last nights concert:
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Looks good!
Any tipps for using BM3 live reliably?
I have gone back and forward between the two of them, and am currently back in the iOS camp especially now that Pure Acid is on the go. There is one piece of hardware that I will never be without though and that is my Korg Kaoss Pads.
Yeah just don’t listen to the bad press it gets here and enjoy making music
— This is a good discussion board but most of the discussion is fuelled by capitalism or favouritism rather than creativity.
Real talk — most of crash inducing bugs in BM3 come from the timeline (definitely run into a few of them myself) so if you’re using it live then you really have nothing to worry about. I’ve probably done more than 100 performances with BM3 as my primary host at this point (complex and demanding setups too) and I’ve never had a single issue with BM3 stability. I’ve had issues with pretty much every other app but BM3 has been the singular rock that has never failed!
That bad press seems to have died waaay down since the last update. Dayum all that midi sync must be keeping the dull roar busy.
Yah it often does just shake down to that. The thing with creative approaches or vibes is it is more ephemeral and difficult to visualize and understand if someone isn't sharing audio/video. It bleeds into subjective taste territory a lot more too which tends to lose people.
Hey, that's great information, so in other words, as long as using (looped) pattern clips in "session view" things work great for you?
Haha. I loved that update too! BM3 syncs perfectly with AB3 using MIDI clock, so I can sync my devices using wires and WiFi off!
I don’t sequence anything in BM3 itself, I just use it as an AU/sampler host, audio routing, mixer etc.
Interesting; so what do you use for sequencing?
Well both IOS and desktops have totally influenced my approach to hardware. I’ve been collecting hardware synths since 1978 and at the present have literally 25 hardware synths all collecting dust since I got these iPad Pro’s (and desktop VST’s before them) I’m finding these iPads very unhealthy, my physical health has taken a big dive because of em, now days I can literally lay in bed all day .. day after day .. composing and producing my music .. only to get up to eat, take care of personal hygiene, and check my mixes in my big studio monitors. I was much healthier in the hardware days 🙄
Probably/not sure.
Shockwave has made me rethink buying a soma lyra, even though its not the same as a lyra, yet makes me want a real synth. Just think its not as routable as shockwave.
Sugarbytes drum machine might make me sell volca drum and volca modular. Def volca drum, although the drum is more useful than volca modular.
A Haskell based pattern syntax called TidalCycles. Here’s a clip from that concert:
