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'm in the United States but I'll check it out anyways. Thanks for the tip.
Which video you mean?The one in this thread clearly mentioned Air 2 and iPhone 6 only with a lot of explanation why.It seems clear that only this two devices are affected by the"scrollview"bug from everything i found (out)and read from different developer (and not just here).There might be something else on Air 1 but i never read from any user that he could run just 8 tracks in Gadget or that Auria starts to glitch with a roundabout 45% of CPU load.This is my 5ths iPad and i NEVER experienced something similar before.And i'm pretty sure now that also Cubasis is affected by this.I made a lot of music on it the last two weeks and it it was a glitchparty as well as soon as the cpu meter hit the 40-50% mark.With nothing else running in the background and ONLY cubasis internal FX and instruments.I could cry about this bullshit,really it makes me depressive.Fuck you apple.
Reminder:DON'T BUY AN AIR 2 IF CREATING COMPLEX MUSIC IS YOUR GOAL!
At least for now...
I wouldn't go that far. Personally, my experience with my air2 has been pretty nice. The biggest issues I've had have been with loopy, but that seems to be fixed in the upcoming update. I can totally understand frustrations with this strange bug, but most of the issues I've had were the same on my air1 and cropped up around ios8 time. I'm mostly making music with patches I've made for mobmuplat lately, and I'd argue that I can create quite complex music with that single app alone. It's really all how you are using the software though, so it can be much worse for some configurations than others. Let's just hope things start to smooth out in the coming years of the ios music world.
I definitely meant the warning serious.When it comes to music i have less available power for my (and others) most important apps.In fact,less than on my Mini Retina (again:only with music related apps).Good for you that everything works but that only shows me that you simply don't stress your cpu enough and and therefore even a device much older than the Air 2 would do the trick for you.I build complex songs on it with up to 25 tracks with full arrangements (mostly arround 8-10 minutes long) and a lot of FX and i need all power i can get.But my mini retina was already there ,all i want is that i got at least this power back.
@Crabman I'm sorry for your trouble. I would guess, by the sound of your projects, that you are an outlier amongst outliers and as such the waiter may not be in any hurry to catch your eye.
I feel your pain @crabman. The bottom line is that newer technology should "do more", but due to whatever reasons... the air2 apparently does less. And that is supremely frustrating.
I totally understand. It's super frustrating when stuff gets worse with an update/hardware upgrade. Unfortunately it seems that is a reoccurring theme in the ios world. I've come to accept it and work around it where I can. I do admit that I probably run less intensive setups now than I once did. I'm just weighing in with my personal experience. Back on ios7 this used to be the live setup I had in place for shows: beatmaker+mic->turnado->loopy->effectrix and then a separate chain for some noise stuff (usually modular or rrarrow). This was on an air1 I believe.
I don't know if this would work anymore on my ipad air2/ios8. Even back then I ran into glitches though and eventually made a mobmuplat patch that pretty much pulls all the stuff I need from those individual apps into one. To each their own. Air2 will be fine for some folks and terrible for others. Personally, it's been nice for me. I feel you though, seems like all apple is doing is making stuff worse these days.
It was Michael's video. Looks like I came across it when you linked to it on the Gadget support site haha. I just watched it again and I guess I was remembering the end where he just says "iPad Air" but now I see that he does specify "Air 2" for most of the video.
Sounds like it has to do with the way iOS 8 handles multithreading priority differently for newer iOS devices so all that devs can do at this point would be to try to work around the issue until an OS update hopefully brings the needed changes.
Essentially Apple has nerfed the Music Production competition of say a Mac book air or the up coming ipad pro...
I had delivery of a new (base model) retina iMac yesterday. All lovely, and worked really well.....apart from sluggish 1990's PowerMac style handling of certain graphic formats. .pdf's in particular sent the beachball into a fury of spinningness if I had the audacity to zoom in and try and move them around. After spending a few hours with Apple support, finding the same files worked perfectly well on my 3 year old MacBook Pro and 4 year old PC, and discovering the same issue reported on countless forum threads, I decided to send it back.
It seems the issue is with the mobile graphics card they've used with the base model - it can't handle the high resolution during certain tasks (Mission Control also judders like a juddery thing), but users that have upgraded to the higher power card seem to find everything works ok.
This kind of makes me wonder about all the Air 2 issues I've seen reported - is this a similar case of underpowered hardware components? Some Apple support have suggested the iMac problem is OS related, and that a fix will be found, but it's been out for 6 months and nothing's been fixed yet, and if this was the case I wouldn't be able to duplicate the issue in Acrobat reader, and it wouldn't be fixed with a hardware upgrade. I wonder if software updates really will fix the Air 2 woes or it's another case of Apple rushing out a product without proper testing.
I can't imagine what would be underpowered in the air2. It made sense when the iPad 3 came out with the higher resolution screen and not enough power.
I thought it was all software, related to the healthkit stuff which has no appeal to me. Put that crap on the iWatch and let the rest of us use iPads to get things done and make music.
Whatever it is.... the same problem is on my retina Macbook pro. It has an i7 quadcore and can run tons of synths but when i open 1-2 UI or scrolling the sequencer while the audio is playing i get CPU spikes.
Are you on Yosemite? That seems to have a few issues, my MBP on Mountain Lion runs absolutely fine.
Yes. I have an late 2013 model which came with Mavericks. Maybe i should try to go back...
Apple don't tease m ereally with all these bugs last time. I would switch to windows but the loss would be to high yet.
There does seem to be less issues reported with ML. I'm trying to get away from the dreaded Windows though - really annoying I've had to return the iMac and go back to my PC desktop!
Along the lines of what I stated in another post to a different topic a few minutes ago, I'm starting to have less faith in apple making the systems that "Just work." Recently seeing a chromebook in action (I realize it's a very different purpose than a full laptop, so not for music production, but very good for my day job work), that's a system that as far as I can tell "Just works." It was also really fast and very easy to use.
I'm not going back to windows ever either, and if Linux was able to be more of a standard without so much futzing about I'd still be on that. But I'm tired of fixing computers these days, I'd rather just use it and have it work. So far the ipad has been good but I think a restore is in order on my air as I've started to get a lot of crashes in safari and some other news sites, perhaps related to scrolling, I don't know. But it seems to be happening more lately.
I think they've always been a bit unpredictable. The PowerMac I had 20 years ago wasn't as glitch free as the Quadra's they'd produced previously, and I returned a MacBook pro about four years ago due to the intense heat it was pumping out, even with the fans on constant full power. They've tweaked the non-retina iMacs and newer MacBook Pro's to perfection, and the iPad Air 1 is apparently a cracker, but elsewhere they've dropped the ball it seems.
I do wonder if "retina" is the issue. I'm not a very big visual person, but I don't recall having a screen that "sucked." But as I said, I don't edit any serious video or do visual art or photography, so maybe that's why I don't care.
It's painful sending back the iMac. The retina thing isn't just about making photos look good - text and other UI elements look superb, and make life easier for my poor old eyes. It's a luxury if you don't need it though - we've got a big branding contract just in so wanted to treat ourselves to a decent machine.
The issue with retina, and particularly the iMac is the amount of oomph needed to generate and refresh all those extra pixels. Probably why the much more powerful iMac processor doesn't seem to provide any noticeable performance increase compared to my 3 year old Macbook Pro - all that extra power is being used up keeping the massive screen refreshed.
That is a better way of explaining what I meant. My friend is starting to look at macs for music now and was asking me yesterday about the retina iMac. Your post was timely. I've been advising him towards a Mac mini if he's going desktop. I still do my music computer work on a 2007 black macbook though, so hearing about newer machines not keeping up is a little confusing. I understand though, that seems like it was the issue with the ipad3 as well, although my wife has one and uses it every day with no issues (not for music)
I think the standard iMac's are good, but the new retina one is no faster than my mid 2012 Macbook Pro.
Something to look out for if you're using it for music making is whether it has separate sockets for headphones and mic. My MBP does which saves the hassle of buying splitters and whatnot, but the retina iMacs and MBP's have an integrated socket.
A second-hand non-retina MBP like mine might be an option for your friend, my one handles Logic with ease and has zero latency. It's probably the best computer I've ever owned.
I have to agree.... for me there is no way back to a non-retina screen once you have used it (a bit the same like i made the jump to my HD-TV). But the problem is really that the retinas eaten up all the new power and sometimes even worse they let you jump back if you need to push a lot pixels (see iPad 3). If they now also change something behind the scenes or some new bugs (see iPad Air 2) it looks great but that does't mean it performs good. I heard that some of the problems with the retina Macbooks can be solved via using an extern monitor.... not the greatest solution if you like to be mobile.
I'm a bit scared what will happen if they really release an iPad Pro (with maybe 4 times the pixels again?) and or Macbook Air retina with 12". How will they power all the pixels with even less powered graphic cards etc. I really wish they would just release every 2-3 years new devices instead of making one step forwards, then 1 1/2 back and then maybe 2 forwards again : ). But then no one push me to buy a new toy every year.... beside the voice in my head
.
However, this is how the market works today. Think we could use everything for years would be the end of the huge marges. At least i'm still using just my iPhone 5 (even if i would like to upgrade to a 6) and my iPad Air and try to hold them until they break. I must say the iPhone 5 is a very robust device when i think what i have done with this thing. Not sure if an 6 plus would still live.
@monzo, I understand completely. My friend is not one to buy used, I do it often and don't usually have issues. But he knows what he wants. He's also not a visual artist, so non retina would work absolutely perfectly for him.
Not sure if this is related to the issue Michael bought up in the vid, but was having a session in turnado yesterday, standalone, no other apps open and in airplane mode on my air 2, was getting quite a few audio glitches whilst playing and in my recordings. Was probably at the same level as when I ran turnado in ab, with an app on the input and output channels too, using my ipad 3, was frustrating. Not sure if this is something sugar bytes or apple needs to address, but that shouldn't be happening so often with all the juice an air 2 has under the hood.
I can't see how it could be a hardware issue and we're definitely not dealing with underpowered hardware. As far as I can tell, it's a software issue that has to do with the way iOS 8 handles multithreading priority differently for newer iOS devices. They've set some arbitrary threshold parameters for how the newer devices are handled which happens to interfere with realtime audio apps on those devices.
Foolishly, I keep clicking on this thread hoping to find the promised good news.
How is 3x performance gains in audiobus and loopy not good news?
@shortbus
I'm hoping apple is working on a solution that comes before ios 9 as the air 2 is impressive from a technical pov.
Here's even more good news: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Ipadmusician/permalink/793210270733589/
If it would be 6x the performance gains without the multi threading issue?