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.

Walked into a free pc laptop, have questions...

I got a free laptop form my younger brother, it’s a Dell Latitude E5500. 4 cores, I5, 8gb ram, 500gb ssd. I happily make music on my iPad Pro supplemented by my iPhone, and I love it. Never even considered doing it on a PC these days, but now I have to consider it because of an obvious advantage of a mac/pc, the plethora of available full featured DAWs. I suppose processing power and a whole world of other software may not hurt either. Back in the late ‘90s I built a home studio with a couple rack mount cases around a PC with Cakewalk Pro and recorded my friends’ bands, but that was a long time ago.

My questions are, are those pc specs above even enough to run a current DAW efficiently for multitrack recording, along with plugins. I know it can vary based on what people are using and their genre, I mostly record multi channel audio tracks, and I also supplement that with some midi and virtual instruments.
Nothing too crazy...

Another more important question is, how does everyone integrate their iOS and PC music tools. IDAM is mac only, I already have interfaces so iConnectivity is not in the cards. Is it really just gonna be importing stems form iOS to PC and that’s it? Can I not pipe in my iPad virtual instruments or guitar sims into the PC, not even with a line out line in?

Lastly, is there any beneficial integration between something like Cubasis 3 and Cubase? Is it worth investing in that vs Ableton which also seems to have some iOS integration available? My Motu comes with Ableton Lite and Performer Lite, so at least I can demo those. Anybody have a tip or rec on how to best integrate an iPad with a PC, besides just using them separately?

Thanks in advance to whoever cares to chime in! To be honest, I’m very satisfied creating, making, producing music on iOS, but just thinking out loud..

Comments

  • First thing you need is a USB audio/midi device of some sort.
    That will allow you to connect the PC Laptop to the iPad in the old school way.
    Laptop native audio is usually pretty basic.

    That PC probably has BT, so you can explore using BT Midi between it and the iPad.

    Studiomux seems alive again, but the PC plug-in is still being coded, I think.

    The specs seem pretty great on that laptop, compared to the crap one I use.
    But hey, my crap one is doing fine. My projects never get that extensive, though.
    Plus, you can always freeze audio if necessary.

  • I wouldn't try too hard to integrate one into another seamlessly, rather draw the line when to use the PC.
    I would use it as a DAW host for post producing my tracks from the iPad.
    Another good use is the PC as a sample player for bigger and better sound libraries that hardly fit on the iPad, controlled by Bluetooth MIDI.
    Windows is known for its issues with BT MIDI, there's a BT MIDI USB dongle from CME (Widi Bud) that makes stuff a lot easier.

  • edited December 2020

    @CracklePot @rs2000 Thank you both! I already have the Yamaha UD-BT01 Bluetooth dongle, which I use either for my midi keyboard or guitar pedalboard. Also my Motu has 5 pin midi i/o, and I have the iConnectivity mio cable which does 5pin midi i/o to usb. Perhaps I’m set and didn’t even know it? If motu plugged into iPad via usbc and motu midi i/o plugged into pc via mio usb, could I route virtual midi two-way?

    I guess what I’m confused about is, can the pc and iPad recognize each other as instruments with an interface in between, or are they communicating together as virtual midi which is sort of the same thing?

    I thought maybe I could take the motu line out signal from the iPad (playing guitar sims or synths) and go line in to pc, but clearly that’s dumb and needs a second interface.

  • If you just have one audio interface, you could plug it in on either one, and use the headphone/line out of the other to send audio.

    To do the guitar amp sim thing on the iPad, use the iPad HP out and plug the interface into the laptop to record in the PC DAW.

  • Not sure what you mean by recognizing each other as instruments, but you can in/out both ways with midi.
    You can use the iPad as a surface controller or sequencer to drive synths, etc. on the PC. The PC can run a DAW or sequencer and control synths, etc. on the iPad, too.

  • edited December 2020

    @CracklePot said:
    Not sure what you mean by recognizing each other as instruments, but you can in/out both ways with midi.
    You can use the iPad as a surface controller or sequencer to drive synths, etc. on the PC. The PC can run a DAW or sequencer and control synths, etc. on the iPad, too.

    Oh I guess I just meant using the iPad and its apps as an actual virtual instrument in a way, so being able to record midi or audio as audio on PC. Or like using the iPad as if it’s the guitar amp and recording that on pc. Rather than just sending midi info between two softwares that don’t sound the same. Like converting midi stems to audio, or in this case recording an iPad instrument in a pc daw. I guess it’s all possible and I just need to study up. Clearly sequencing and triggering between them is no problem.

    My line of questioning has to do with the fact that I have many synths and modulars and guitar rigs on iOS that I love and preset, so I want to basically “play” them for the pc to receive, beyond just moving stems around. But using pc as a daw host makes sense.

  • edited December 2020

    @JoyceRoadStudios said:
    @CracklePot @rs2000 Thank you both! I already have the Yamaha UD-BT01 Bluetooth dongle, which I use either for my midi keyboard or guitar pedalboard. Also my Motu has 5 pin midi i/o, and I have the iConnectivity mio cable which does 5pin midi i/o to usb. Perhaps I’m set and didn’t even know it? If motu plugged into iPad via usbc and motu midi i/o plugged into pc via mio usb, could I route virtual midi two-way?

    If your laptop already has Bluetooth then definitely give it a try!
    The Yamaha does the opposite BTW: You attach it to the keyboard and it acts as a BT MIDI "sender" to convert the keyboard's USB MIDI to BT MIDI while the dongle I've mentioned does the opposite for the receiver side.
    And yes, MIDI is usually implemented as a two-way connection.

    I guess what I’m confused about is, can the pc and iPad recognize each other as instruments with an interface in between, or are they communicating together as virtual midi which is sort of the same thing?

    Both sides need some kind of software virtual MIDI port they can access and use to communicate, no matter if it's cable or air.

    I thought maybe I could take the motu line out signal from the iPad (playing guitar sims or synths) and go line in to pc, but clearly that’s dumb and needs a second interface.

    Laptops used to have stereo line inputs but they've been mostly replaced by mono microphone inputs because today, we have a lot more headset users than musicians. Now that's what I call dumb 😅

  • I’ve just gone through what you’re describing. Reaper is my DAW on PC. I had an old Edirol UA-25 audio interface which I’ve just set up to work with the iPad using a Hyperdrive connection. I use a Zoom U44 on the PC. I feed the iPad into the PC that way. I like using the iPad for fx and sound source and Reaper is the best there is. There’s a load of blah blah about using two interfaces but if I’m really precious about audio quality both have optical connections. Obviously your needs may be more pro than that. Midi is easy. I already had all the kit so it didn’t cost me anything.

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