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 Store

Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

Making 'full' tunes on an iDevice... (Too long) thoughts and ramblings

This is going to get rambly. And Long. I make no apologies. Stop reading now if you want something cogent.

I'm at home looking after three kids, two of whom are under 5. It's more of a full time job than my full time job is. Lockdown for me means I literally don't get more than 2 mins at a time without interruption. My wife is a nurse working on the wards and would quite like to find all three children in one piece when she comes home. That's easier said than done! If you're sticking with me please bear that in mind; If I post this it will possibly make little sense but I think I need to get this out to give me something unimportant to fret over for a bit.

So, er, Yeah. I've been using iOS devices to make music on since the iPad 2 came out. One of my first (and still favourite) 'proper' apps was iElectribe and I've had a lot of fun makes noises on iOS ever since.

Anyway, to cut to the case, one thing I've never really wanted to do in all this time is make a full tune on iOS. That's what Logic is for. But in the past year or so I thought I'd give it a go as I find it very hard to find the time to make tunes the way I used to and using an iPad on the sofa whilst my wife watches 'Call the midwife' is the only chance I get these days!

I've tried lots of apps and have had lots of failures. I thought I'd detail my thoughts here. Everything that follows is subjective. Apps that I find to be unusable might be your go to apps. That doesn't make me wrong, so if you want to argue please just start another thread saying how lovely your favourite app is instead and I promise not to gate-crash.

A bit of background; I have been making music alone and in bands since the late 80's. I've used Macs to sequence since the Mac II was king of the hill and started with Opcode EZ Vision. I quickly switched to Logic from Opcode when Logic was the only sequencer that would speak MTC to my Fostex R8 reel to reel. Sequencers were very much MIDI only in those days.

I've used Logic ever since and watched it morph from the ugliest piece of software ever to grace my Mac to where it is today. I've used Opcode Vision, MOTU Performer (and later Digital Performer), Reason and Logic to make 'proper' full tracks and liked using all of those sequencers. I know my way around an amateur recording studio. I've never had a record deal or released any commercial music, but that never stopped me enjoying making music and songs.

I mostly use iOS as a song scratchpad and to make loops; especially drum loops. I like to use BlocsWave to put my song ideas down and the immediacy of that app is just fantastic. I have made some tracks that have morphed from my original idea and BW is a big factor in that. I mostly use Blocs on my iPhone and it's stuffed to the gills with little loops and stems.

To get back on track, I had an idea that I'd try and make a tune and sequence and arrange it predominately in iOS. I'm not bothered about mastering or mixing on the iPad at this stage, I just wanted a 'completed' song for demo/fun purposes.

I tried the following DAW-type linear sequencing apps on my iPad to create a full tracks:

GarageBand, Auria Pro, NanoStudio 2.

I wanted to sequence as much of it as possible on the iPad. Here's how it went.

Auria Pro

Wow. Where to start. I like most vegetable but can't eat Cauliflower. I hate cauliflower with a vengance. AP is Cauliflower in app form.

It does everything I want it to but I dislike almost everything about the way it goes about things.

I did persevere for a bit but ran into too many hiccups and crashes and completely gave up. This cost me a good couple of months of time.

A couple of factors:

The MIDI side of AP is just wrong. Made by somebody with a brain wired differently to mine that's for sure.

AP on paper has it all. It can do unique-to-iOS-things lie select multiple regions easily, it has aux tracks. It should be great.

But the worst thing is it fights me at every turn. Literally everything I try in AP won't work the way I think it should. I hate having to long-press regions or notes to edit them. Long-presses make everything feel like you're wading through treacle. So slow. So tedious. The final nail in the coffin was discovering that you can't even record MIDI in loop mode. I have decades of muscle memory that require me to be able to do that. It's like buying a guitar and finding out you can't strum it.
Garageband

This works OK. But compared to Logic, the arranging of regions feels incredibly limited.

On Logic I can whizz around and insert/cut time, move chunks around, edit regions with scalpel precious all things that require long and tedious work arounds in GB. I don't mind doing things completely differently (for example, I really like using AUM with modular sequencers, and BlocsWave which are both totally different to how I'm used to working. I'm not a complete dinosaur!).

it's fine if you already have a fixed structure, but not fun at all when you want to arrange on the go.

Simple things like not being able to select multiple regions as you would on Logic/Desktop with the shift key make life way too tricky. This is my favourite feature of AP that other DAWs should steal borrow.

But for some tasks it's OK and I could get stuff done but it's main benefit is being able to transfer projects to Logic really easily.

The lack of aux tracks is a bit of a pain, especially with limited resources on my iPad. I like to use reverbs and delays as sends. Again, habits of a lifetime. I like the way sharing reverb and delays helps glue a mix together and gives a sense of everything playing together.

However, Liveloops are great. Not as good as BlocsWave as you have to make sure the loops are already in time/pitch but if they are it's a great way to arrange. Hit record, jam your arrangement and bingo. The timeline is just as you wanted it and easy to edit the odd region afterwards. Arranging in this way makes GB feel different and much nicer than arranging in the main timeline.

But Logic's arrange window is so much better it's not even close.

It's OK to make a full track in, no doubt, but not so good if you are still in the process of moulding the arrangement. Lack of Auxes is a pain but I can usually live with that, especially if the final mixing is going to happen in Logic as the aux track fx would all be replaced anyway.

NS2

This is a tale of two apps.

NS2 on my iPad Air 2 sucks badly. It's basically totally broken unless I only use stock plug-ins, which I'm too stubborn to do (I don't really care for them -- obsidian may be great but it doesn't float my boat). It handles potentially misbehaving auv3s or memory leaks, whatever it is, really badly and ends up in a state that any file related commands totally fails. Which means no saving, exporting, mix downs, etc. And as the same project auto loads, the only way to be ever able to use NS2 on the iPad again is to go into the files app and delete the offending project.

Really, really poor experience for me. Unusable for a full track. Totally. (on the iPad Air 2, newer iPads are undoubtedly a completely different experience. I know this. Please don't tell me! :-)

But when it came out as a universal app I gave it another shot.

On the iPhone it's a completely different experience. Once I managed to get a project transferred to my iPhone from my iPad (which required me deleting every auv3 fx plug-in from my iPad to even allow me to archive and share the project) I was very quickly able to get into the nitty gritty of actually making a track.

Turns out after all the iPad failures, making a full track on my iPhone 11 was a walk in the park.

One reason for this is that it's just so much more powerful than my ageing iPad Air 2. I'm sure I'd have very different experiences on a more modern iPad. But I actually quite enjoyed making and sequencing my song on my iPhone.

It enabled me to work on it (wearing Apple AirBuds --- the best Apple product I've had in years!) whenever I had a spare 5 minutes, in places and times I couldn't really use my iPad (For example, much of the time I've spent on the tune in the last few days was outside watching the kids trying to kill themselves on scooters in my tiny courtyard garden) when I didn't have an iPad handy even.

And the restrictions of a tiny screen actually help me in a funny kind of way. Things that feel clumsy on the iPad are forgivable on the iPhone due to the form factor.

NS2 on my iPad is totally unusable. Literally. It's broken if I use practically any third party auv3s.

On my iPhone it's really good. And fun to use. The attention to detail in the interface is in stark comparison to Auria Pro. My guess is that NS2 and Auria Pro are like emagic versus Steinberg back in the day. If you loved one you pretty much hated the other. And vice versa. In fact I'm pretty sure there was a clause in the emagic Notator Logic v1.1 EULA that prohibited you from ever using Cubase. True Story.

The tune isn't great. But it fitted my requirements perfectly. It's not properly mixed or mastered but it doesn't need to be. It gave me an indication of how much horsepower the iPhone 11 has and how much I could get done on it. Even without proper audio tracks (I used Slate to trigger loops in this example).

I'm not going to ditch Logic or the Mac anytime soon, Logic is leagues above any iOS DAW in terms of usability and pure speed, but the iPhone is so much more immediate and accessible that it is becoming my main music computer.

The iPad Air 2 is just not up to the job. I gave it a good go, but it's going to be consigned to less demanding roles in the future. The iPhone 11 is so much more powerful it's not even close. I'm going to be using the iPad as a hardware fx unit for my hardware stuff in the future; It handles that task with ease. It's also really good as a standalone groove box type thing, either with a roll-your-own AUM setup or just with iElectribe of iMS20 in standalone mode.

Apple's rate of improvement is obviously going to slow, but the iPhone has pretty much handled everything I've thrown at it so far bar the odd temporary glitch (NS2 even handles temporary CPU overloads much better on the iPhone than the iPad) but the rate of progress from the A7 to the A13 is frankly astonishing.

I look forward to NS2 getting audio tracks... That'll take it even further in front IMVHO.

TDLR: I made a 'full' track in NS2 on my iPhone. The track isn't very good but I enjoyed making it :-)

I can detail how I made my track (and post the frankly not very good track itself) if anybody is interested?

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Comments

  • Thanks for sharing. I've read it all (I have time?)

    I'm still undecided: Mac or iPad - both?

    Please, post that track :smile:

  • @Monome said:
    Thanks for sharing. I've read it all (I have time?)

    I'm still undecided: Mac or iPad - both?

    Please, post that track :smile:

    Mac is essential for me. If I could only have one it would be the Mac.

    But it really depends on what you want to do.

  • edited April 2020

    I also ended up with NS 2... for now. Imo it's the best linear DAW UI for iPad OS. Still headroom of course but I also keep coming back to NS 2 to work in track format on my iPads.

    But I think these devices are just not made for the classical linear daw approach. When I think about it, it feels to me like the glass is between me and those DAWs.

    I also use Logic on an iMac to make things real. Just by using a keyboard, a lot of custom shortcuts and a magic trackpad it's like I can get behind the regions and work with surgical instruments in atomic dimensions. Even on a MacBook pro 13".

    On the iPad I always kind of bounce off. Too much lack of precision, little handy helpers, smart tools for arrangement...

    But hey, it is just another universe where gravity works in a different way. And I am glad to live in both worlds.

  • I’m sold on NS2 - my MacBook is on its last legs and I just can’t wait for things to load or process anymore than I can afford a new MacBook - so NS2 is a lifesaver. I’m getting tracks done, albeit with some problems. I’m on an iPhone 6s which isn’t the best for handling more than a few external audio units. There are a few grumbles relating to sample work but like everyone else I’m waiting for the audio tracks update. Was thinking of updating iPhone but I’m stopped by the lack of headphone jack. I’ll probably bite the bullet pretty soon though!

  • edited April 2020

    @KRPT said:
    I’m sold on NS2 - my MacBook is on its last legs and I just can’t wait for things to load or process anymore than I can afford a new MacBook - so NS2 is a lifesaver. I’m getting tracks done, albeit with some problems. I’m on an iPhone 6s which isn’t the best for handling more than a few external audio units. There are a few grumbles relating to sample work but like everyone else I’m waiting for the audio tracks update. Was thinking of updating iPhone but I’m stopped by the lack of headphone jack. I’ll probably bite the bullet pretty soon though!

    The A13 cpu iPhone 11 is a massive upgrade to the A9 in the 6s.

    My track has about 20 odd tracks and includes a couple of Kronecker synths, poison 202, Lorentz, Ruismaker, Ruismaker fm, some obsidian and a few slates. Fx includes a ton of stock EQ, comptrssors, etc, FAC Maxima, FAC Alteza, AD EOS2, K7d and a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember and I had loads of headroom as you can see from the screenshot below. Occasionally there would be the odd big spike but things would quickly return to normal and most of the time I could play back the track without getting near 50% on the CPU meter.

    I ran out of song before I ran out of tracks :-)

  • Weird - I had no problems using nanostudio on my air 2.

  • Yeah I think when it comes down to workflow, sequencing anything over a period of time on a small screened device can be really frustrating, and I also get the same frustrations doing this with any kind of hardware groovebox too. So I'll always use a combination of ipad + desktop for when I run out of steam building a workflow in iOS.

    I'm currently excited about the possibilities of sequencing with Drambo in AUM and also Sunvox when that gets midi out and a combination of the two.

    I prefer this to using a standalone DAW because I can build it from jamming with a live setup and then progress it to a more structured composition without having to change workflow and apps too much. :)

  • Most people use Auria for audio tracking / mixing / mastering.
    The sequencing is usually done in Cubasis or NS2. Then exported to AP

    I am pretty happy with Cubasis 2 -> AP -> Grand Finale

  • Hey I love both Auria Pro and NS2, so is it is possible :D

    The MIDI sequencing in NS2 is nicer than in Auria, I don’t disagree with that, but Auria is still king for audio mixing (for now).

    And for what it’s worth I’ve never encountered those problems in NS2, and I use a ton of AUv3 synths and effects in my projects, so it’s very likely that the issues are down to just one or two individual plugins.

  • I believe Audio Damage Grind is known for causing issues in NS2, unless that’s been fixed.

  • Song mode in BeatHawk is actually pretty good.

  • For me I use Xequence as my linear DAW.. and point it to AUM. I can do everything I want... all the automation, fader controls and its the most stable of anything that I have.
    I use multi out of pulse and DigiStix for all my audio and samples. I might go back to ns2 at some point but it was so buggy with a lot of AU’s I use.

  • edited April 2020

    @richardyot said:
    I believe Audio Damage Grind is known for causing issues in NS2, unless that’s been fixed.

    Nope. Not fixed yet. At least not with the iPad Air 2.

    AD plugins work better on the iPhone 11. Not had the same issues.

    But the track above (and literally every other project I attempted on NS2) was a total arse-ache on the iPad in NS2. And the only AD fx I was using in this project was EOS2 and ns2 still failed after I deleted EOS2 from my iPad.

    Basically I seem to have a collection of auv3s that makes NS2 fall over badly. But just on my iPad Air 2 not my iPhone 11.

    I won’t apologise for using an auv3 host to host auv3s either ;-)

    The only iPad only plugin I was using was iSEM. other than that the project that made NS2 inoperable on my iPad worked fine on the iPhone.

    In the past I came up with an easily repeatable method to bring NS2 to its knees using AD plugins on an iPad Air 2, hopefully to help the devs work out what was going wrong, and others on the forum confirmed the same issues.

    Coincidentally the same plugins worked fine in AUM on the same iPad.

    AUM and GarageBand never gave me the same reliability problems on my iPad AIr 2.

    Auria pro may be what most people use but I can’t stand it. It shouldn’t matter to anybody that I hate it anymore than it matters to me that anybody else actually likes it.

    Even if I didn’t have the myriad of reliability issues with AP I’d still dislike it. Some things just don’t suit your particular tastes and sensibilities.

    Anyway. Even if it didn’t seem like it, the point of the post was to be positive about how well the iPhone worked for me and how good NS2 actually is on the iPhone.

  • Thanks for sharing your track.
    Auria is where I tend to mix and master as well as track any live playing. I like its old school approach of you get out what you put in. It forces me to hone my skills.

  • @klownshed said:
    Basically I seem to have a collection of auv3s that makes NS2 fall over badly. But just on my iPad Air 2 not my iPhone 11.

    I think I did around 2 or 3 tracks in NS2 on the Ipad Air 2 prior to upgrading to a 10.5 Pro, and it was a struggle to manage resources. No such problems on the Pro though, it works very well. It could just be that the RAM and CPU limitations of the Air 2 are part of the problem, it's a pretty old device by now.

  • AD plugins seem to be an issue all over unfortunately. Even in AUM I've run into issues with them.

    But anyway, I'm just surprised by your problems. Maybe I just don't use AU3s as heavily in Nanostudio, or something, but it's been very reliable for me. I've had a few AU3s hang - and I wouldn't argue that NS2s AU3 implementation could do with some work - but it hasn't crashed any more than AUM. And trying to use something like Moog 15 in Nanostudio on my Air 2 was an... interesting experience.

    What I like about Nanostudio is that the stock synthesizer/sampler and effects are pretty decent, are efficient on resources and so I actually can do more in it than I can often do in AUM.

    One thing that can effect stability is disk space. If you're running out of storage space on your IPad it will run a lot slower. That's just one of those computer things that you can't do much about - much like gravity, or friction. So if you were low on storage on your iPad that might have been causing the issues. I removed a lot of stuff from my iPad and was surprised by what a difference it made.

  • @Thomas said:
    Thanks for sharing your track.
    Auria is where I tend to mix and master as well as track any live playing. I like its old school approach of you get out what you put in. It forces me to hone my skills.

    I’m an old dog. I honed whatever skills I will ever have years ago. I used to record and track on an R8 8 track reel to reel tape machine which was synced to Logic starting at v1.2. It used to take about 20 minutes just to ‘stripe’ the tape with sync code— which left 7 tracks for audio.

    I have used many sequencers since then. I know how to do everything I’ve ever wanted to do when it comes to sequencing etc. If I want to make a track I know what I’m doing. In a past life I used to record ‘proper’ songs with bands (always as a hobby, never pro, but we had fun).

    That kind of experience comes with a lot of baggage too. I have always been fussy with software. I have always liked apps that have an attention to detail and a way of working that suits me. Logic was frankly hideous when I first bought it (I hated having an Atari aesthetic on the Mac) but it could do things that my other sequencer at the time (Opcode Vision) couldn’t do. It had the now ubiquitous arrange window. It had object-orientated non destructive parameters like quantise, transpose, velocity etc that made editing so much faster than ever before. And it continued playing as you edited. In the early 90s that was a novelty even for MIDI only sequencers.

    Anyway TLDR. I can do a lot of stuff in Auria Pro but I dislike using it. Life’s too short.

    When I want to get anything ‘serious’ done then I just fire up Logic.

  • @cian said:
    AD plugins seem to be an issue all over unfortunately. Even in AUM I've run into issues with them.

    Ironically considering the issues I’ve had with NS2, I’ve never had them in AUM.

    But anyway, I'm just surprised by your problems.

    I can assure you they’re real.

    Maybe I just don't use AU3s as heavily in Nanostudio, or something, but it's been very reliable for me. I've had a few AU3s hang - and I wouldn't argue that NS2s AU3 implementation could do with some work - but it hasn't crashed any more than AUM. And trying to use something like Moog 15 in Nanostudio on my Air 2 was an... interesting experience.

    The problems I have with NS2 are to do with it basically hanging when doing any file related tasks. That means it can’t save, export, mix down etc. This becomes even more frustrating to sort out as obviously as soon as NS2 launches it auto loads the previous project. So unless you delete the project in the Files app, or delete plugins used in the project you get into a catch 22. Ns2 won’t even load a different project when in this state.

    It becomes inoperable. A crash would have been preferable.

    What I like about Nanostudio is that the stock synthesizer/sampler and effects are pretty decent, are efficient on resources and so I actually can do more in it than I can often do in AUM.

    Yeah they are. I just don’t like them enough to use them on their own. They are what stock plugins should be but that makes them a little devoid of the character I’m after sometimes.

    One thing that can effect stability is disk space. If you're running out of storage space on your IPad it will run a lot slower. That's just one of those computer things that you can't do much about - much like gravity, or friction. So if you were low on storage on your iPad that might have been causing the issues. I removed a lot of stuff from my iPad and was surprised by what a difference it made.

    Not in my case. I have Always made sure I have plenty of storage space available.

  • edited April 2020

    @richardyot said:

    @klownshed said:
    Basically I seem to have a collection of auv3s that makes NS2 fall over badly. But just on my iPad Air 2 not my iPhone 11.

    I think I did around 2 or 3 tracks in NS2 on the Ipad Air 2 prior to upgrading to a 10.5 Pro, and it was a struggle to manage resources. No such problems on the Pro though, it works very well. It could just be that the RAM and CPU limitations of the Air 2 are part of the problem, it's a pretty old device by now.

    Undoubtedly. My hunch is that the lack of RAM causes a major issue with NS2s file handling system. Possibly a memory leak issue.

    It is probably more of an issue with older devices like the Air 2 that are powerful enough to run the apps but don’t have enough RAM to run them all reliably.

    I think the ram runs out long before the CPU. And for whatever reason, NS2 does not handle that situation well. NS2 should handle those situations bette in my humble opinion. It handles CPU spikes much more forgivingly

    In any case, my experiences with my iPhone are so much better that I would not expect these issues on a newer iPad.

    I’m just in no rush to buy a new iPad. My air still works fine for everything else I need it for and my iPhone is good enough for my mobile music requirements.

    And as i keep needing to remind myself, I have a Mac. Logic is a magnitude of order more powerful than anything on iOS. I don’t need to replace it on iPad.

  • I don't disbelieve you, I just think it's interesting that different people can have had such different issues. I've had no problems with the file system in Nanostudio, but I have had problems with mixdowns. That is due to individual plugins (you see similar issues in Cubasis). I don't think the issue here is memory leaks, I think it's probably a combination of the AU3 standard not being very, err, robust. And that a lot of plugins probably aren't coded particularly well. I remember similar things early on in the VST era, and it actually took a long time before DAWs could handle whatever idiocies plugins would throw at them.

    You'll see more problems on resource constrained systems, as those will stress the plugins more and lead to edge case behavior.

    Making a host for plugins is incredibly difficult. And unfortunately it's one of those areas that programmers love - where minor differences can trigger a bizarre bug, making it very hard to track problems down.

  • @onerez said:
    For me I use Xequence as my linear DAW.. and point it to AUM. I can do everything I want... all the automation, fader controls and its the most stable of anything that I have.
    I use multi out of pulse and DigiStix for all my audio and samples. I might go back to ns2 at some point but it was so buggy with a lot of AU’s I use.

    Same here. A lot of fun this configuration 🔥

  • @Charlesalbert said:

    @onerez said:
    For me I use Xequence as my linear DAW.. and point it to AUM. I can do everything I want... all the automation, fader controls and its the most stable of anything that I have.
    I use multi out of pulse and DigiStix for all my audio and samples. I might go back to ns2 at some point but it was so buggy with a lot of AU’s I use.

    Same here. A lot of fun this configuration 🔥

    And I can’t remember the last time I have had a AU crash in AUM.

  • When it comes to making complete productions, I’ve had a much better overall experience with NS2 and lately Zenbeats than I typically have with AUM or some of the other DAW’s on both my iPad 1 and on my 2019 iPad. I typically do not, however, record vocal tracks or external instruments. Synths and samples for me.

  • @onerez said:

    @Charlesalbert said:

    @onerez said:
    For me I use Xequence as my linear DAW.. and point it to AUM. I can do everything I want... all the automation, fader controls and its the most stable of anything that I have.
    I use multi out of pulse and DigiStix for all my audio and samples. I might go back to ns2 at some point but it was so buggy with a lot of AU’s I use.

    Same here. A lot of fun this configuration 🔥

    And I can’t remember the last time I have had a AU crash in AUM.

    I've had a few. AUM is definitely the most stable, though I think that's partly because it's become the defacto standard. Developers kind of use it as a target for their AUs.

  • I would start by redefining what you think constitutes a “full” or “complete” track. Duration aside, you probably think you have to go through a series of “proper” steps that you only think is “the” way to do it because that’s how you learned or because that’s what you heard pros do. Might save you a lot of time throwing out useless notions.

  • edited April 2020

    @db909 said:
    I would start by redefining what you think constitutes a “full” or “complete” track. Duration aside, you probably think you have to go through a series of “proper” steps that you only think is “the” way to do it because that’s how you learned or because that’s what you heard pros do. Might save you a lot of time throwing out useless notions.

    You should start by buggering off.

  • I have used Cubasis 3 to create 2 tracks to date. I used AUM and ToneBoosters to mix them. I am working on a few more. I think it’s very possible to make marketable material on iOS devices.

    I am looking at switching to NS2 for some of my EDM stuff as the automation is better in my opinion. Pitch automation alone makes this a no-brainer. But I’m sticking to CB3 for beatmaking and more simple EDM.

  • You can't automate AU3 effects in NS2 unfortunately.

  • @cian said:
    You can't automate AU3 effects in NS2 unfortunately.

    This!!! This is what killed it for me. Sad Face. Heck I would pay the DEV 300$ if he would fix this. If NS2 was as stable and and could do all that AUM can do... I would never use AUM.

  • Very funny that nobody mentioned Gadget. Still does the job quite well for me.

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