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.

Synchronisation between apps : differences in timing ?

saxophonicksaxophonick
in Support and Feedback

Hi all,

I've tried for months to establish a nice, fluid workflow with Audiobus, which is pretty stable and reliable.

But I'm having some issues succeeding, which refrains me from being able to just to finish up ideas

Fyi, my day job involves using music computers and applications, and I feel confident what I experience is not really user-based errors

The apps I use mostly are : Seekbeats, iPolysix, iSEM, Garageband, AudioShare, Sunrizer, DM-1, JamUp Pro, Bias and a few fx and more occasional stuff

What happens is that different combinations of apps, when recorded into any recorder app at the end of Audiobus, will more or less be synchronized

What's worse : in between apps sharing of loops shows that one loop at 120bpm might be 119.9 in another, or start on the second beat in another and more weird stuff

It feels like timewarping back to the 1990s losing nights of sleep and liters of sweat to synchronize the first versions of "name a DAW" with audio/midi peripherals.

How is it possible there seems to be no consensus between apps for a tight, unified clock, whether in Audiobus or with Interapp Audio or with Audioshare???

Can somebody explain to me what's happening within Audiobus ( bought the full routing version ) only to find myself using mostly one app a time, because synchronization is all over the place

Is 44.1 really 44.1 KHz inside each app? Is the midi clock's stability different from app to app....

Thanks for your insight

Regards

Nic

Comments

  • HalftoneHalftone

    not audiobus fault - midi clock sync is not perfect in ios world.

    watch this:

  • CalCuttaCalCutta

    1) Audiobus does no MIDI whatsoever, only audio

    2) Apple never established a uniform MIDI protocol for iOS, hence the lack of uniformity.

    3) From my experience/general consensus, the best option for MIDI clock on iOS currently is Midibus.

    4) DM1's MIDI has never worked for me and I've given up trying. Seekbeats MIDI sync is extremely testy but does seem to work better in IAA than any other iteration, from my experience.

  • saxophonicksaxophonick

    Thanks Halftone for the link, this explains a lot....damn I wished I would have known that earlier, I would have waited before getting excited of using apps together...midisync...for midi apps....isn't that like a basic requirement?
    major apple neglect imho

    Thanks CalCutta, explains a lot as well!
    Yes indeed I seemed to be fixated on both audio and midi, in the process forgetting that Audiobus...well, handles audio ;)
    Nonetheless every inter-app system, be it IAA, Audiobus or other should be aligned in some way...

    Now which developer, other than apple of course, might come up with a brilliant steady midi clock? Is that something to watch out for? Any approachable/ indy app designer that would be willing to try to fix this?
    I know I'd happily spend more bucks to get this sh*t sorted out!

    Peace

    Nic

  • CalCuttaCalCutta

    The problem would be getting every developer to conform to whatever protocol was developed. There have essentially been attempts at this with Midibus, trying to get other developers to run that protocol for their own MIDI clock capabilities. Some went for it, others didn't. This really does need to be a move Apple makes, it seems.

  • AudiojunkieAudiojunkie

    @saxophonick This won't work for everyone, but maybe it will help if I tell you what I am doing lately to get everything to sync:

    I use Cubasis as my home base. I use its sequencer as my sequencer for everything. I then went through all of my apps and found the ones that do IAA Midi. These became my main apps that I use for everything. There are not a lot of them that do IAA Midi, but I like the ones that I have (ie Arturia apps, Sunrizer, Funkbox, etc). I've got probably 10 or so apps that specifically work in Cubasis with IAA Midi. Everything else, I play live through Audiobus or IAA Generator. For me, this is as close to a standard DAW workflow as I am able to get, and everything just plain works. I don't have to deal with other issues. I wish more apps included IAA MIDI rather than just IAA Generator. :-)

  • saxophonicksaxophonick

    Thanks Audiojunkie, I will check out the IAA Midi and compatible apps.
    Right now I bought the " Pro Midi " app which provides very familiar daw-piano roll style editing and handles midi data pretty well, didn't try it in omni or multiple channels to different apps yet. Very efficient and user-friendly, wireless midi, virtual midi, external/internal sync and much more.
    Oh, and to keep this topic related to the site : Audiobus support coming soon :)!
    Will be interesting to see if they can come up with some modicum of unification across apps with regards to synchronicity.
    Shameless plug : http://www.wiksnet.com

    Peace

    Nic

    @Audiojunkie said:
    saxophonick This won't work for everyone, but maybe it will help if I tell you what I am doing lately to get everything to sync:

    I use Cubasis as my home base. I use its sequencer as my sequencer for everything. I then went through all of my apps and found the ones that do IAA Midi. These became my main apps that I use for everything. There are not a lot of them that do IAA Midi, but I like the ones that I have (ie Arturia apps, Sunrizer, Funkbox, etc). I've got probably 10 or so apps that specifically work in Cubasis with IAA Midi. Everything else, I play live through Audiobus or IAA Generator. For me, this is as close to a standard DAW workflow as I am able to get, and everything just plain works. I don't have to deal with other issues. I wish more apps included IAA MIDI rather than just IAA Generator. :-)

  • Demon1972Demon1972

    I have been stressing over this sync myself. All I want to do is be able to get some drum loops into Garage Band because I am tired of the smart drums and the drum sets that have no flexibility when it comes to mixing the drum levels and eq. I recently purchased audiobus and music studio 2. With hopes of doing this and because I read somewhere that I would be able to use audiobus to mix my GB projects I don't have much money to work with and was so happy I had found a cost effective fix for my dilemma, now I am let down. Anyway I guess I should be happy I don't still have to use that little 4 track I used to sit with years ago. If u find a fix to this sync thing please let me know thanx it's good to know its not just me not seeing a setting that was in my face because I have looked everywhere for that lol

  • Diode108Diode108

    Does Cubasis have the ability to offset or bias the MIDI sync? I know ProTools and Reaper do. What about the other iPad DAWs?

  • RedSkyLullabyRedSkyLullaby

    Latest update of Loopy HD seems good at being master to sync stuff too

  • solador78solador78

    I find that B-Step, Genome, Thesys, and Xynthsizr all sync perfectly with Gadget. Would love to know if there are other apps like this.

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