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

Help me integrate AB in my workflow

ArtvargArtvarg
in Support and Feedback

Hello friendly people 👋🏻
So I have finally found a workflow, that lets me finish songs (or rather one song at this point 😅). I found the often praised AUM + Xequence 2 combo to really be as good, as a lot of people on this forum said.
Right now I’m at the point where I want to throw in more Apps, namely Gestrument Pro and Softdrummer. So I thought that Audiobus 3 would be a good investment for its state saving feature. But I’m having huge problems.

What I want to achieve:

  • play instruments in AUM via Gestrument
  • Output Softdrummer in AUM
  • Record MIDI from Gestrument and Softdrummer in Xequence
  • Save everything in AB3 so that I don’t have to do it in every app all the time (I plan to save seperately with every “milestone”)

What I got so far:

  • A headache trying to find the best way to route midi with all those confusing options in AB3. Decided I would rather route everything in AUM
  • Crashing apps, like constantly. Either Softdrummer or Gestrument is crashing regularly when hosted in AB3. Even AB3 crashed.
  • sometimes an unresponsive AB bar (that little handle where you switch and control all the apps)
  • Errors when trying to state save (e.g. Gestrument is not running even though it is, or some app couldn’t state save)

Questions I have:

  • Am I doing something wrong?
  • Is AB3 not as stable as I assumed?
  • Do I have to dive deeper into AB3? (I don’t really want to, I want to make music)
  • Are Gestrument and Softdrummer badly optimized regarding AB?
  • Should I ditch AB and just safe everything manually?

I tried a few different approaches:
1. most things hosted in AB (which was too confusing for me)
2. only a few things hosted in AB
3. at last I only put Softdrummer, Gestrument and AUM in different audio input slots in AB and AUM in the output slot of Softdrummer (no Xequence 2 at this time).
The results have been the same.

I have an iPad Pro 11” first gen btw. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Comments

  • PoppadocrockPoppadocrock

    That’s a decent amount to unpack but AB3 is stable unless CPU is pushed really high. It is also quite simple and straightforward compared to AUM. I think both Gesturement and soft drummer are IAA only. So they must be loaded in an audio track in AUM not a midi channel. You can then still route the midi to another audio channel.

    AB3 is basically a simpler Version of AUM. So while both can be useful sometimes for a few reasons it sounds like you really onl6 need AUM for what you are trying to achieve.

    Just load gesturement in an audio track in AUM but route the midi connection but touching those 3 horizontal lines. So set up 2 audio lanes, one with Gesturement and one with a synth, then on the 3 lines next to synth select Gesturement so the synth receives the midi out from ges.

    There are several great YouTube videos that should help you out.

  • PoppadocrockPoppadocrock

    AUM saves everything just as well as AB3 too.

  • ArtvargArtvarg

    @Poppadocrock said:
    That’s a decent amount to unpack but AB3 is stable unless CPU is pushed really high. It is also quite simple and straightforward compared to AUM. I think both Gesturement and soft drummer are IAA only. So they must be loaded in an audio track in AUM not a midi channel. You can then still route the midi to another audio channel.

    AB3 is basically a simpler Version of AUM. So while both can be useful sometimes for a few reasons it sounds like you really onl6 need AUM for what you are trying to achieve.

    Just load gesturement in an audio track in AUM but route the midi connection but touching those 3 horizontal lines. So set up 2 audio lanes, one with Gesturement and one with a synth, then on the 3 lines next to synth select Gesturement so the synth receives the midi out from ges.

    There are several great YouTube videos that should help you out.

    Thanks, I’ll try that tomorrow night or on the weekend.

    @Poppadocrock said:
    AUM saves everything just as well as AB3 too.

    Does it really save everything in Gestrument and Xequence (both IAA) too?

  • [Deleted User][Deleted User]

    I attempted to incorporate AB for similar reasons only to find that the IAA apps I wanted it for didn't support state saving. Soft Drummer is one of these sadly.

  • PoppadocrockPoppadocrock

    I don’t have soft drummer but it does for Xequence 2. I also save file inside X2 just to make sure.

  • animalanimal

    I always use Gestrument Pro inside AB, routet through Aum to varying instruments. Sometimes you have to open Gestrument manually, to get it to actually run, but apart from that, it’s working great. I don’t use Softdrummer or xequence, but GP works reliably in this setup with any midi/audio App I tried (Autony, Cality, Factory, Model 15, etc). The Midirouting is easiest inside Aum, with the three lines next to the input. Just try different routings and setups and find your most stable presets to save. Good luck!

  • ArtvargArtvarg

    Since the consensus seems to be that AB is not needed in this case, I ditched it.
    I put all MIDI into Xequence and from there to AUM. Works quite stable (so lang as there are no loops in the routing 😅)
    @Poppadocrock I tried a few times, but for me It only saves the setup inside Gestrument not in Xequence. X2 is blank every time I open the project in AUM. Guess I‘ll have to save that manually every time. No big deal.

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