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.
Standalone or AUM AUv3?
Hi all. I’m running 5 large apps all as AUv3’s in AUM, but they all can also be used standalone and controlled individually via the wonderful ‘midiflow’. Does anyone know what is better for resource headroom on my iPad pro - stand-alones or AUv3’s?
Comments
Audio units seem to have memory limitation. I’m curious though if using them as apps can utilize more than one core for processing. I’ve heard that audio is limited to a single core and so the Pro is not much better than the plain iPad for audio purposes.
This is purely from my personal guessing about iOS. I’m sure someone will come along and correct me, which I appreciate in advance.
It depends. Probably AUv3 is most efficient. What are the apps?
With 5 apps there are lots of variables. Could be that one misbehaves a bit as an auv3 or maybe has issues as standalone when run in the background. And different combinations of apps might yield different results. Only way to know for sure is to try it on your own device.
Personally I’d stick with auv3 and only worry about standalone if I was running into issues.
I heard somewhere that AUv3 has memory limits, so wondered if I’d get more headroom as standalone. Currently Ravenscroft or PSP2 will occasionally crash in AUM do too memory (I think). No problems if I run one app less.
My apps are;
Ravencroft 275 - sample based?
Neo Soul Sudio 2 - sample based
KQ Dixie - i think is tiny prog?
B-3X- sample and modelling
Pure Synth Platinum 2 - sample and modelling?
As a general rule I feel that on modern devices the difference in overhead is negligible, so go with what's most convenient for you. You can ignore the memory limits if you're on today's iOS.
A clunky workflow is more hampering than anything else in my experience.
As someone with a clunky workflow, do you have any tips or recommendations?
A lot of these apps are very resource hungry. Unless you have a high end iPad, you might have trouble running them all at the same time. I would make sure you have nothing else running in the background and you might want to try to freeze some of your tracks or disconnect some of the apps from the host once you’ve captured what you need. 🙂
If you don’t need multiple instances of the same instrument AU doesn’t add anything.
State saving, sync, easy midi routing, au parameters. Etc.
I use Audiobus, AUM and AudioShare combination. Haven’t tried any of the DAW type things for years.
I’m not anti AU, just yet to notice any big difference compared to IAA. Everything gets saved here despite my best efforts to lose things.
Great job on Mononoke @brambos
It’s been getting a lot of use here already!
IAA doesn't save states. If you have them as AUv3 in a host you can save patches and parameters within a project with IAA you can't. If you are working on multiple projects at a time that's a big deal
Must be Audiobus state saving in action then. I don’t think about the app format, just use what I like. Yet to have issues.
Anyway use AU always is the best advice (I think)
I play them live with AUM via two keyboards on a 2018 iPad pro 12’ 512Gb. No Daw.
Most of the time it's ok, but think its right on the edge, as the occasional patch change in PSP2 will crash it or Ravenscroft.