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
It might just join the graveyard of great apps that you should use for what they are great at, not for what they could be.
It's a shame it didn't stay with MG and become what it could have been.
Reports of BM3's death have (yet again) been greatly exaggerated!
The most likely cause of corrupt projects is pressing the save button and then force-quitting the app whilst it is still part-way through the process of writing edited samples and project files to disk (NB - this is not an instantaneous action, even on solid-state storage!). As was already suggested, leave a few extra seconds after saving before force-quitting the app and you shouldn't ever encounter a corrupt project -- as is the case with me after 4 1/2 years of regular use.
In July this year, BM3 celebrates its 5th anniversary. So is it really any wonder that the gap between updates have gradually started to grow longer and the new features added a little less ambitious?
In its current form it is still a stable and competitive host capable of making awesome music. It still competes with every DAW that has been released since 2017. It still does things no other host can do esp. with sampling. It always had audio tracks. And stability has improved substantially since the earlier years (when iPads shipped with much less RAM than they do nowadays).
Long live Beatmaker!
Full disclosure: I have been a BM3 fan, Intua forum mod, BM3 Discord admin and occasional apologist for Intua, since July 2017.
Here to ruffle feathers.
Beatmaker 4
The lack of engagement from the BM3 developer has been a huge disappointment for me. The Koala dev has shown how it’s done in that respect.
But it is still alive!
Make music. ✌️
I just pulled it out before. On iOS it's definitely unparalleled for features.
That said it's complexity is it's downfall in a lot of ways.
Wuuuut??!? Wow!
Super
I am happy with stability and any little bug fixes
But would be great if there’s something new
Love me some BM3
So fingers crossed to an update
Sometimes when people are pissed off with the lack of updates, I always comment on how it was with BM2. It took some long periods between some updates. But it was worthwhile
Hoping for this to be the case with BM3
In the meantime, BM3 is beastly good at its strengths.
I think so too. For me it's stable enough (using my ol' iPad Mini 2) and I ended up offloading Cubasis in favor of BM3
I started with BM3 and after a long, circuitous exploration I ended right back there. It was actually spending time in BM2 that gave me a better understanding of what BM3 was all about.
So glad to see a hint of something on the horizon 😀
I tried BM3 for so long and I honestly couldn't get the hang of it. The UI was annoying, the lack of built-in sounds annoyed me for the price it cost, it crashes at least once every time I use it with AUs, I don't sample a ton so the sampler isn't as relevant to me, and it had more menu diving than I want to deal with. The biggest thing was the crashing and random hiccups I ran into while being in the zone and straight up losing presets that won't reload.
For me, Korg Gadget solved all those issues and Cubasis is my preffered AU host. I'm interested to see if they do an update or just release the 4th version.
@KirbyMumbo
How long ago did you use BM3?
It hasn’t crashed on me for months
But always save often ( just in case)
I love using the scene mode
And the sampler is still my favourite
It’s still a gem in my mind, if you haven’t used it since the last update, might be worth trying again
In the mist of all these sales, trying BM3 might click, I recently have started going back through my older apps and delving deeper, some feel like new apps to me
At this point I have far too many tools I'm proficient in to want to learn BM3. The lack of content/instruments is also a problem for me, especially when Gadget has a cadre of synths/romplers and I've invested into that environment heavily. Even Cubasis has a ton of presets and a synth. Both have samplers that are good enough for my needs and Gadget has some really solid FX.
I'm sure it's good and I keep it around as an option if I ever get the urge, but I just haven't had it. I've been too busy generating and remixing tracks with Beatly Pro and Loopmix.
It’s stable for me , but I use it pretty much entirely for the sampler…that’s what distinguishes it.
There are a ton of sound packs available in the Intuia store directly on BM3.
That's fine but for $30 or whatever, I expected some sounds built-in, especially since you can get gadget for $40 with like 8 synths, 4 drum machines, and a few romplers. Gadget also has expandable instruments, Korg Module, and it's other synths that are also full apps in their own right.
It's my fault for not doing my research properly early on and buying what I saw others using. I'm not shitting on it, I just personally couldn't find a workflow in it that didn't frustrate me.
I'm interested to see their update, though.
ENI is selling a good sounds bundle for $30 thru November . Gadget ended up costing me some cash.
I was on the betatesting team for BM3 before its initial release, and I found a ton of bugs that I reported. For whatever reason it was still released with many bugs and instabilities. These seem to mostly have been ironed out however, and it is one helluva sampling tool and DAW that has audio tracks unlike coughNS2cough.
My wish is for the remaining bugs to be ironed out and for BM3 to be ported to iPhone. It might very well be the perfect DAW environment for producing Lofi which is the genre I'm currently obsessed with.
Ultimately, it is a doomed vessel.
The main developer has been gone for ages, that’s why there have been no new features added…
We allllll know Apple will ultimately kill it in an update and that will be it.
I don’t think Intua can do anything major to their own platform now
I could be incorrect…but I don’t think I am
I am however not dissing beatmaker3 it’s more powerful than many sampler platforms out there. I don’t want it to die. I would like for it to get sold to a developer that can go forewarn with it. It’s obvious intua can not do this. Like I said in the initial post it has great great potential. If it was a hardware sampler OS it would be the best hardware Sampler on the market
So here’s to hope!
Let’s hope it floats
@jwmmakerofmusic
Same here, I was really getting in to the app but the file management was what put me off using it. I seem to recall the main issue was that the app kept all my takes when recording audio and it was a nightmare trying to keep things tidy without accidentally deleting the samples I was using,
It got changed a little bit
First of all to auto save you need to swipe up to the app switcher screen
Second, it auto creates a folder for every session and saves the samples inside
There are some(very small number) known bugs that you can workaround easily.
And third, if you want ease of use, start using the the built in browser and tagging system, you can easily tag and save fx chains, plugins, routings and etc.
All in all. BM3 is very stable and still is the fastest app for music creation.
If you have some extremely complicated workflow or you’re using a lot of latency inducing plugins, BM3 is not for you.
And If you don’t, It’s superior at most things it does well.
I still use BM3.
I actually think part of the problem is that it was ahead of it’s time and too ambitious. With the newer powerful hardware you can really push the capabilities.
My only real peeve with it is the same overlapping midi notes issue that has been there from day one. You can finger drum some very realistic fills but can’t record them properly. 🙁
The timestretch algorithm in BM3 is still the best on iOS. For me, it is a robust solution and I rarely had a crash. I agree that the workflow is not very intuitive and can be disappointing
One thing to mention, you need an empty wave on a pad to save it as an fx chain and save routings
And you can save it as a template for future use