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.
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Any experience with Studiomux and Windows 10 ? Having an iPad 2018 iOS 13
@wim Here's the song: https://soundcloud.com/bill-saunders/electricsunrise
I learnt so much in the process - getting iPad midi into Studio One on Windows was the big one, of course. I used one of the Alchemy Synth sounds from GarageBand called Epic and Punchy for the lead. I also used another Alchemy sound - Lush Ambient, as a pad.
The guitar parts were mainly done in Native Instrument's Sunburst Deluxe: https://native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/guitar/session-guitarist-electric-sunburst/
I used the new Sound Variations (aka key switches) facility in Studio One 5.2, which made sound changes a breeze in Electric Sunburst. Also the first time I have got heavily into editing modulation, pitchbend, swing amount, fret noise etc - all good fun.
The drums are EZDrummer 2, and I played a real bass guitar.
Daaaaayyyyymmm! That is an awesome track @BillS!
Seriously, great job. I like it a lot. 👍🏼
I use rtpmidi to connect my ipad in reaper as a midi controller. It’s free and never had latency problems. You can also reroute the midi back to your ipad if you want.
Thanks so much @wim
@wim and anyone else - given my two interface set-up (Focusrite 6i6 and iRig Pro), is there anyway I could get a "virtual" keyboard on the iPad to transmit midi data to my desktop DAW Studio One Pro? At present, I use my physical Roland A-300Pro keyboard to send midi and it works great. But...I'd love to be able to get the brilliant iOS keyboard KB-1 to transmit midi to the desktop. Or any other iOS keyboard for that matter...
What is the A-300Pro connected to, the PC or the iPad? Did you ever connect MIDI cables between the 6i6 and the iRig Pro? I forget.
Anyway, it should be possible as long as you have working midi connections between the 6i6 and the iRig Pro.
The A-300PRO is connected to the PC, and I have working midi cables running between the 6i6 and iRig Pro.
Well, it seems like you should be able to send midi from the iPad to the iRig Pro and from the 6i6 to the DAW, but without the equipment to try it out I can't offer much more help than that. I guess it depends on whether the 6i6 passes midi through. I would expect it to, but can't say.
Fair enough, I thought it should work. I’ll try to figure it out! Thanks
@wim These are the iPad settings in Studio One:
These are the A300 settings:
This shows the connections I have:
I think the midi cables are working because when I press a key on the A300, I can see the corresponding key highlighted in the iPad keyboard. As it stands, midi is recorded from the A300 (along with audio from the iPad). but only audio is recorded if I use the iPad keyboard.
What is your routing in iOS? Are you using AUM?
You need to set the routing on the iPad to go to the iRig. I'm guessing this is what you're missing.
Not using anything! Just one of the Audiokit synths, KB-1 or GarageBand. Happy to pick up AUM or anything else if it solves this.
You don't have to use AUM or anything else but you do need to set the midi output of whatever you're using. It also has to put out MIDI. Garageband does not. The Audiokit synths may not either, I don't know. KB-1 does.
In KB-1 add a keyboard if you don't already have one added. Then tap the output button. You should see your iRig listed as a destination. This needs to be selected.
This might take some nimble technical fiddling.
I'm also running Studio One 5.2 but on a Mac M1. My initial efforts in the forum saw me directed to an apple feature called IDAM which under normal circumstances allows both midi and audio communication in both directions.
Spent a week wrangling with this rather simple process but Studio One wouldn't co-operate.
Finally managed to get a response from Presonus -a blunt "Studio One does not support IDAM."
No idea why. No idea if other DAWs have this design feature.Seems it can be forced to swallow ios midi.
Sincere congrats on getting these things actually communicating. Seems they're not actually designed that way.
iDAM allows MIDI both ways, but audio only from iOS to the Mac, not both ways.
I will try that, thanks. Would AUM allow me to route midi out of any synth? I cannot see that the Audiokit synths have midi out
AUM won't help if an app doesn't output MIDI. There's nothing that can be done in that case.
I can live with that - can't imagine why anyone would want to send audio to anipad really - but unfortunately - while I can easily set idam to link the ipad and other apps on the Mac when it comes to putting it into a track Studio One just doesn't see a thing. Nothing whatsoever on the Presonsus site nor from the desk.
BUT ... seems Studio One isn't as ios phobic as they'd have us believe ... found this little workaround on youtube:
Might try setting up two tracks - audio and midi - withe the ipad as input on both ... just what I'm after.
Might be helpful if anyone else is silly enough to want to try this on Studio One. Don't expect Presonus to tell you.
Thanks for your help with this wim.
@wim So I added a keyboard in KB-1, set up a nice minor blues scale and made iRig the output. Then in Studio One, I have a VST instrument set up, and I changed the input from the A300 to "all inputs" - unfortunately nothing happens when I touch the KB-1 keyboard. I am guessing that Studio One does not recognise my iPad as an input - but from the first image from my post yesterday, I thought it would...can you see any clues in that image?
I don't see "In" checked for "Bill's iPad" on the Scarlett. I also only see channels ALL for Sending, not receiving on the Scarlett. You need to be receiving MIDI from the Scarlet. I can't tell from the picture if these options are available and just not set or if they're not available at all.
I know - "In" is only the default input - there's no option to set the iPad to this setting, and I have the input set to all in any event. There are no further options for receiving midi from the Scarlett as far as I can see.
@BillS I'm not sure if you mentioned this but, are you seeing any signal action on the MIDI monitor in the bottom left hand corner of the main screen in Studio One when you tap on the KB-1 keyboard?
If MIDI is being received try just setting up a New Keyboard in the external devices using your current iPad receive settings.
You will need to remove the receiving port from the iPad device settings before creating the New Keyboard device otherwise Studio One will complain about having two devices with exactly the same port configuration.
Set it to the MIDI channel(s) you want to use and where you want it to be receiving MIDI from and it should work like this. It doesn't want to see the iPad as a controller, but it will happily see something called a new keyboard and whatever name you give it.
Then you can select the new keyboard device you just created in the list of input devices for the channel and have MIDI control from the iPad.
In summary, to have the iPad working as a MIDI controller and as a receiving device. You need to set things up so there is an iPad Instrument that Studio One sends to and a New Keyboard device using the iPad settings that Studio One receives from.
This approach should work on both PCs and Macs.
@arktek that worked! Brilliant, thank you. So now I can play VST Synths with the KB-1 keyboard, which is fantastic.
I guess if I want to use iOS synths, I can just temporarily disconnect the "New Keyboard" and reconnect my iPad - which I was doing before.
I'm guessing there is no way to play an iOS synth AND record MIDI data from an iOS keyboard? It's not really an issue, thanks to all the help I got from @wim I can record MIDI data by using the physical A300 keyboard...but it would be nice :-)
Thanks again
Since you've got what is essentially two devices from the one device and one is sending only and the other receiving only then you should be able to do both. There is no need to disable one to operate the other as they are on different ports (one in and one out) If the iPad instrument is set up on one channel to record the audio and the keyboard is set up on an instrument channel to record the MIDI. It should work. In Theory. Personally, I run into problems when attempting this in Bitwig on a Mac - something to do with the audio engine. I end up with the audio from the iPad being delayed. It's buffering and I haven't figured out why...worth a try though as you are on Windows and sometimes these things "just work".
I think you should be able to do this from something like KB-1 if you use AUM or Audiobus. Just route KB1's output to both the synth and to the iRig in parallel. Recording the audio on the PC at the same time may be more difficult as @arktek mentions, but just playing an app while sending the midi to the PC shouldn't be a problem.
Also to add an extra dimension - you have 16 MIDI channels available. You can easily run a number of different MIDI generators from the iPad (any app that will send MIDI out) using different instances of the keyboard device Studio One with a different MIDI channel for each generator source on a different channel. The keyboard device is just an interface location that Studio One sees as a MIDI source as long as each instance is using a different MIDI channel it should be very doable. (I hope that's not too confusing)
By the way - nice track.
Thanks - I will continue to experiment. The KB-1 controlling VSTs is a seriously useful option. Are there other keyboards similar to KB-1, which perhaps have more chord options? I’m getting greedy now 😀
Using the ASIO audio format, and If you have a lightning to 1/8” adapter, and an audio interface, just run the audio from the iPhone to the guitar/instrument input of the interface. Connect the audio interface to PC via USB. Finally, run the audio interface’s headphone out to your speakers or headphone. I do this every day and it works without issue.
—Nate
Hi, I’ve been reading and re-reading one this post regarding using iPad as external midi instrument to a windows based DAW. Your contributions were invaluable. I know it’s 3 years now but I need help.
Similar to this post and the sketch therein, I want to use my iPad Pro 3rd Gen as an instrument, sequenced from my Windows DAW. I have a Presonus Studio 1824c audio midi interface connected to my other devices and keyboard.
I need to find a way to connect my iPad Pro through a midi and audio interface like iRig pro duo I/o to the 1824c.
But before I commit myself to buying such a device, it would be important to know how two audio interfaces are being made to work together like this in a windows DAW in the above post.
Alternatively, if I were to skip the iRig / eq device, how can I connect the iPad directly to the 1824c? The 1824c is connected by usb to my pc, so where does the iPad get connected?
I’ll be most grateful if you can
guide me in the right direction.
I’m attaching a sketch of mine as well, similar to that in the above post.