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.
effects bus?
Hello, I've just joined the forum and not spent too much time yet with audiobus. The recent purchase of an ipad 8 caused me to explore migrating from my aging macbook [running mainstage]. While it's pretty obvious how to insert an effect in AB, I haven't yet figured out how to create a bus such that multiple channels may utilize the same reverb. Thanks.
Comments
You seem to be describing a "send" bus. I don't have Audiobus and don't know how it works, but maybe a quick google search for send effects will give you some pointers. Good luck.
Sorry, Audiobus doesn’t exactly have busses.
However, you can add more than one app in the input position of a lane that has the FX on it.
Thanks much, wim; the graphic is much appreciated by this visual learner!
No problem. The only issue with that setup is you have no control over the relative level of FX applied to each app. They all go 100% through the FX. There are some tricks to sort of get around this, but if you're looking for more advanced routing and mixing, you might want to consider checking out AUM, which is a bit more like a traditional DAW track mixer.
I personally love Audiobus and try to do everything I can in there, but when I need more advanced routing I add AUM into the mix (pun intended).
Though I see while this arrangement requires only one instance of the effect it also requires that every app in the chain have the same "mix" [send] value.
As @wim said, if you need real bussing, AUM is the tool to use. AUM and Audiobus also work very well together.
Strangely, I did not see wim's reply before I posted my last lament, but I get that you both recommend me shelling out another $20 if I insist on having that amount of control! Thank you both for your service to the ios music community.
Right on, Jeffry. Yes, you honestly could’ve skipped Audiobus and gone straight to AUM. I haven’t used Audiobus a single time since AUM was released a few years back. It’s probably in bad form to say that here, but it’s the simple truth.
And to cost you another four bucks, you should strongly, strongly consider using Audioshare for your audio file organization and storage. Your AUM recordings will automatically be saved and accessible via Audioshare. It’s made by the same developer. With no exaggeration, it’s the most essential app I’ve ever bought on iOS in 10 years and integrates with Apple’s Files app better than any other solution.
If you don’t have $4 for it, I will gladly gift it to you if you’re in the US.
Indeed
. But, there's good news: $20 is less than the cost of a single channel on most any physical mixer with effects sends. Bonus: in this case, you pay the $20 once and get jillions of channels, sends and entire mixer configurations.
Also, welcome to the forum!
Also, also: you haven't wasted any money yet. AudioBus and AUM work like magic together. AB does a wonderful job of simplifying many things. AUM does a wonderful job at giving you options for many things. And, thankfully, they are both aware of each other so adding AUM as an output or input to AudioBus "just works". And works very well.
If one uses standalone apps together, Audiobus is an extremely helpful tool.
Much appreciate all your opinions, both public and private. Like many others, I imagine, I didn't hesitate to buy AB3 because of the active forum where users may be seen helping each other out! My focus is performing live, not that is happening much these days. But I do at least get asked to provide music via zoom to the Interfaith Community Sanctuary in Seattle. So I wonder if any of you have figured out how to get zoom on the ipad to pick up the output from AB because when I ran a test zoom insisted on getting its audio from the internal mic. I guess only the computer version of zoom lets you direct the audio to/from an interface?
Yep. The iOS version of Zoom doesn't let you stream to it. If you have a Mac you could potentially stream from the iPad through IDAM to the Mac and then through to Zoom. Haven't tested that one - just put that on the list...
Right, thanks. I did end up having to take my analog audio out from my iodock into another usb interface to input to my old macbook running zoom. This way I was able to have a LDC mic for dry audio [so when I spoke it wasn't being reverbed, etc and to capture the front-of-guitar sonority] and have my guitar pickup running through the ipad effects and synth. Of course, how zoom mangles the audio is out of my control, but the congregation seemed pleased with my noodlings through Velvet Machine and over kq dixie drone.
@jeffry who doesn't like a velvet cloaked dixie noodle