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
Hopefully it won't matter at all. On the newer devices leaving the sample rate at 48k is the best option. You might encounter problems with plugins or samples that are expecting 44.1 but that should be pretty rare by now.
Depends on your projects and what you want. If you really need the control, say in a professional mastering situation, then it could matter.
For me, I treat my iPad more like a synth or guitar processing chain. So, as long as it sounds good to me everything is good. If I can think a freaking noisy ass class A guitar amp sounds amazing or the 12-bit output of an early DX7 is great, then my iPad is just fine. But, I did say above that if I were making recordings for archival purposes or for later mixing that I would want to use as high a bit rate and sample depth as I possibly could and because of that I wouldn't use my iPad for that job.
Seconded. 96khz is a waste of resources, unless the material was explicitely captured or synthesized for this rate.
Which means both adequate input for digitizing sources and playback devices.
Such stuff does exist (specialized publishers content), but it‘s pointless for all iTunes and streaming.
This all makes me wonder what happened to the oversampling AD/DA converters that used to be on early devices?
...I have an old Zoom 1202 FX unit, it's 16-bit 44.1K but it also uses 64x oversampling at the AD stage to minimize any kind of aliasing on the way in to the device and I've never heard any audible aliasing from it when using high-frequency saw waves etc.
The discussion has been totally focused on the iOS audio subsystem so far... but nothing keeps a DAW developer from simply implementing their own audio rendering altogether (and in fact, that's what I would recommend given the pretty lame documentation (at least 2 years ago) of AVAudioEngine and related stuff and the large amount of ambiguities). I'm pretty sure that's what NS2 does, for example. I don't think it uses the iOS audio libraries for anything other than hardware input and output (and of course (reluctantly in Matt's perspective) for hosting AUv3s).
I must admit that I'm not a huge fan of libraries/frameworks in general and tend to avoid them whenever I can, even if that means more implementation work... I'm just too burnt by bad documentation and bugs. But maybe I'm also just too demanding 😆
(in my defence though -- I have added experimental AUv3 hosting in Xequence just for the heck of it and the amount of "strangeness" I've encountered during that experiment -- both in terms of AVAudioEngine's documentation / behaviour and especially unstable / non-"standard"-conforming plugins -- has been so demotivating that I've quickly given up on it 😒 I have no idea how @j_liljedahl managed to make AUM that stable and compatible and forgiving 😁)
Anyway... that was a huge diversion. Just what you can expect when I enter a thread!
Funny, Zoom 1202 😄 my first FX unit, bought in 1997! I kept it all those years for decorative purposes!
Yes, but it does not work - in my tests, it spits out 48k files (without interface)!
Same here, with and without interface.
And this works even with NO interface attached!
Same as with MultiTrack DAW.
Strange things.
You would need to test with the interface attached and mixdown / export files to check the real rates that were used.
I will send back the SoundBlaster interface and most probably will never buy another.
Hi @tja and everyone,
auGEN X is an audio generator (hence the name, hah hah) - so I hadn't envisioned it to be a supersonic audio generator. This is why the frequency setting range maxes out at 20,480 Hz. That being said, you still can use auGEN X to generate harmonics above 20 kHz. Have it generate a saw at 6 kHz and you'll have harmonics at 12k, 18k, 24k, on up. At 48 kHz sample rate, the 4th harmonic (24 kHz) and up will fold back (i.e., alias). Switch to 96 kHz sample rate, and now the foldback won't start until the 8th harmonic (48 kHz). You can hear this easily by using auGEN X's Frequency Sweep feature. I've attached an auGEN X Preset (zipped) which demonstrates this. Import it into auGEN X and hear it for yourself. When the nominal 6 kHz saw slowly increases in frequency (pitches up), you'll hear the upper harmonics pitching down - this your aliasing. When you increase sample frequency from 48 kHz to 96 kHz, you'll hear the aliasing noticeably diminish. You don't need a fancy audio system to hear this phenomenon, even using my iPad's built-in speakers my middle-aged ears can hear it clear as a bell. (Note that I had to use my iTrack Dock for the 96 kHz test.)
I hope this helps. BTW, auGEN X is alias-suppressed not alias-free so this is why we can do this test. At musical fundamental frequencies (below around 4 kHz), you shouldn't have much trouble with aliasing.
Oh, many many thanks, @auDSPr !!!
Now, as auGEN X is used to create test tones, I would have expected it to work with higher frequencies
What if I need a sine wave at 1280kHz? i cannot expect your regular synth to create such audio ...
It would be great to use auGEN X for such cases ... hint ... hint
Just saying ...
And special thanks for the preset - will check this out!
Yes, way back in the day, along with a couple other plugins.
Since I am not commuting anymore and have Maschine I dont really get the itch to make new stuff on iOS so much but a lot of the old stuff can find new life on desktop.
I have a ton of tracks that I need to bounce out as audio before plugins/ios changes etc and they sound all messed up. I have a few now that are screwed up because of new AU issues.
Lots of delta-sigma type converters now where they do very high sample rate conversion at low bit depth and then convert that digitally to a lower sample rate but high bit depth signal. It allows for much easier to construct analog pre-filters and then use very good digital filters in the internal conversion as well as things like digital noise shaping to reduce quantization errors. Pretty slick stuff, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-sigma_modulation