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.
Comments
Looks good, I find it just as clear. No problem.
I love these channel toggles!!
Niiiice! That's looking good.
I actually had the earlier build loaded up at a concert recently to give me an idea of what MIDI was flowing in the heat of the action. It's not visible in these images but it'll give you an idea.
Something I thought about asking in regard to the MIDI recording functionality but didn't get round to asking yet:
Is it possible to capture all MIDI messaging including MIDI clock signals? (and SysEx, although that's a lower priority to me as I have a linux tool that can do that). I've not yet been able to find a MIDI recorder that can capture all data so that I could reproduce a performance piece (including the synch signals for analogue gear) without the original 'generative' software (which is also generating clock) being run.
Small suggestion: to let the 1-16 buttons on the left have the same color as the corresponding notes on the piano roll. If that becomes too much of a rainbow, then use that color as a blink when the note plays.
Cool!
I’m thinking about CCs (and potentially even a tiny track to visualize them, too) and if that goes well I’ll consider the rest.
I like the second option a lot – like you said it might be too colorful with the former.
Cc visualization yes please.
@TonalityApp
This looks really cool!... Do you have any plans to add retrospective midi recorder capability to this?
Such as.. The ability to set a recording buffer time length limit, where any data older than a selected time length limit gets auto-deleted to keep retrospective Midi capture within an easily navigable visible range.
I understand you're already incorporating zoom in/out. Might Midi-regions on the recorded timeline be selected, then exported to Midi file?
From the video it looks like you can already drag through the recorded visual record. I'm assuming the notes will play when dragged past the piano keys playhead? Drag-audition makes it easy to find sections to be exported.
A thought for unlimited recording times, could be including the ability to tap-insert position markers while recording is active. Makes it easier to later find regions for either visual analysis or exporting.
I was wondering when you’d ask
I am definitely more likely to include that functionality here than in Tonality
This seems pretty doable, but I don’t want to promise anything yet - see below.
This is on the roadmap! I wonder if the already-available endless recording paired with this function will do close to what you want
Currently they’re just highlighted when dragged past the trailing edge, but I like the idea of adding an option for playback as well – shouldn’t be too difficult. This would also allow variable-speed playback at whatever rate you’re dragging your finger, which I think is pretty cool
Good idea! Maybe there could be an automation parameter which inserts such a marker when triggered
Endless recording should certainly work too. The only reason I think about limiting buffer length is to presumably make it easier to navigate the buffer... A long Midi buffer size shouldn't be that big.. right? I'm only guessing that longer buffer lengths could/might effect buffer navigation. This has been my experience with certain other piano roll software on my 2015 iPad when trying to use them for retrospective use. But we're talking fully editable piano roll, and not a MIDI Visualizer.
All that matters for retrospective use, is being able to load the AU, start the recording, then let it run in the background until something is played that the user wants to save.... Then they can go into the recorder and export only the desired section of Midi.
Also. When I say "select regions of timeline for export", I don't mean having to be able to select individual notes. It's fine to only be able to select nothing more than a time-range.. and be able to export all the Midi that happens to be within that range.
Looking forward to this App very much!
Gotcha. I think with track markers it shouldn't be too bad in terms of scrolling, but I see your point and will think about it. Maybe I could have a little timeline or picture-in-picture window that shows an overview of the entire track.
In terms of memory it shouldn't be unless you leave it running all day with a constant stream of MIDI events. I'm storing the bare minimum, and long stretches of silence contribute nothing to the memory footprint.
In terms of CPU usage, I'm trying to make it as light as I possibly can. Even with an extremely long history of events, only those in the current visible range are loaded at a time, and the corresponding resources get recycled as soon as the events go out of frame. In effect (apart from the backing storage of historical events) displaying a section from a very long buffer uses the same amount of resources as displaying a short buffer of the same size as the current section. I'm assuming that some other piano rolls keep the UI rendering resources even while scrolling, which would definitely cause lagging for longer tracks. That won't be an issue here!
This will definitely be possible!
Gotcha – I was already planning on allowing the selection of an arbitrary region (both on time and MIDI note axes), but it might also be good to allow selecting a time-range with all notes included so you don't have to drag over a large region.
I can add you to the beta if you like!
Yeah, it would be cool to see the entire timeline of whatever has been played. Would this be placed in a buffer, so it would clear whenever host timeline restarts or would be it be possible to store multiple plays?
Currently the visualizer acts as a "tap" on the host – it will record and show barlines and events caused by the transport control, but in an independent manner such that restarting the timeline and resuming will just keep adding to the end of the visualizer.
@horsetrainer Just implemented the option for MIDI Out when scrolling through the history – I like it a lot!
In the second half of the video below the playback speed is entirely controlled by my scrolling (it can even go backwards or freeze at an instant). I hooked it up to Tonality for the second half but am planning on including some built-in chord/scale identification.
@Poppadocrock This could be useful for learning songs as you were suggesting.
Cool! Looks good for finding stop and start points for making selections, as well as other uses.
Cool, that works.
Great!
@horsetrainer Did you see my earlier comment about buffer navigation and the beta?
Yes, I did see your description of buffer size likely being a non-issue.
Sent you a PM with my email. Make sure you let me know how you'd like me to help, because I have zero experience Beta testing.
Thanks.
Looking forward to this being released, currently working great in Drambo and AUM on iPhone.
I was thinking would it be possible to have a counter next the bar markers at the side so you know how many bars have been recorded. You could then perhaps have a dialog box to specify which bars to export such as 7 to 32 etc.
Definitely! I actually store that information already, just haven't gotten around to displaying it.
I will add some kind of overview and transport control. The issue with pure bar numbers is that the recording can handle partial bars, duplicate bars (if you rewind the host / loop), and host-independent recording so the timeline would be a mess.
Awesome, great stuff. This is really cool.
Sites like bitmidi have lots of files
Yea, this would be great especially the bar, and beat, seems like you’re already on it @TonalityApp would you then need to add various time signatures, or is that already there?
.
Already there! Just haven't displayed it on screen yet, at least numerically. If you look closely the downbeat of every measure is emphasized.
The new midi export works nicely after a quick test in Drambo, I had a couple of questions
is there a way to select all notes e.g. by double tapping or long pressing, I found it a bit fiddly trying to select everything on a small screen.
could the exported file names add a time stamp for unique files.
Looking great overall.
Planning on it!
Definitely, and I might even allow in-app storage/browsing of exported chunks.
Glad to hear it!
Cool thanks, its probably the easiest method of recording a midi performance I’ve found on iOS so far. Looking forward to it being released.
I’ve tried opening the export in Cubasis 3, NS2, GarageBand and Gadget, they all seem to merge the multichannel midi file onto one track apart from Cubasis 3, which splits each channel onto a separate track.
Awesome
Good to know. Would you want an export option to collapse channel data down to a single channel?
Thanks, I prefer when it exports out to separate tracks anyway so wouldn’t need an option to collapse channels, not sure why some daws treat the file differently though.
Got it working on Mac!
Just lurking on this one and completely blown away by the sophistication of our members and devs.
As a tangential question: can/do the faders in AUM and/or others send MIDI cc or just receive? It seems like the former hooked into this app for recording the MIDI; playing back would essentially give you an oldschoolesque ‘flying faders’ automation of a mixer that’s not a DAW… Unless I’m wrong and just distracting from another wise productive conversation…
I'm not actually sure about AUM. For others which support CC input that's exactly the effect you'd get if you hooked it up to this and scrolled through some CC data!