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.

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Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

WIST and MIDI sync woes...

BuskaBuska
edited September 2014 in General App Discussion

I am unable to get any two apps on two ipad3's to sync for longer than a minute or two, everything drifts out of sync very quickly.

Is this just the way it is on ipad or is there something wrong with my ipads?
I have tried WIST and tried external MIDI hardware.

I am thinking of buying a iConnect4+ but dont want to buy that and then discover its useless to me.

Cheers

Comments

  • HalftoneHalftone

    Some apps have better clock sync than others. Few are rock solid. Loopy is well known for good sync. I have DM1 drum machine - but it always goes out of sync for me after 1 bar!

    I'm sure others can chime in on apps with good midi sync. Drumjam and Thumbjam sync well for me also. Trying to think of others...I know there are a few more. I think Beatmaker2 works pretty well?

  • BuskaBuska
    edited September 2014

    Hmm ok thought as much, looks like ios just isn't good with clock sync yet. Real pity..

    I wonder if gadget has a good midi clock sync.

    The app I wanted to work the most was samplr but it doesn't stay in sync.

    I've even tried just syncing one ipad to an external hardware midi clock with samplr and didn't last more than about 40 sec and was out of sync.

    I was hoping to slave samplr to the new korg electribe but it looks like a no go.

  • HalftoneHalftone

    no - i believe the sync on Gadget is useless.

  • ChrisGChrisG

    I tried syncing multiple apps yesterday. I've never really bothered with clock sync across a lot of apps over longer periods of time before. But I was looking at buying midibus to do just this in an easy way, yesterday.

    But first I did a small test, using SeekBeats as the master. I opened Gadget, DM1 and Rebirth. Started all 4 apps using clock sync from SeekBeats. Gadget was just impossible to sync up with no matter what, it was just way off to start with. DM1 kept up somewhat a bar or two before also totally drifting off. Rebirth on the other hand was totally solid (although I didn't try having it running for a longer period of time at this point). Rebirth also kept up with bpm changes all over coming from SeekBeats. The other apps just crapped out even more when adding bpm changes to the mix.

    That was only 4 apps, but I think it's safe to say that midi clock sync is still very much hit 'n miss. And some app combos might work better then others, while others won't at all, and so on.

    I didn't buy midibus after all this. Perhaps that app might have made things more solid somehow, I dunno, I'm back at the not even bothering stage again. :/

  • BuskaBuska

    I have bought midibus and midibridge. Neither helped.

  • KorakiosKorakios

    @Buska said:

    I have bought midibus and midibridge. Neither helped.

    http://www.audeonic.com/midibus/

    so ask the devs of the other apps to support midibus.

    2014 : a proper audio app must support AB2,IAA,midibus,audiocopy (including soundcloud,dropbox,box etc...) and audioshare(which I don't longer use much ,since retronyms audiocopy give me nice editing features)

  • sonosaurussonosaurus

    Coming from the perspective of a dev, it's the midi clock syncing that is the tricky part, and each app has to implement that themselves. The Midibus app (or the SDK) only provides functionality for solid clock sending, but it's the receiving end where the excrement hits the fan. It's pretty hard to get right, and I know that my apps have issues with it, but are a little better than some. A library that made this part of it easier for all of us would still be great for someone to produce (not me).

    IAA sync is technically much better, as it actually provides sample accurate syncing without all the pain of phase/delay locked loops, etc. The only issue is that it needs a single host app that can load up all the other ones as "plugins" and serve as the tempo/transport master.

    In other words, getting the right sync workflow is still a tricky problem to solve.

  • HalftoneHalftone

    But when you do get apps syncing - boy is it ever nice!

  • BiancaNeveBiancaNeve

    It's a shame that midi was never baked into audiobus really

  • obiwahnkentobiobiwahnkentobi

    we play often with 3-4 pad/phones and mostly tap/set the bpm manually runs then like a DJ....this works, but you spent parts of the creative energy into the technical part and this is sad....

  • BuskaBuska

    @obiwahnkentobi said:

    we play often with 3-4 pad/phones and mostly tap/set the bpm manually runs then like a DJ....this works, but you spent parts of the creative energy into the technical part and this is sad....

    Yup that's what I've decided to do also.. More reliable than any midi solution I've found so far :/

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