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.

Zenbeats Export is EXCELLENT

Just noting this here, because I don't see this context mentioned RE: Zenbeats (2.0) anywhere.

Obvi Zenbeats is kind of marketed and touted as the multiplatform solution -> but largely leaning toward composition and song creation via loops/samples etc.

It's great for that, but my primary interest in zenbeats as a iOS DAW was in how it handles audio across my devices.

What I've found with Zenbeats 2.0 is that it ports my stems, my track layout, my third party plugins AND the settings within those plugins if I have the desktop counterpart. - I don't know how much of this relies on the plugin developer / how much Roland is on the pedestal for this one, but this is the exact behavior I've personally idealized from jump. - From there, porting into another desktop DAW is still unencumbered - would hardly need to if Roland ever incorporates real bussing and FX chains that can be pasted to a track.

Right now, it will load my tracks with their plugins etc. but if I have desktop chains that vary some from the iOS chain, I'm either adding them manually or creating a new set (of 10-25 tracks) using Zenbeats "Track Templates" and moving all of my audio "down one" into their new track homes.

Still not bad. Still heaps more useful IMO than AAF or Cubase import.

** The Alternatives **

Cubasis allows for "Cubase Import" but if you're not a desktop Cubase user, you're looking at what?

Adopting the full price version - or - hoping your exports are fully accommodated by the limitation in Cubase Elements (they could be!) - only having access (they're words) to stock Cubase plugins coming across the river with your project - orrrrr - mixing down your stems on their own in Cubasis - which to me, is a pretty unintuitive and tedious process. (Esp. with mixdown features constantly defaulting in Cubasis)

Wasn't a great answer for me, wanting to track & prep vocals on iPad, then do more advanced editing with Studio One and Vocalign, making detailed mix references for my engineer(s) etc. - too long, too tedious, too unreliable.

Beyond that, I could have opted into Auria Pro for the AAF support; but the reviews I see on that process aren't great; nevermind the dated GUI (coming from a pretty fine tuned and up to date touch experience in Cubasis) - Nevermind again, that AAF is useful for cross DAW exports, but does not bring everything across into the new environment.

I don't know if I'm underestimating or misunderstanding export limitations in these other iOS DAWs, but for anyone wondering, Zenbeats 2.0 (Ultimate) export functionality works out of the box and seamlessly.

Comments

  • I’m trying to export my song as a midi file can’t figure it out.

  • @Tones4Christ said:
    I’m trying to export my song as a midi file can’t figure it out.

    You can export individual tracks but not sure you can do whole song.

  • If I understand correctly you export from ZB in iPad, then import in ZB desktop... and then...

    From there, porting into another desktop DAW is still unencumbered

    How do would you port, say, to logic?. Stems, individual export of files or are all the files in some folder?.
    Cheers

  • edited October 2020

    Import and transfer are great, too. I just pulled some .wav stems from a Logic project (~15 tracks) and dragged them into a new song in Zenbeats on the Mac. Piece of cake. Then I transferred the song to Zenbeats on an iPad and everything came over perfectly. It took no more than 15 or 20 seconds for the transfer.

    This song was completed and mixed about a year ago but I wanted to use some raw audio tracks to learn about mixing in ZB. One thing I have to be mindful of is that I have different AU plugins on the Mac and iPad so I may try mixing with only the native ZB effects to maintain compatibility. The alternative is to stick with one machine or the other until it's done.

  • @onerez said:

    @Tones4Christ said:
    I’m trying to export my song as a midi file can’t figure it out.

    You can export individual tracks but not sure you can do whole song.

    I’m pretty sure that’s correct. I like that though because it means you don’t have the hassle at the other end of trying to separate out midi to the right tracks

  • Wondering if someone can help me out...I'm trying to export some stems from Zenbeats on my iPad so I can work with them in Ableton. I've exported all of the stems which end up being a ~1GB archive file... Now it looks like my only two options to transfer the file off of my device is via OneDrive or Google Drive over wireless...which takes foreverrrrr and apparently fails every time for various reasons, including whenever the screen locks. I would love to transfer the file locally over USB except I don't see Zenbeats listed in the Files option in iTunes. I have a lightning flash drive but don't see an option to use that either. This is wasting a lot of my time and getting quite frustrating. Any suggestions?

  • Can you open the archive and send the stems to One Drive/Google drive one at a time? Does not sound fun, but it might accomplish the job😆

  • edited June 2021

    @Shabudua said:
    Can you open the archive and send the stems to One Drive/Google drive one at a time? Does not sound fun, but it might accomplish the job😆

    NOOOOOOOOooooooo...! Well, maybe. Obviously trying hard to avoid it but it may come to that.
    (Just tried it 2 more times to Google Drive and it made it to less than 10% before the whole program just closes.)

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