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
Oh no, that sucks! I’ve been reporting it to them but using their voice memos app as the example of where to see the bug. I figure they might take more notice of the problem with one of their own apps rather than third parties.
They probably won’t. So many reports have been sent to Apple in the past year or so detailing the problem from every angle possible and no real response has been recorded. Doubt your effort will be fruitful but hoping it will.
No doubt you’re right but hope springs eternal and all that.
Recently decided to update from 14.3
I already regret it. In cubasis for ex, making a mixdown of all tracks results in cubasis shutting down when the rendering is almost complete. Then when I look for the file, nowhere to be found.
Tried a few times...
Try force restarting your iPad first. Sometimes that will fix lingering issues.
On the fence:
I am using an iPad Pro 12.9 2nd gen (2017) running iOS 13.7
Should I “upgrade” to 14.7?
Depends on how much it bugs you if occasionally, and for no apparent reason, your AUv3's go missing until you reboot. And if you're willing to live with the fact that Apple hasn't even acknowledged the issue yet.
Worth mentioning that it seems like some people run into this somewhat regularly, and that its seems that most people don't ever run into this.
Hmmm, wonder if particular AU(s) expose this bug.
iOS 15 is about a month, maybe two months away now. It's looking good in my beta testing so far. You might want to wait for it. On the other hand, it might mean that the "fun" gets to start all over again and you won't be able to upgrade to 14 if there are features you need there.
There is one new thing to consider here. If you upgrade from 14 to 15, for the first time ever, you will be able to downgrade to 14 if you like. As someone parking on 13.7 waiting for the AUv3 fix, I now need to decide if it's better to get on 14 so that I have that option, or whether it's time to just freeze this device on 13.7 forever and call it a day.
I believe on staying on the very latest tenable version possible, but now need to make a call. I feel like I can live with the AUv3 issue, but it just isn't in my nature to upgrade to a known broken release. However this might be an exception because of the above consideration.
Thank you for mentioning this. The next 40-odd days are the last chance to update to iOS 14, before iOS 15 becomes the current standard. iPadOS 14.7.1 is working fine for me, but I've only seen missing AUv3s twice. This may be because I always force-quit browsers and music apps when I'm done with them, so I don't challenge the memory management.
Yes yes! THIS!
Fwiw, Seems to finally have gone away here.
The first time I've had this missing AUs fault crop again for ages today (ios 14.8 on 2017 pro) I think a Testflight version of AUM was downloading installing in the background when it happened, although I can't be certain that was related.
Wondering if anyone has had this issue without Testflight being installed?
Yes. It's been confirmed elsewhere that people without Testflight have had the issue. That doesn't rule it out as a potential cause, but it does rule it out as the only cause.
oh ok thanks, back to the drawing board then
The other thing I was doing prior to it happening was importing IRs into Altispace2 so could be some kind of Files bug causing a glitch maybe.
I had a new report of LRC5 missing from a user this morning. The user says that they have been using LRC5 for some time but that after opening the container application they can't get back to LRC5. There could be a misunderstanding involved but assuming that the user is right about what's happening it has me wondering if having a container application for an AU open while trying to load AU's in a DAW might be causing the system to mess up its database of installed AU's.
There is some interaction that goes on between installing container apps, opening container apps, and the DB of AU's on both macOS and iOS, but I can't figure out how it actually works. I'm wondering if people who see the missing AU bug tend to leave their applications open.
I have this feeling that manually closing apps helps delay the onset of this bug, but from experience does not prevent it completely. I will be upgrading to iOS 15 on the weekend maybe that’ll fix it.
I understand this is how @brambos apps are handled and that he had similar reports from way earlier. Probably he can help you out with the most relevant bits.
Edit: I think it’s different issue from system wide ‘missing AUs’ associated with iOS14. For example I had this once on 13.7 with Ruismaker Noir only. The plugin wasn’t missing, but it was running a blank black screen in standalone mode - fine as AU. After reboot all back to normal.
It turns out that the missing LRC5 issue was completely unrelated and has been solved. But it still feels to me like the disappearing AU problem has to be related to the various different ways that AU's get scanned for and added to the DB for the OS(s). It makes me doubt my choice of using the container app for anything but being a blank page. On the other hand, it is the thing that has helped get around all the app store rejections early on.
Maybe the same event triggers both. Pre 14 it messed up wrapped AUs, from there on it could bring down the whole AU DB. Not sure if we (users) will ever know for sure, but hopefully one day it will magically disappear.
I've seen AUv3 plugins disappear too, but I've been using a procedure that seems to entirely avoid the problem. I haven't tried iPadOS 15 yet, so the following applies to iPadOS 14.8 and one or two earlier versions (since I started this experiment). Maybe it works for 15 as well, or maybe 15 fixes the underlying problem.
This is based on the theory/hunch that there's a race condition involving simultaneous updates to the registry (whatever form that may take) of AUv3 plugins. The only time I can imagine this happening is when updates of two AUv3 plugins finish at about the same time. Whether it involves AUv3 hosts as well as plugins I do not know. Those occur too infrequently to test.
So here's what I do. Since I started to use this procedure, I've not had AUv3s disappear.
Turn off automatic updates. You need to control this so as to avoid concurrent updates.
Before taking an update to an AUv3 app, exit all AUv3 apps.
When taking updates to AUv3 apps, take them one at a time, waiting a second or two after the completion of one update before starting the next.
That's all! If this doesn't work for someone, please post a response. I'm curious.
Of course these precautions shouldn't be necessary.
Interesting idea. I can see how this might be a cause. It correlates with some observations that it happens to people with lots of AU's installed and might interact with the TestFlight idea too. It could be a useful experiment to try to force the issue to happen by doing lots of multi-AU updates. I don't think I have enough AU's on my systems to try this experiment and my device in in a non-typical state anyway.
Though, if it is a cause, I don't think it would be the only cause because I've had bug reports of LRC5 missing for some users where I suspect it was the only AU they had installed at the time.
Interesting points, I will notice these things from now on
I also wish to add here that, as a user who encounters this bug a lot, I can say that I almost never get the bug before the initial launch of an AU host. Meaning, the first launch of an AU host after a device restart will not get this bug, even if it’s been days since the restart, but once I do launch the AU host, I might get this bug even an hour later.
Have you ever tried hard resetting the device daily to see if that makes it less likely to occur.
Sounds like the host(s) might be caching the AU information they get when they first launch and the data remains valid. It could be a more complicated interaction though. On the little test host I use to test AU's during development I've had to move to using a weird pattern of interactions to get the host to scan the AU DB a couple of times before the AU I'm trying to test shows up. This didn't used to be the case. It certainly seems like something has changed in both iOS and macOS about how the system handles keeping the AU information up-to-date.
Nah, never. I only do a reset when the bug bites.
It might be worth doing it at the start of each day and seeing if the problem stops occurring.
For people who’ve had the missing AUv3 bug in iOS 14 - do you still experience this bug in iOS 15?