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.

Game Changiest iOS App of All Time

With the truly existential change to iOS music making (for many of us, at least) that is the long-awaited arrival of Logic Pro for the iPad, a conversation I'm having right now about AUv3 and IAA reminded me of the GOAT of game changing iOS music apps: AUDIOBUS!

I know there are very few use cases left where AudioBus is the best solution, but I don't think we'd have AUM, Drambo, or Logic Pro-on-iPad (our digital Stratford-upon-Avon) if it weren't for Audiobus.

So, @Michael and all the other creators of the original game changer and de facto community leaders, THANK YOU! I'm glad that we honor the Audiobus legacy with the incredible wealth of knowledge shared in its namesake forum.

Long live Audiobus!

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Comments

  • One can argue the original Loopy was the OG game changier. 😉 Still a @Michael creation.

  • Without Audiobus we also wouldn't have this forum, which continues to be the main hub for the iOS music community even after all these years.

  • ❤️

  • @busker said:
    Without Audiobus we also wouldn't have this forum, which continues to be the main hub for the iOS music community even after all these years.

    Actually then yes, AudioBus is the game changier! 😂 Because we have our forum here.

  • edited May 2023

    @jwmmakerofmusic said:
    One can argue the original Loopy was the OG game changier. 😉 Still a @Michael creation.

    Audiobus 2012
    Loopy 2014 (to the best of my Google search-based recollection)

    I definitely am not arguing with you @jwmmakerofmusic; Fallon using loopy on national television was a watershed moment, but for those of us who were making music on iOS before Audiobus (I'm also not suggesting you weren't one of us; I just don't know), I'd suggest that being able to route audio from one app to another, circumventing the sandboxing that was built into iOS was like the invention of the wheel when it came to iOS music making.

  • @mulletsaison said:

    @jwmmakerofmusic said:
    One can argue the original Loopy was the OG game changier. 😉 Still a @Michael creation.

    Audiobus 2012
    Loopy 2014 (to the best of my Google search-based recollection)

    I could've sworn Loopy was around longer than 2014, but that was years ago.

    I definitely am not arguing with you @jwmmakerofmusic; Fallon using loopy on national television was a watershed moment, but for those of us who were making music on iOS before Audiobus (I'm also not suggesting you weren't one of us; I just don't know), I'd suggest that being able to route audio from one app to another, circumventing the sandboxing that was built into iOS was like the invention of the wheel when it came to iOS music making.

    Yeah, I remember the days of hoping other apps would adapt to Audiobus back in the day.

    Back in the day I was on NS1, FLSM 2.0, and ReBirth.

  • edited May 2023

    audiobus was definitely part of ios music apps revolution back then ! Still remembering how exciting it was being able to route NLog into Nanostudio and sample a hell out of it. Literally abandoned desktop as music production platform back then and mived fully on ipad:)

  • @Michael said:

    2008

    That was definitely around even longer than I remembered! 😳

  • I think it’s pretty funny and very gracious that the AUDIOBUS forum now is host to endless threads about Logic

    Michael is a patron saint of music

  • I think 2014 was Loopy HD.

    I got into iOS music in 2013, and the original Loopy was already a mainstay by then.

    Anyway, it was indeed Audiobus that started it all. Incredible.

  • edited May 2023

    That sounds right. I got started in 2013 too or 2014. When AUs became the norm, it went full iOS. But yeah wouldn't be the case with Audiobus, Michael, and this forum.

  • As with all tech evolution you got a chain of guys that dev things that put the way toward other creating new bridges . Many of these guys are hidden guys . From a dev point of view it was Audiobus thanks to @Michael .

    Lp iOS And LoopyPro are just tools but it was possible to make this tools because some dev put the dev bricks , hidden part , to make other dev able to do these tools

    So what change the games is not what you use but technical protocol, dev language and so on.

    This post is an hommage to all these hidden great dev that make it possible in music and everyday life. I was part of them , ot in music, but if you can book online so easily an airplane tickets it is because I made it possible programming what make it possible.

    The game changer are not the tool but the guys who make it possible for other dev to do what they achieve. I think that dev here understand what I mean including @Michael

  • You can hear the story of AudioBus and Loopy from the Creator’s mouth here:

  • For me, THUMBJAM!

    But, of course Audiobus has been an important thing in my life…

  • Yeah - AudioBus. For me it was the "big bang" in iOS music making.

  • I was using Nanostudio (1) before I found out about Audiobus, but Audiobus gave me a totally new direction, which came to the fore when NS1 couldn’t work on 64 bit iOS.

    And yes, I’ve moved over to AUM, but this way of working has transformed my music making, and ditching linear DAWs (for the most part) was a huge liberation that I would not have had without Audiobus paving the way.

    Also, without Audiobus arriving on the scene, I doubt Apple would have started to include internal frameworks like IAA and then AUv3 in the OS, or have taken iOS music making seriously enough to port GarageBand and now LPx (I can acknowledge the importance, even though I have no intention of using either).

    So yes, thank you @Michael for seeding all this progress, and hosting such a great community.

  • Aum was my first love, bought it when i was hyped about it, and lost interest because it looked to complicated, then after 2 years got back into it and fall in love how easy and cool is to work in it

  • The first (not necessarily the gamechangiest of all time) that I recall was Sonoma Wire Work’s Audio Copy/Audio Paste. It was basic, so AudioBus was a welcomed improvement in handling audio (and later MIDI). My personal gamechangeiest was NS1. I got it right after it launched and it was the first app that I could use to create completed pieces of music. The previous apps just didn’t click with me (others had a better time with them so I am not slamming those other apps).

  • Let’s not forget Soundprism, the OG of awesome touch screen instruments in my opinion

  • TC-11 showed how an iPad could be a viable touch surface. Maybe not as "changey" as Audiobus or Loopy or AUM, but nevertheless was a turning point for me. I can't help but think of Animoog and Thumbjam for how influential it was at the time.

  • Samplr or AUM

  • wimwim
    edited May 2023

    @Michael and Audiobus changied my game from having completely given up making music to making more music than I had all my life. (By making music, I mean beyond just noodling on my guitar)

    After a few years of fun and discovery with Windows DAWs. I reached a point that the second I would sit down at the PC every ounce of creativity would instantly evaporate. I chalk it up to spending 10 hours or more a day supporting PC computing. But for whatever reason, music making was dead for me.

    I stumbled across an ZDNet article where Audiobus and the Audiobus forum was mentioned. I checked it out. I could't believe how inexpensive the apps I read about were. I finagled a way to get my hands on an iPad. I found that the creative paralysis was completely gone when working with the iPad rather than at the desktop!

    And here I am still, happily creating every day, now with Loopy Pro opening up new doors, improving my chops, and freeing me from obsessing over tweaking midi tracks to perfection rather than flowing with the creative process.

    I still occasionally visit the AudioBus forum too. 😉

  • Audiobus is as essential as oxygen.
    Thanks Michael!

  • Yea they original AB was pretty revolutionary. I think it was the first time you could really connect apps together on iOS.

  • Other than that I’d say Mozaic and Drambo are obviously up there. They both can do so many things, especially with all the patches available.

  • I’m gonna be absolutely honest and say Beatmaker 3… I’ll always despise the absence of MG though…which halted all forward progress of the app to this day. I can only imagine where the app would be if not for that.

  • @wim said:
    @Michael and Audiobus changied my game from having completely given up making music to making more music than I had all my life. (By making music, I mean beyond just noodling on my guitar)

    After a few years of fun and discovery with Windows DAWs. I reached a point that the second I would sit down at the PC every ounce of creativity would instantly evaporate. I chalk it up to spending 10 hours or more a day supporting PC computing. But for whatever reason, music making was dead for me.

    I stumbled across an ZDNet article where Audiobus and the Audiobus forum was mentioned. I checked it out. I could't believe how inexpensive the apps I read about were. I finagled a way to get my hands on an iPad. I found that the creative paralysis was completely gone when working with the iPad rather than at the desktop!

    And here I am still, happily creating every day, now with Loopy Pro opening up new doors, improving my chops, and freeing me from obsessing over tweaking midi tracks to perfection rather than flowing with the creative process.

    I still occasionally visit the AudioBus forum too. 😉

    Very similar experience. 15 years ago I wanted to go desktop but I kept running into so many issues with installs, updates, software, connections, etc.. it all seemed so overly complex, so after several hard fought tries I gave up and I stuck to instruments and digital 8track until I started to realize the potential with iOS. The rest, as they say, is history… lol.

  • Add my voice to the Audiobus choir, it changed everything

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