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 Store

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

Pick a DAW, any DAW (Er... Help ME pick a DAW)

13

Comments

  • Sorry that wasn't very helpful but its what I ended up doing...

    I now use BM2 for most stuff...it's a great arranger....

    I use Auria for live recording and finalising mixes....

    I use Cubasis a little less than BM2 as its editing of midi notes is less intuitive and a bit fiddly...

    I use Garageband on occasion to add some nice pianos.....and guitar...

    Multitrack DAW I use on my iphone when doodling to transfer later as audio....

    Nanostudio I stopped using when BM2 got Audiobus...

  • Nanostudio announced it will be on the bus in a few weeks (the dev is just one guy who is also working on NS2). That is what I am waiting for with fierce anticipation. For all the ups or downs people may find with it, i find NS the most intuitive. The piano roll (to me) is more malleable than BM2 and easier to do so. I am not saying it is better for everybody else, i am saying that for me there was very little learning curve in NS and i can get things where and how i want them without compromise or tutorials. BITD I got BM1 on sale, hoped for better, got BM2 when it first came out, tried it hoping/expecting it to be intuitive like NS, and then it sat there collecting virtual dust. BM2 has only come back on my radar recently because of audiobus. Now forced to use BM2 i am excited about its community because there are nice samples to be had and advice etc due to its wide adaptation and following but it still can be a struggle. I dont have anything against BM2 per se, its just that i love NS to bits!

  • I agonized over which DAW to get and ultimately settled on BM2. I would've gotten Auria or Cubasis if I thought they were better, but BM2 really seems like the best all around choice for the moment.

  • BM2's got a lot of bang for the buck, but I am eager to start using NanoStudio in the Output slot! :D

  • @matthew so did I for weeks following this and other threads avidly. Finally decided on Cubasis and am now regretting this with its current UNDO bug and screen dimming (plus the £39.99 price tag). Now back to Garageband and looking with envy at the other DAWs and sequencers (Yamaha) now coming on board. If only I had waited! But it seems there is always a more attractive app around the corner. I shall wait until Steinberg gets its act with its monthly updates together and return to Cubasis. But I am tempted with .............!!!!!!!

  • Seriously, all the DAWs have their issues. They also have their plus points. There is no best all round choice. It's all largely subjective, so use what you have, unless you find you really hate it, in which case get something else.

  • Wow, looks like this old thread still has some life left in it.

    For you Nanostudio lovers, what is so great about it? Truthfully, I never had one bit of desire to get it but I must say that many on this forum whose opinions I trust speak highly of it. While it's not a fair comparison, could any of you compare it to older deskop DAWs like Pro Tools, Ableton, FL Studio? Where i think I see value in it is for using it specifically for Audiobus ideas, especially MIDI, then transferring them all to Auria for mastering. But how about the new N-Track and of course MT? If it's for the midi, got it, but aside from that, how is it more intuitive than any of the DAWs I just mentioned?

  • 24-bit is the recording standard for the music industry now. It just is. I doubt it will go anywhere beyond 24/96, but iOS development needs to catch up here, and I'm sure it's primarily because of the number of ipad 3 and below devices out there.

    I keep finding the Xiph.org article floating around on forums discussing the issue, but in that very article near the end they state that you'd want 24-bit recorded to have headroom for processing/effects.

    I liked Nanostudio at first, but the number of feature requests ignored over a couple years of very sparse updates ultimately disappointed me. I generally liked working with it, but at this point I'm more interested in the fabled "NS2". I was most disappointed with the fact the dev didn't add virtual midi support when that became a possibility on iOS. That said, I still got a lot done with it, especially using it to interpret Chopin Preludes from notation.

    But, the keyboard sampler doesn't time stretch samples, which is a definite annoyance, because higher pitched notes will play shorter than lower ones, which will often mess up your composition. I prefer the song/midi editor of it compared to beatmaker 2. I don't like nanosync at all, but it is better than nothing.

    At this point, since Beatmaker 2 is the most fully-featured, I'll use that until midi in Auria comes about. I won't touch Cubasis unless they drop its price, as BM2 flat out slays it on features for price.

    However, at this point for the next project I'm working on, I'm looking to bring together Reason 7, Logic, Geist, and Auria. I'm slightly underwhelmed with most sound design options on iOS at the moment.

  • edited May 2013

    @AQ808 - thanks for the feedback on Nanostudio. as for 24 bit, bro, you're preaching to the choir here. (read earlier parts of this thread). You won't find much love for that from our Audiobus brothers except for maybe me, dubhaus and a few others. On a related note that dubhaus brought up before regarding dither, theres a new app called Audio Mastering that mgmg posted about where the appstates it has dithering with noise shaping. Still trying to grasp how it can work in my workflow. I dont see it being a contender agaisnt Auria for mastering since it doesnt even have a limiter.

  • The Audio Mastering app does appear to have a limiter. They call it the "Loudness Maximizer" and it has a response speed setting and a ceiling setting. If you look at the screenshot these are on the far right-hand side of the main screen.

  • Actually, 24 bit audio is great, providing valuable headroom when processing FX and mixing, etc., but you'd better stay within Auria or (insert favourite 24 bit capable DAW here) to do it, because once you feed your audio through Audiobus, that data is rendered as 16 bit and any extra dynamic detail is gone for good. A bit like driving a double decker bus through a single decker tunnel...

  • @PaulB Lol. Nice analogy.

  • @PaulB said "A bit like driving a double decker bus through a single decker tunnel..." LOL...
    I imagine driving a double decker bus driving thru a double decker tunnel, but there would be an army of clowns with ultra fine sandpaper in the tunnel who would take the sheen off of the bus.
    Still looks like a bus, still smells like a bus, but it has lost is glossy new finish.

  • 24 bit is most important for headroom on capture. After that, who cares as long as it sounds good.

    Nanostudio is great for lots of reasons but mainly because of the workflow. It's just a buttery app, lots of attention to detail. Still the best piano roll on iOS, good synth, good file system, good effects, lots of tracks... It's weird but I think one of the things that makes it great is the lack of features people want like midi out and audiobus. There's very very little distraction when making music in Nanostudio.

  • edited May 2013

    Hey! I used to be a tour guide on a double decker bus in San Francisco, haha. And when we started, the drivers were new and there were specific routes you had to take, but every now and then, theyd get lost and we would sometimes go thru these narrow tunnels and both me and driver were scared we wouldnt fit and would slow down, being prepared to backup. Oh, i was maybe in the 10-20% of tour guides who told actual facts. It shocked me how many tour guides would just make stuff up or give inaccurate information, haha, but as long as the tourists were happy to think they were seeing jimi hendrix's house, then they figured who cared.

    @MrNezumi - Thanks! I did not know that. I wish they didnt have to put fancy marketing names for basic features. @syrupcore - thanks! actually you're one of the gents i was referring to in my last post who spoke highly of ns, it always made me curious about it.

  • Nanostudio could end up the best Audiobus daw overall if the update comes out......

  • Maybe ns2 will be but the upcoming audiobus update will not have midi out.

  • edited May 2013

    I've just joined this thread and I see the original poster was in the same predicament as me - recording live guitars and running DM1 into Garageband. So obviously GB becomes limited, it doesn't sync with DM1! What other DAWS sync with DM1? I'm looking for something hardy with some decent mastering effects, but don't want to blow my money before some thing better gets 'on the bus'.

  • MIDI sync is a bit of an iOS bone of contention. I'm not sure any app does it well.

  • MultiTrack DAW in my opinion is the best daw out there, never had a problem with it, and is always ready to work. Im a purist allways using ONLY the iPad :-)

  • Nanostudio 1.4 (with limited AB support) has been approved by apple! He's just waiting on them to approve the OSX version before releasing. There's another little bit of awesome for Nanostudio: free desktop versions to work on a larger screen.

  • Hi all

    Been following this thread for awhile and been using ios music apps for a while, personally I don't get bogged down with if its 24 or 16 bit, I'm coming from a more old school way of producing music, I started as a tape op/assistant in the late 80's in a UK studio and so learnt to edit and record on 2inc, 24trk tape machines, I did chuckle at the quote in this thread about Geoff Emerick as I was lucky to be his tape op/assistant on many sessions and that was very much how he was, we always joked he had dogs ears because of the fact he could hear things no one else could hear, but it was down to his experience and he knew how a bit of gear should sound.

    Back to what I'm trying to get across, I'm still amazed by what I can do with an ipad and some music apps, I see loads of apps now which I have used the analogue version years ago, so far Auria is my favourite DAW but that's more to do with the layout is familiar to me and it sounds good, I'm also about to do some testing with my ipad and a Focusrite 18i20 recording bands with Auria, so should be interesting, it reminds me of the days when computers started to come into studios, it was a bit hit and miss and when you compared the sound of drums recorded on a Ampex 16trk to the computer then we never was that interested, it got better over the years but took a while and still to this day I struggle with getting that sound from a DAW with out throwing plugins all over it, don't get wrong I love the modern way to produce music but I do miss the old kit.

    I could waffle on about this all day, what I was always told is use your ears, yes it's good to know all the tech about how and why it works but if it sounds good to you then that's all that matters, a lot of the artist I worked with would had no clue what frequencies we where talking about, they just knew when it sounded right.

    Any way that's my 2 pence worth of randomness , loving the community on here and hope to report on my adventures with ipad and Focusrite 18i20, one last thing I apologise now for my bad grammar and punctuation. Sound is my thing, not writing.

  • +1 For how it sounds is really what matters.

  • Ok mandrakonian I think Multitrack looks best, as I usually like to use the 'Bus for my plugins, all I need is basic compression, reverb and the ability to sync apps like JamUp, DM1 and Loopy. Looking forward to more insights from Patrickmoore!

  • Multitrack doesn't sync with apps at this point.

  • @PatrickMoore - Wow, how did I miss your post to this thread? You assisted Geoff Emerick??? You've got to share some tips mate! Please, I'm throwing any bit of dignity and shame away and begging haha.

    I'll confess to being one of the geeks who brought up the 16 bit /24 bit part (though not the only one). What's funny is i also strongly believe in using one's ears but it's because of my using an old 16 bit VS-880 for years with an Alesis SR-16 (16 bit as well I believe) and then later on using the Alesis HD24 that made me realise what i'd been lacking all along. Granted the interfaces I was using also played big role but there was just so much additional detail I could "hear" in the 24 bit recordings that had been lacking in the 16 bit recordings. Also not to bring up a whole other debate but again, using my ears, tape has always added something to the low end (kick, bass) that digital has only recenty been able to add. Imagine if Hendrix or the Beatles recorded some of their classic tracks on digital vs tape. Might be sonically cleaner but that grittiness that added to the magic wouldn't be there. Anyways my point is I always rely on my ears first, but that is a given, after that, with price being controlled, whats wrong with ensuring the geeky recording requirements are there, since it frees up the creative part of brain to enjoy.

    Main question to you is which apps would Geoff use?

  • edited May 2013

    @gjcyrus you alluded to it but for sure the difference you heard between those two devices is down to component quality, including and especially converters, not the extra 8 bits. Those machines are a world apart. The Roland was one of the first available personal digital 8 tracks at a very affordable price (read: cheap parts!). The alesis was a pro deck.

  • edited May 2013

    @syrupcore - I agree and disagree. On one hand, yes, the components probably made a big difference although truthfully, I'm not an expert when it comes to the guts and circuitry of the AD/DA converters that Roland VS-880 had vs an Alesis unit. But because I had an extra 8 bits to work with, I didn't always have to get the hottest levels short of clipping going in to capture details.

    Let me emphasize again that yes, everybody should be able to get a good recording with 16 bit. It is such a minor thing compared to using your ears, room acoustics, reference monitors, etc.. I'm not knocking it as I used it for years. But if price is not an issue, what is wrong with recording at 24 bits? I don't want to beat a dead horse here as I only posted again because I saw that Patrick worked with Geoff Emerick and Id love to learn even one new trick that one of the greatest recording masters of all time used.

  • Nothing wrong with it all. I'm all for recording in 24bit! Just saying that the sonic difference in those units has much more to do with parts and engineering than bit rate. Like, if you were somehow able to get the alesis to record in 16bit, it would still be totally night and day - especially after the tracks started stacking up.

  • Sorry, your wrong.

    The frequencies we cannot hear do indeed intermix like water ripples do causing sound inflections therefore effecting the frequencies we actually do here. It is noticeable but only to a very small percentile of the population. Is it worth worrying about, probably not but to say it is mathematically impossible because of human limits inherent to our frequency range is in point of fact just bad out of date information.

    Best IOS daw is Auria. It has track freezing so an ipad 2 will work. Baring that Mulitrack DAW is a very good recording app to.

Sign In or Register to comment.