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
I'm not sure then - the app has multibus output nodes which you can open on separate tracks in AUM or Cubasis 3. I thought that would mean it's multi-out (it is in the desktop version as I've seen in the routing section at the end of Playbeat 3's manual).
Maybe @Audiomodern can chime in.
I bought it, it sounds good. I may read the manual… I have Playbeat 2, and didn’t realize it could be used as a step sequencer for things other than drums. Given that the midi can be sent through IDAM or Studiomux, I think the price for @Audiomodern apps on iOS are a steal.
I wish it supported scales (again… I should read the manual) but Rozeta Scaler does the job well enough. Side note, any chance of user defined scales in the future @brambos?
I can’t get anything musical sounding out of Chordjam, but that’s user error.
I think once they add randomizing sample choice from a folder/pool of samples, I'll upgrade. That's really the only feature I wanted.
I will buy Playbeat 3 when it has MIDI sample buffer compensation which Playbeat 2 doesn’t have either.
@Poppadocrock and @Foleslaw You are right, the 8 multibus output nodes are available in AUM - but i couldn‘t find an option to route a Playbeat track to them:
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That reminds a bit of the newly added midi output node (which also shows up in all AUv3 plugins input list) that currently isn‘t used. In Polybeats settings, midi can can be directed to AUMs main midi port, shown as „AUM destination“ with active midi input in the following screenshot:
BTW: Audiomodern answered in their support forum that they think about providing a midi output version of Playbeat 3, so the second issue might be solved in the future.
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Added the multibus topic as my third bug-report to Audiomodern‘s forum - either its not supported (then the multibus flag should go so that its no longer shown in AUMs multibus list) or a Playbeat setting to use these nodes is missing. There is also no info in the manual
@Paulinko Over two hours is a quite long play session, even non-link-enabled hardware could get out of sync by then.
I don‘t think that the „midi sample offset = zero“ topic is related to that problem because Playbeat will handle its own sequencer and audio output sync not depending on any midi message with or without timing info. They probably sync to the hosts tempo and sync information supplied.
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The „not-setting midi sample offset“ becomes important when midi notes are sent out via the host midi connection in conjunction with large sample buffers (1024/2048). In such cases sample offsets need to be used since a sample buffer-accurate timing is no longer sufficient and you get timing glitches that are really obvious and audible.
For a more technical explanation click the spoiler:
At 44100 Hz samplerate and 2048 buffersize, there are 21.53 buffers used per second, each of them holds 46.43msec of audio.
A midi sample offset specifies the timepoint inside such a buffer when the midi note should start playing.
If a note plays at regular intervals, it may/will result in the need to be started just before such a buffer runs out, as buffer update and bpm normally don‘t divide evenly and therefore the note timing position inside such a buffer shifts from buffer to buffer used.
In the worst case the correct offset could be 2047 of 2048. If always specifying zero as midi sample offset, the note would be off by 46.3 msec - which is around 1/32 for 90bpm
Smaller buffer sizes need more buffer updates per second, ie 86.13 buffers/sec for buffersize 512 at 44100 samplerate - so the resulting max timing difference is smaller and harder to notice.
@audiomodern
Will Playbeat 3 be included in the Bundle?
Have just checked and the Bundle icon shows 3 apps but the page states that “this bundle contains 2 apps” … see below. Maybe the bundle is just taking a bit longer to update (as they usually do)?
Aah can’t seem to edit my post or upload images to the forum at the moment (re: previous post with App Store screenshot)
Hi Max - Playbeat 3 requires IOS14 - any plans on making available for older IOSversions as well?
It becomes a problem after 5 minutes or so for me. Most of the mobile MIDI apps address the issue so in the future I will restrict my purchases to those that do. Doing calculations or making edits because a developer didn’t bake buffer compensation into their app is not my idea of fun.
Okay, then it‘s as worse as i remember from my BeatHawk bug-report some years ago
That went off-sync about 1/32 in 130bars… which is 3 to 5 minutes depending on the bpm. I even wrote a re-sync script using a note per beat on BeatHawks track 16 and a reference note from a Rozeta XOX instance to delay the other 15 track to be in sync again… Luckily they fixed that - it was really, really anoying with the beat getting more and more off-grid the longer a session played.
Ditto
I don’t expect people to follow my lead in this, but with an abundance of MIDI apps, this seemed like a reasonable way for me to filter them out.
Apparently the multi-out nodes have been fixed with the newest update. They have been removed completely as not to confuse
Now that the bugs were officially reported via their forum there is a good chance these problems get fixed.
And … playing around with the new version is fun, the app has got some cool sounds and nice capabilities
19 EUR for the desktop upgrade as well which isn’t bad.
Yup, i can confirm the multibus output nodes are gone in v1.0.1. Maybe they return if the devs decide to include that feature - finding space for new UI elements is quite hard if the design plase is already over and everything has come together in a suitable place
Does anyone know if Playbeat 3 has choke groups?
Great! Let's hope they decide to do that. There's no special need for any UI implementation (Hammerhead doesn't have one and works perfectly fine) as you can output and group the tracks to your liking in your host app being it AUM, Cubasis or whatever. There are drum sequencer apps that let you choose output buses from within the app for each drum part but as for me - if they decide to add it as a simple output node for the 8 lanes - I'll be more than happy.
If not then no real pain as it's a really great app with some cool inspiring outcomes
Doug shows off all the new features:
This looks good, but has anyone done a side-by-side comparison between the previous version and the new app? (Started watching Doug, and it's great, but it's also 50+ minutes!)
Or barring that, is it easy to drag in a collection of, say, 8 samples and they're automatically assigned? Can Playbeat3 drive, for instance, FAC Drumkit or Slammer?
Haven't done a side-by-side but watching the video you quickly see the major additions to the new version:
If you watch the first 15 minutes or so you will get an idea of how much of an upgrade this is.
I think I paused just before things really got underway. Thanks, @Simon
Sounds good.
Thanks for noting this - I might’ve missed that
Doug’s video on this is good. Just finished watching it.
I was just about to post it in this thread but someone beat me to it.
@Simon Thank you for sharing it here, top job.
Good question. It would be good to see PB3 in this bundle.
I just took a look at the bundle in the UK and it currently offers 2 apps for £16, whereas purchasing Riffer and Chordjam separately is £14 (rounded up).
I don't think this is an oversight, I suspect it's a marketing tactic to push folk to purchase Playbeat 3 for £8.99. Disincentivising the bundle suggests there's probably a longer-term strategy to push the price of the other apps up to £8.99 too via major version updates in the near future.
Nothing I'm saying here is intended as criticism, £8.99 seems a fair price if you're into what the Audiomodern apps have to offer.