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
Yeah, I didn’t know it worked there for a while as well and would do the same as you were doing by clicking to load that app’s page and then updating. Now, I just pull down the refresh button before clicking update all. Usually by the time I’m updating I have several apps that need updated.
I’ll inform them.
Hope they fix it.
Don’t forget to vote for AUM on Patchstorage. That would be awesome to share routings and setups.
A top new feature is also session load via note: this allows to switch faster between various sessions like in live situations for example.
Hold tap a session and choose copy URL
Paste in session note, save session. Now you can open pasted session URL with hold tap and confirm open session
Also there are new midi actions next previous bar, toggle metronome and hide all plugins. Timeline scrolling has been improved a lot too. All of this is very nice with apps like Helium or Multitrack, improving DAWLESS setups experience by a huge margin. Also double tap in blank space hide all windows double tap again… show them again 😎
Delete a channel, tap new channel tap import and choose restore removed channel to restore it!!!
Also, another bonus: long press transport play/pause button to start/stop AUM but not Link peers 🤘🤩
@Janosax thanks for pointing those out. The new previous/next transport controls I had missed. As you say, they could be very useful for improving the DAWless experience when mapped to onscreen buttons or a hardware controller. Will have a play with this later on.
Excellent update, @j_liljedahl thank you as always! I'm not sure there's something left to polish but again you made it even better. Only UI improvement I can imagine is the ability to add favorites and hide unused auv3 plugins from the general list.
Can you use the mouse to scroll through channels? Like the scroll wheel ? That would be handy! Amazing app. Essential.
This is my first usability complaint for sure. It's a lot of scrolling, for sure. The other usability thing that drives me nuts is that an audio channel and an app must be linked together--so much so that when I choose a different app, all the channel filters reset. That's counter-intuitive! So, let's look at how that works in real life: I set up a bass line using App X and set up channel filters so that I only use Channel 2 and filter out any MIDI notes higher than C3. Then I change my mind and want to use App Y because App X doesn't have the bass sound I hear in my head. I change to App Y and then have to set up the channel filters ALL OVER AGAIN! Why, @j_liljedahl, why?
@j_liljedahl
Loving the update
But agree with the scrolling
How about page dots at the bottom like on an iPhone
Then we could book mark pages as well as channels
Sorry to bang on
Is zooming that difficult to implement… seems all it needs is a ‘lock’ button here…
SynthMaster1 and a few other apps you can load into the effects slot.. it is so handy.. wish other apps did it..
Air 4
Unlocking the workspace for Zooming in and out could work well, with the channels shuffling to rows below as you zoom out further like responsive website behaviour.
Not exactly what you're asking, but the new MIDI busses can function as workaround to ease some of the pain: you route your MIDI source to a bus, set the channel filters, etc. in the bus and then just set the MIDI source from the MIDI bus when changing apps.
Yes it's a common complaint
I haven't yet figured out a solution that would give a good user experience.
Zooming out 50% means you can't see/read what it says or use the knobs or buttons etc.
Grouping and folding a bunch of channel strips would work, but what would the folded group look like? And wouldn't that lead to a lot of tapping to fold/unfold?
Another idea is tabbed groups, so you can have tabs showing selected groups of channels, and also an "All" tab that shows everything as usual. Either by extending the existing bookmarks system, so that each bookmark becomes a tab that shows all channels from that bookmark up to the next. Or perhaps one should select which tabs each channel should belong to, so one channel can show up in multiple tabs.
Because MIDI channel filters are tied to a node (app/plugin). I have a note in my TODO list to allow copying the MIDI routing and filtering from an old node to the new node when ejecting and replacing a node. Not sure if this should always be done, or if it should ask the user first, and if so how to ask without adding an extra tap etc..
That said, you can use the new MIDI Bus nodes to act as a proxy, so route everything to a MIDI Bus node and set your filtering there, then all you need to do is a single routing from the MIDI Bus node to your instrument plugin.
I appreciate the response, thank you! I look forward to when you get to your TODO list on the copying/retaining MIDI routing/filtering when replacing a node. I am willing to bet that the use case I presented accounts for 90%+ of the ejection of an existing node so I'd advocate for always copying over the existing routing/filtering and add a "reset to default" option somewhere in the UI. My hypothesis is that when a user wants to start fresh with a new node they will opt to add a whole new channel rather than eject an existing node from an existing channel.
The MIDI Bus is by far my favorite new feature--it really, really improves usability so thank you. And yes, it does help with the problem I described, for sure. That said, there are some cases where a MIDI Bus for one MIDI connection doesn't make sense and that's the use case where the copy/paste of the routing and filtering makes more sense.
Again, thanks for the awesome update and for listening to users!
Yep! That grouping/folding option is the way to go. Definitely requires a thoughthful implementation though. Fingers crossed you work something out that is IF you are going to tackle this.
Anyways - thank you for this new update. Adds some really nice workflow improvements!
I prefer the tabbed groups myself I think. Especially if one can include a channel in multiple tabs. Useful to have a Master channel always visible, for example.
For zooming, I personally don’t think it really matters if things get unusable cos you can just zoom back in again.
It’d be great to be able to zoom out, quickly reorder tracks, then zoom back in again. Or zoom out for a fader mixing session, then zoom back in again to focus on individual tracks.
Much easier said than done though obviously 😜
Tab groups sounds like a great idea too.
One possible solution would be to collapse channels in a group into a compact accordion with skinny channels with a small icon at their top so that you see what is in the compacted group
wow, i already see the AUM balloon getting bigger and bigger and burst.
I thought it was cuz I was using an iPad. It’s symbols now glow in the dark with extra markings! I just had to bullshitpost, I’ll go straight back to reading the threads
I still think an overview view would be handy. In this view all channels would be reduced to a single icon with the channel level indicator you have now next to it, and at least part of the channel name. Tapping an icon would open the full view with that channel centered. Maybe there could be swipe up and down gestures for mute and solo or something too.
This would enable navigation to any track with just a few taps.
I’m trying to find some use cases how to use midi bus. Some complex routing that will turn my AUM sessions into a new world of pleasure...Any examples?
Interesting.. A mock-up will be nice..
Nice..
I agree that quickly zoom out and back in would be very nice. I think for large setups this would be a faster navigation than scrolling. For an overview it doesn’t matter that you can’t read the text. I would like that.
Another vote for tab groups.
Here are some examples of use case:
Of course, it has been mentioned several times: one bus for multiple inputs (or not) to multiple destinations, with quicker setup during creation workflow once made in amount.
I use quite often Helium. I made 16 busses: one per Helium track/channel. Each one of those busses are set to filter all CC coming from Helium. I also made a 17th bus with all CC coming from all 16 Helium tracks/channels, this time all notes are filtered. This allows to avoid CC to trigger AUV3 knobs via midi inputs (like Ruismaker), but this also allows to separate 17th CC bus routed to AUM midi control without any notes risking to trigger all midi actions (in my case 18 midi notes from Xequence pads buttons that I use as remote, but also three 4Pockets Midi Mixers instances which use midi notes for mute/solo on 12 different channels (72 midi notes in total!!!)… best to separate traffics!!! Much easier, set and forget.
That Xequence pads remote I made uses notes on ch15 (AUM midi control) and ch 16 (Helium loops), midi busses help separate things here too: Remote routed to ch 16 only bus routed to Helium, and also routed directly to AUM midi control which don’t use ch16 aka ch15 midi actions only. This allows to avoid to record ch15 Xequence actions in Helium as CH16 only is dedicated to remote loops.
Each bus allow to quickly transpose any instrument, but also filter any CC temporarily.
Busses can stop midi with play/stop button, cool for quick jam or auditions.
Quite often, when you want to use Helium or LK and want to use multi tracks, you have to set channels each time. Even, you have to choose a single channel per instrument even when replacing an AUV3. Channels settings are made in busses, so they will be kept even when swap an AUV3. That’s much faster. Busses are also on top of list in midi sources view and easy to read/choose with simple 1,2,3… names and quicker to use than Helium/LK busses IMO.
Then, you can also become creative and route busses to busses, use midi plugins: it will become a whole new sport 🏀 for sure!!! 😊
Thanks @Janosax! I was thinking about another use case the other day that makes use of helium’s exclusive stacking mode: you could have different instances with different parts of a song, all stacked in a bus. Then when you select one part of the song it excludes the other parts and vice versa. You could do this without the exclusionary stacking feature but it would take longer to work out the MIDI controls per instance.
Longer term, it’d be much easier to set the song parts in one instance of helium (or any other sequencer), instead of messing with separate instances.