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 expect iOS 17 will introduce multiple audio interface support.
While I don't care about Logic Pro on iOS, I do believe that Apple having more skin in the game will bring many benefits for better plugin support, better file management, and better audio device support.
Call me a cynic but I'm pretty certain the motivation to add multi-threaded audio support to iOS was mainly in support of their background development bringing Logic Pro to iOS. Opening the OS to custom audio driver support was another subtle change that I bet was part of the strategy.
You’re right, DriverKit makes sense in the context of Logic market development… interesting that Apple calls out a bunch of interface companies on their Logic for iPad website - Apogee, Focusrite, Novation, Universal Audio
Potentially, a lot of iPad musicians might benefit without having to sell their soul to the devil via a subscription… 😁
That's an apt metaphor. 😂
Though, I think the real Devil's plan is more of a reverse rent to own scheme. 😉
Curious, but why do you/we need more than one audio interface to iPad?
Isn’t just buy something bigger for more ports in/out?
Many synths and grooveboxes have built-in audio interfaces these days, if you want to use them with other audio interfaces you can’t on iPad… it is strictly one at a time.
On Mac you just setup an aggregate audio device with as many as you want…
I think that it is for multi recording like to record a physical drum kits with 5 mic or a band live on LP. Is it that ?
Stopping there ... but the more I think about it the more uses I think of.
Not really, many hardware synths now come with combined USB audio/midi interfaces - I have a Roland Jupiter Xm that delivers 8 audio channels over USB. In Logic on a Mac I can access them all individually, as well as the inputs from a bunch of other devices I have connected via USB.
That way I only need a simple 2-channel audio interface for guitar and microphone…
Still a lot of new core audio job postings at Apple…I hope they found the people they need for iOS 17…otherwise we are looking at iOS18 or later to get iPadOS audio up to snuff
Interesting info didn’t know a lot about harware synth
I can highly recommend this interface for the desired 2 channels.
The sound quality is really amazing for this price.
Audient iD4 (MKII)
https://audient.com/products/audio-interfaces/id4/overview/
Look at thisvideo on connecting interfaces.
It looks like the Audio Settings inside Logic Pro actually allows for selecting hardware in/out… has anyone actually tried connecting multiple interfaces?
Yes, and it works quite well.
Currently there's no way to 'aggregate' (ie. merge inputs and outputs from multiple devices into one virtual device) so you can only pick one device for input and another device for output.
As an example I've used an Audio Technica USB-Turntable which is an In/Out device, selected it only for input and then chosen the iPad speaker as the output. I've also used my Audient ID4Mk2 to record audio with playback thru the Steinberg UR-242.
Some things 'just work'
Wow that’s awesome, I think if logic can do it AUM could do it also @j_liljedahl ??
I’d love to see Roland release a new driver for the MC-707 that allows all 8 tracks to stream to iOS like they have on Mac and Windows. That would be a dream come true!
I remember being able to do that with BM3 so AUM should be able to do it.
I had AT LP120-USB as input and my interface as output.
It already does! MENU -> Settings -> Output Route and Input Source.
Note that iOS does not support aggregated audio devices like macOS does, so it simply means you can switch between the connected devices. The possibility to have different devices as input and output seems to be a bit dependent on the audio devices. Sometimes iOS automatically switch the Input as well if you select another Output device, or vice versa. Let me know if you find that Logic Pro allows some combination here that AUM doesn't, and I will revisit it.
Check This out...
...I can't do this in AUM.
(Screen's messy I know, it's just a quick to show how it works).
Cool! Indeed that's not possible in AUM, but would love to support it if I only knew how
There's a chance this is a feature not available to other DAWs.
Is your turntable an audio source only, or does it present itself as both input and output?
The Chip / CODEC used inside presets it self as a device capable of both input & output.
...the audio you send to it will be sent out thru the line-output of the record player so in practice it's an 'audio interface'
with the pick-up after RIAA amp/filter hard-wired to the ADC.
There must be someone in the dev-world outside Apple who knows how to select any enumerated device connected to the iPad.
When the automatic device selection is turned off in Logic it behaves like AUM.
(Don't know how to debug and trace apps in detail but monitoring the device when selecting the devices in Logic could reveal something?!)
If possible bug the heck out of Apple as this feature is something that would benefit every single host on the iPhone & iPad.
So, I've been investigating this further. I tried the same thing as you, with a Scarlett 6i6 (which has both in and out) and it did work!
Interestingly, if I enable "run in background" in Logic Pro, this possibility carries over to AUM as well
So while Logic was running in background, I could have audio interface -> speaker in an AUM channel strip.
Also, both audio interface and mic input is then available in AUM Settings "Input Source".
However, as far as I know there's no API to get a list of available outputs and select between them. This might be a hidden feature only supported by Logic Pro. AVAudioSession has
availableInputsandsetPreferredInputbut no such thing for outputs.Then let the real 'bugging' begin
My guess is that at least a few audio developers must have downloaded and dissected Logic Pro for iPad prior to heading of the WWDC'23 labs to 'interrogate' the reps there digging out every last bit of intel they could squeeze out of them.
Hopefully this can be sorted out sooner rather than a few years from now...
Any chance this might help?
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfaudio/avaudiosession/category/1616484-multiroute
No, the issue is that there is no available API to get a list of available outputs, or to select one of them. This is probably an internal API that they use in Logic Pro, unavailable for us mortal developers.
If a group of developers 'ganged up' and got in touch with Apple they might be willing to share?
This is honestly in the best interest of every single audio-developer doing stuff on iOS/iPadOS.
Considering that iPadOS 16.4 is the minimum version required to run Logic there might be some stuff added in there that allows this?!
I wish you all best of luck! Sooner or later you'll be able to do it too
@j_liljedahl If this is of any help...
https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/71008
"On iOS the AVAudioInputNode and AVAudioOutputNode provide the devices appropriate to the app's AVAudioSession category configuration for input and output. On macOS, these nodes communicate with the system's default input and output. (AVAudioIONode.h)"
Smells a bit anti-competitive if Apple really are using an undocumented OS API in a user-level application to provide themselves with what is effectively an, albeit minor, commercial advantage over rival hosts.
Fair enough if they just have not got to documenting it yet as it is a new API, or it is documented but not in obvious way.
CoreAudio on macOS gives you functions (AudioObjectGetPropertyData etc.) to find hardware, determine its properties and retrieve the IDs you need to, for example, configure an IO audio unit to use the hardware. Those functions aren't available on iOS.
Exactly. Instead we have AVAudioSession with its currentRoute etc, and availableInputs. But no availableOutputs function
Any chance iOS 17 gave developers like @j_liljedahl the ability to use multiple audio interfaces like Logic Pro does? I'd love to be able to use my Analog Four as a class compliant device alongside the headphone jack or another interface.