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.
Do I need Auria?. Looking for decent audio editing and mixing.
Hi, you wonderful lot.
I never liked Pro Tools, and I don’t really like the looks of Aria, I already own Zenbeats (current fav), Cubasis and BM3.
Thing is audio editing in all the above is plain miserable. Can’t even crossfade.
I just read the Auria manual and it seems very capable, in line what I’m used to in desktop daws: cross fades, in place editing, bounce in place, warping, transients... Pretty good bussing and grouping...
I love to record in Zenbeats using Clíp view. I love improvising in AUM. That’s not gonna change. But Zenbeats and Cubasis are, in my opinion, seriously lacking in the audio dept. Routing, bouncing, editing... Yes, I could go from ZB / AUM to desktop and mix there, but I’m half lying on the sofa right now and this is where I want to remain. So I’ll rec and fool around in ZB and/or AUM (depending on who knows), export stems of the loops/parts and arrange and mix in Auria. That way I might actually finish a bloody song, cos right now, due to the aforementioned limitations I’m in “I’ll finish it on Logic, but I don’t feel like it now. Cozy sofa”.
How good is Auria?. I’m worried about:
- fiddly touch controls, like hard to access tools, difficult selecting, precision and ease of dragging. Overall if it’s a pain to use. I find Zenbeats pretty bad in this area, makes me nervous,
- crashes, is it stable?. Someone told me on a Facebook group that it was terrible, unusable due to constant crashes.
In summary, feature wise I think it’s miles above the rest in the audio dept. With buses and groups you can achieve a “proper” mix without a desktop, that’s huge. But does it suck?
Comments
Adding automation in the auria tracks is something I totaly disliked. Adding points or selecting them to move was a very painful task.
The mixer is very nice and endless. However effect slots (4) can not be moved once put in place.
AP saves every move you make so even when it crashes you are pretty safe.
The channel strip is somewhat getting used to but it does the job.
Its a very complete ios daw, but not for everyone.
The pianoroll feels too uncomfortable for in depth editing.
Editing for songstructure in general:
I left AP and moved to Xequence 2 for this. Nothing can beat Xequence in terms of flexibility and time management to get things done.
But I dont use audio, so it depends on what you want to work with.
If its mainly audiotracks, then I would use AP above the rest.
Thanks @Bob !
I’d say it’s 50/50 audio/midi. But I won’t record in Auria. I like the clip based mode in Zenbeats. And i find Auria really ugly but in a boring office kind of ugly. Zenbeats looks like an 80s arcade, it’s inspiring. Either Zenbeats or AUM with LK, then export, So yeah, Auria will be used mainly for mixing.
I really like the “auto save” feature, that’s smart.
I’m interested in your Xequence workflow. Do you record into AP?. How is it Xequence-AUM hosting apps - Auria?. Do you sync Xequence and Auria?. That’s an interesting workflow, guess it’s be similar with AUM and LK and recording to Auria. You can’t do that with Zenbeats, which is a bummer.
Thanks for your help!. I’m leaning hardly towards YES.
The workflow I tend to use is to compose and arrange in any one of GarageBand, NS2 or Gadget, then export the stems to Auria for vocal tracking and mixing.
It works pretty well and it's a great way to use each app to its strengths. Audio editing in Auria is really good, and so is mixing.
I used to work with cool edit pro and acid pro years ago so I am used to a linear timeline structure to start and finish song, editing breaks on the go. Lots of editing: split, crop, move, copy,..
AUM now has become the center of creation for me, but where do you start building a song and edit the entire idea over a timeline?
Combining Xequence with Aum and Audiobus is the best workflow for me now. It’s all midi in Xequence so no audiotracks. Aum and Xequence work hand in hand together, audiobus makes the switching between both apps as if you were to work in one single complete app, perfectly synced.
Each Xequence track (16 midi channels) can have up to 3 automation tracks, so that’s nice.
I don’t sync with AP.
I try to mix everything in AUM, but you could record all separate tracks into AP and get into a more complex environment of never ending bussing and send tracks possibilities. The max 4 effects slots per track in AP are of no limitation, because you can keep sending to other tracks to combine more AU. Freeze tracks is a big + as well.
Automation in AP is frustrating work so, you can do this beforehand in Xequence a lot better. This is one of the reasons that I have not used AP lately. The automation adjustments should be editable during mixing..
If all your tracks are ready to go then yes, mixing in AP is nice, depending on what AUs you want to use.
But then again, all this is possible within AUM itself.
Right. Exactly what I’m looking for.
So when you export... Do you export whole stems as in the whole song structure with changes, etc?. Or do you export “sequences”, loops or parts and arrange them, work out the song structure, in Auria?.
Im thinking of the later, doing the structure in Auria, Can you loop audio parts?. As in loop a clip bd copy/paste...
Thanks again!
You can loop and edit. Working with loops instead of whole stems is totally possible.
Got it!. Who was I fooling?. It’s a gas, gas, gas...
Thanks @Bob 🙌
Auria Pro is my go-to DAW. I personally find it beautiful and inspiring. It will crash occasionally, but it does auto save. Using it is a fulfilling education for me, with great results. Stems from other apps end up in Auria Pro anyway. Enjoy!
I export stems with the structure already decided, although sometimes I will then re-arrange in Auria if I decide to change stuff around. You can do both.
@MatthewAtZenbeats : Any plans on expanding the audio editing capabilities of Zenbeats in the near future ?
So I got it and it’s crashing like crazy. Auv3 plugins kill it.
Seems like it happens after adding the first one, if you change the plugin or add a new one. It happens every time.
It’s always something, isn’t it?. Good thing I paid half price, I only feel half an idiot 🙃
Ps: the Auria forum seems closed to new members, not cool for customers.
So I just upgraded to a super-processor Air 4 mainly so I can consistently use Auria Pro as my daw without crashing. I don’t know if having the A14 chip will make a difference or not over my Air 2, but I figure it can’t hurt and gave me a nice excuse to get new stuff. I’ve had Auria since the day it was released and love everything except the crashing and freezing. I recommend it to anyone who wants a Lamborghini and realizes they could easily drive something with that much power off a bridge once in a while if they’re not experts. I am not an expert. ☹️
Same for me since the most recent update. Loading a Nembrini amp into an fx slot crashes it instantly. Sometimes it helps not having the track armed first, or choosing a different sample rate to start a project. iPad Pro 14.2 here as well. There’s often talk of AP crashing because of certain AUv3/IAA plugins sitting in the back causing an issue, without even being loaded.
On the plus side, AP now recognizes more usbc interfaces with the new update.
Well that sucks. I’m not sure but I think it happens more (always) if you load an AUV3 and then try to trade it for another one. If you load a plugin, then select “none” to unload before loading the next one it doesn’t seem to crash as much. iOS 14.2 here.
It can be something like a random app on your device wreaking havoc on AP in the back without even being loaded. I would send the devs your issues and crash logs. Even if the updates are rare and their forum is stale, they’re very responsive over email in my experience. You are also within your refund period...
Which AUv3? Some plug-ins are problematic but not all (or even most) unless this is specific to iOS 14.
..
It’s interesting. What’s the advantage of having Audiobus in this workflow? What do you mean by AB makes the switching between both apps?
I used to swipe with four fingers to switch between Xequence and AUM. Is there an easier way with AB?
How about using Zenbeats w 4pockets multi track recorder as an auv3?
Do you need crashing?
One use of Auria Pro with AUM and Audiobus is that Auria Pro doesn't support multi-output AU -- but it does support multiple Audiobus audio outputs. So, if you use AUM to host multi out plugins, you can send their outputs to separate Auria Pro tracks.
Ha-ha, sofa is exactly my preference and don’t want to sit to a desk.
I don’t even have a desktop software 🙂
I uninstalled from my first gen iPad Pro due to space issues. I had a lot of plugins and it was a wrench but I had crashing and time is too precious to deal with it or chase the issues on forums and whatnot.
I recently grabbed a 2020 iPad Pro with much more space so naturally I eagerly put Auria back on and restored my purchases. FabFilter, THU joys ahoy.
Nope.
Crashed when I was browsing the plug ins. Then crashed within 5 minutes playing around a demo song.
Uninstalled.
Life is too freaking short for this.
@GLacey
The aum+AB+Xequence setup:
-wherever you are, you can access the other apps from the little AB tab on the sides or upper side instead of swiping. Swiping can sometimes lead to minor touching mistakes.
-AB will be where you save and open your projects, it saves both aum, xequence and AB states in one go.
Apparently so!. I got a crush on crashing, and this takes to unknown levels. Yay!
It crashes when switching plugins, any AUV3 plugins.
It also crashed when unfreezing a track, time after time, I can’t think of a more annoying crash than this. Being stuck with a frozen track.
I will. Besides the crashes, which is like saying beside the elephant sitting on my lap, this thing is pretty amazing compared to other Daws. So I’ll stick to it as support and appreciation in hope it’s resolved. Really makes you wonder why audio editing is sooooooo neglected in iOS production.
Take a very simple and basic use case... you have a guitar take that’s excellent except for a bad note that you can take from somewhere else in the take. You can’t fix that in Cubasis, Zenbeats, BM3!. How is that acceptable?. Ok, you could split the region, remove the offending part, put the other bit as a region in there... A) no cross fades , b) you can’t merge that region puzzle into a new region!. It’s not OK.
I could live without buses and the amazing routing if it meant avoiding the crash hell. But there’s no alternative. I mean, seriously, we have 14 granular manglers and no acceptable audio editing.
Pisses me off. All these apps produce audio, yet audio is badly neglected. No, you shouldn’t have to go to your desktop to do this. This is basic stuff that’s been there forever.
I could understand it if I was in the wrong place and everyone using iOS was solely into electronic music, midi and stuff. But people spend hundreds in THU amp sims and Nembrini stuff, yet you can’t edit a bloody take.
I was gonna say “sorry for the rant”, but I won’t 🤬🙃
I stumbled across poor editing tools in ios daw (multitrackstudio in my case), and got myself a separate tool - auditor app. It brought me closer to "desktop daw feel", but editing in reaper is still faster and more comfortable for me.
So i think that simple and convinient audio editing workflow is not achiveble on ios. At least for now
Yeah, it does crash a lot. I usually back up copies of my project before doing anything risky, because it has actually eaten songs while crashing too (though rarely.) Its not reproducible for me though, just random surprises happening every so often.
I kind of need it to finish stuff (while lying on the sofa) so I just cope. It feels like how software used to be in the bad old days, like MS Word 6.0.
Thanks! And how do you route the midi channels between these 3 apps? How does your setup look like?
This is how I tried, but didn't succeed:
I'm confused...
Probably it's my fault but I haven't find the place for Audiobus in my workflow. I can route anything I have into any of my daws directly.
Apologize for the off-topic questions in an Auria thread.
It’s easier, check the exact settings in the manual, scroll down to the title “example setup” and check Using Xequence + Audiobus + AUM together
http://www.seven.systems/xequence2/en/manual/