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.
Re-inventing the wheel ?
Okay, controversial post alert...
Looking at some of the new granular synths and the like, I'm wondering if people are excited about them because they are now on iOS or because they do something unique particular to iOS ? There are already zillions of granular synths for Reaktor amongst others, for exampole
I can see their appeal if people are intending to use their devices solely to make and master their music on, but is there an element of simply porting things from the Desktop world with a different touch screen interface ?
Don't get me wrong, I think there a lot of really unique apps that work because they are on an iPad - ifretless guitar in particular come to mind (also Roverb, Gestrument and Gadget spring to mind), I'm just wondering about applying the touchscreen to create things that really can't be done on the desktop - as opposed to things looking great but actually having a similiar functionality.
Comments
There are tools...The more there are, the more you have to choose.
Sometimes, the most complicated is the question itself.
Just enjoy.
Is mobile time!
A person has $2000 Limited Fender Strat w/ cherry neck and an amazing Marshall stack. He can't play a lick. Bar chords and some tabs he learned from a Guitar magazine.
Homeless guy with some beat up old Ibanez acoustic with spark plugs as tuners- sits on a park bench in shitty underwear and tracks on his neck.
But sounds like Muddy Waters.
It is not about the how, it is about the why. Too many people are caught up in the technical jargon or aesthetics of various computer production apps and programs.
The greatest music ever made was with a persons own mouth and the tapping of their foot.
Yes, the iOS approach is great (mostly), but thats wasn't my point.
It's about portability, mobility, creativity, being unshackled and the touch screen interface. I have a number of apps on the iPad that I also have on the desktop in the studio in one form or another, not only exactly, in terms of the actual app, but also in genre. I have the Arturia V suite for example, but also iSEM, iMini (and the yet as unfinished, iProphet). I have Z3TA+ in both places. I have Notion in both places. In genre for example, I have FM synths on both. I have DAWs on both. I have FX apps and FX programs. etc.
There are some apps I only have on the iPad because they only exist for the iPad. Animoog, Earhoof, Thumbjam, etc.
But - the critical thing about the touch interface for me, and I think others also, is that I can interact with the software in a way that is quite quite different than on the desktop. I can move around a score in Notion on the iPad much more quickly than mousing - or even remembering keystrokes - on the desktop. I can use multiple fingers - for apps that support that - including things like Thumbjam, Borderlands and TC-11 and so on, which I simply cannot do on the desktop without a similar touchscreen interface and have the same expressivity, and, frankly - holding my hand out horizontally to the screen would get tiring if I had a touchscreen. :-) If I didn't, it'd be a surface of some kind in tablet form anyway - sitting flat on the desk. (Which is the function in part my iPad serves - so - full circle there. :-) )
There is uniqueness there - apps that don't exist. Apps that don't "work" on a 27" display anyhow (imagine splaying your fingers over a 27" display to control TC-11 :-) (Sure: I imagine folks would come up with a way of using the real estate, but, that's not the point and not to the point of the question as is.) Apps that invite multi-touch. Apps that by multitouch and smaller screen format invite different ways of exploring creativity.
Anyhow, $0.02
@RustiK Awesome words.
@MusicInclusive Good post.
@Rusik at first glance (to me) you seem somewhat choleric (your note, not necessarily you personally
, but I think that actually what you illustrate fairly well is that we all are approaching these issues from unique angles we imagine others share when in fact they themselves see things refracted a little differently (and thus come to different conclusions).
In this case it's rather simple; I don't use desktop music applications. I could. I might. But I don't, today. A thousand years ago I did and I understand the areas of greater power they offer, but -in my dirty underwear and sat on this lonely park bench- I find the iPad is the thing that has brought me back to the real pleasure of making and connecting (however clumsily) little pieces of sound.
So, you're right. And I am too.
@Igneous1 Touch based granular synthesis is a different world for me.
IOS did not invent the wheel new because it works without wheels
Of course there is still everything there (and more) in the desktop world and i miss a lot in the iOS world which are not possible yet because of limited RAM and CPU. But it's just a new way to create music and often (not always) it's more fun... even when the quality output might a bit limited. It's just the combination of these worlds which makes it perfect. I wonder really why there are not more control apps from famous companies to interact with the desktop tools instead of searching the perfect thing on one device. There are some great control apps for Omnisphere, Logic, Alchemy (still...ouch!) and some others but they are still very limited.... why?!? I see no reason to bring all the big toys into iOS but i would like to control these with native apps
More place, better workflow.... awesome 
I find in general that the mobile and desktop apps are still too seperated.... from a musical side there is no reason for me to go this way. It just should melt together. Why limit yourself to one OS or one device (i did it a while and it sucked).
Sure is that there are unique apps in booth worlds. I took me some years to find out that i don't care which device, OS or tools i use as long as it let me do what i want, when i want and i have fun to do it.... and most important it must inspire me.
Today borderlands 2 is my favourite iOS tool because it's just fun to use it on a touch screen followed by Mitosynth. Crusher X is maybe the best granular tool i saw but i hate to using it because of the UI and workflow. My favourite desktop tools are all the 2c audio stuff because it's just from another world and i would bet very soon Omnisphere 2 because it's a beast and it has one of the best native iPad control apps (which will be updated also).
Similar to @MusicInclusive 's post, I have an electric guitar and I have an acoustic. They are the same essential tech but the way I play them and the music I get out of them is different. I could quite happily accept another few different guitars and would probably play differently with all of them.
I was excited about the Borderlands Granular update because of the multitouch UI. Lovely to look at and more fun to use with the fingers than mousing around on a desktop computer - I feel like I'm playing an instrument when I play with Borderlands Granular.
On another forum, somebody (presumably) watched the demo video and posted "I don't get the circle thing - I can get the same stuff with sliders". No, sir, you can't.
For me the ipad has got me back to just playing, experimenting and enjoying things more and editing less, so I feel like I've had a release from the rut I kind of got into on desktops and laptops. In a way I've come full circle as I'd just sit for hours with my old 101 hooked up to a dat just making weird sounds, with the intention of going back and just grabbing chunks I liked, I'm doing this sort of thing again, but with a much wider sonic palette that is also a lot cheaper, regarding the price of apps.
As you mentioned reaktor, one of most vivid experiences I've had using an ipad came when I got konkreet performer and linked it up to reaktor, think it was standalone as I'm sort of sure the plugin didn't support osc at the time. It felt like the future and not just the near future, it inspired me no end and I just played for hours with eyes the size of saucers, which only usually happened if I'd taken something. I've been inspired not just using a multitouch screen, but by the way others have been inspired, through chatting online, watching videos and relating to the excitement, also some of the weird and wonderful apps devs have made that have been unlike what I've experienced using hardware or software previously, I feel like an early astronaut without the safety concerns.
My mini rant wasn't about the merits / de-merits of iOS music making as such, more about the element of touch being applied to unique iOS apps that couldn't be realised on the desktop.
And my comment was about magic being added to long-standing desktop paradigms because touch had been applied.
I've been using granular synthesis since the 90s but never was it as musical or beautiful or playable as it is with something like samplr. It's a different animal.