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.

Routing MIDI between tracks

I'm wondering if anyone is aware of a way of outputting MIDI from one track (potentially post MIDI FX etc) to another?

I've got one track with MIDI In Port set to my hardware midi interface & MIDI Out Port set to Logic Pro Virtual Out, another track with MIDI In Port set to Logic Pro Virtual In, and both tracks armed for recording... but it doesn't seem to be working. Could be a bug?

Comments

  • Interesting too, I found routing in most DAWs a bit cumbersome after using AUM

  • Yeah I definitely am finding myself wanting to do the kinds of things that AUM is better at... Never really was much of a one for standard DAWs, arranging in a timeline etc, but am optimistic that this sitting on my piano/other music stand might help a lot.

    I understand them not including the whole Logic midi environment (which I last used before Apple acquired it, and to be fair may be pretty cumbersome), but expected a bit more routing flexibility than there seems to be.

  • edited May 2023

    i think this is not possible even on desktop logic (route midi from one track to other track) so don't see them make this possible on ipad logic anytime soon ...

    but on desktop logic you can record midi into track POST MIDI FX (default is PRE MIDI FX) - or to be more precise you can select exactly after which MIDI FX (when you have more of them) should be midi recorded into track - there is option which when you select you also see visually in mixer from where in midi chain are data recorded to track.

    Isn't there something like that on iPad ?


  • Sure, I can't see myself rooting in LP lets say Riffer to Mirack midi mutators and then distribute notes to 3 different channels while filtering ultra low or high notes. In AUM int's a matter of few taps. Jonathan is UI genius.

  • I feel like this stuff may be possible with the environment... but very much swimming against the tide - Apple docs say it's included in the desktop version as a legacy feature for compatibility with old projects. I don't know how comprehensively it works with any more modern features (and from screenshots, the UI has clearly aged).

    From my brief use many years ago, it felt like you were almost forced to use it even for doing trivial things (I probably just hadn't learned the software properly - but I remember doing environment patching when I all I wanted was to add a track). It seemed that it'd let you make intricate bespoke configurations with esoteric musical "logic" if you wanted to... as someone who got into programming via Max/MSP, pd etc, a part of me always imagined "Logic" to be more about that; clearly this is not the direction Apple have taken it in, which is probably mostly a good thing...

    Still, I'd have thought it'd be possible to do some MIDI routing like this, which opens up a lot of possibilities and which things like Ableton seem to manage to make fairly easy to access when you want it without it getting in your way when you don't... Maybe the lesson I really need to try to learn, though, is to just bake things to processed MIDI or audio at an earlier stage when using tools like this, and keep using AUM / Ableton / Reaper / my own weird shit etc when relevant.

  • Midi routing seems to be omitted in Logic Pro.
    Makes me love Aum even more and I would like it on my mac as well.
    Anyways, I found that audio Veek's midi bus au works to get midi to other tracks.
    Watch out, in the bundle there is also midi router, this plugin will crash Logic.

  • edited May 2023

    @Alfred said:
    Midi routing seems to be omitted in Logic Pro.
    Makes me love Aum even more and I would like it on my mac as well.
    Anyways, I found that audio Veek's midi bus au works to get midi to other tracks.
    Watch out, in the bundle there is also midi router, this plugin will crash Logic.

    Ah cool, I haven't come across MIDI bus, maybe that'll be neater... although as long as it's not too heavy on MPE etc I think I can kinda do what I want with a minimal AUM that just patches Logic Pro Virtual Midi Out -> In. May well be potential to crash things with that if there's a short-circuit somewhere... which I could see happening on a pretty regular basis.

    I feel like this is both making me love AUM more, but also feel like Logic's still likely to become a pretty integral part of my setup.

    Actually, I still have my old iPad, which I was anticipating using for a bit of testing and also for multi-device music / AV stuff... this is making me start actually putting that into practice (as well as using the new one for stuff the old one wouldn't support). What I might also start to do is have some mostly MIDI stuff running in AUM on the old device, working with Logic via network midi...

  • Can confirm MIDI Router instantly crashed Logic, and MIDI Bus / other MIDI Tools look like generally good things to have.

  • Yes that makes sense to use another ipad to do all the midi routing in Aum.
    However when you try to make your setup self contained filewise the midi bus au is a nice temporary solution.

  • @dendy said:
    i think this is not possible even on desktop logic (route midi from one track to other track) so don't see them make this possible on ipad logic anytime soon ...

    A matter of fact, it can be done on Mac (sending MIDI between tracks).

    I have wonder if that's possible for a long time, but never searched an answer, but, it is a "simple" solution - check this video.
    If you can't find MIDI Environment in the menu, press Command + zero (0)...

  • @xinaesth said:
    I feel like this stuff may be possible with the environment... but very much swimming against the tide - Apple docs say it's included in the desktop version as a legacy feature for compatibility with old projects. I don't know how comprehensively it works with any more modern features (and from screenshots, the UI has clearly aged).

    From my brief use many years ago, it felt like you were almost forced to use it even for doing trivial things (I probably just hadn't learned the software properly - but I remember doing environment patching when I all I wanted was to add a track). It seemed that it'd let you make intricate bespoke configurations with esoteric musical "logic" if you wanted to... as someone who got into programming via Max/MSP, pd etc, a part of me always imagined "Logic" to be more about that; clearly this is not the direction Apple have taken it in, which is probably mostly a good thing...

    Still, I'd have thought it'd be possible to do some MIDI routing like this, which opens up a lot of possibilities and which things like Ableton seem to manage to make fairly easy to access when you want it without it getting in your way when you don't... Maybe the lesson I really need to try to learn, though, is to just bake things to processed MIDI or audio at an earlier stage when using tools like this, and keep using AUM / Ableton / Reaper / my own weird shit etc when relevant.

    Yeah you used to be able to do all that sort of stuff with the environment. It became surplus to requirements when VIs were introduced as they don’t work like external MIDI did inside the environment.

    To be honest, even at the time when the environment was at its peak it used to get criticised like crazy. People wanted much simpler setup like the other DAWs had.

    It was mega powerful though if you didn’t mind rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty.

    Before the advent of digital audio in DAWs I used to use Logic synced to an 8 track reel to reel. I had a Fostex Mixtab midi mixer which was a rack mount 8 track analogue mixer with MIDI control.

    I built a virtual mixer for it in the environment and had complete mixer automation from my tape machine (including full control of the transport and sync via SMPTE) in the 90s.

    Each track has automatable sends, pan, EQ, solo, mute etc.

    I think Some people in the scoring community still use the environment a lot for complex stuff but I haven’t used it in anger for decades.

  • @dendy said:
    i think this is not possible even on desktop logic (route midi from one track to other track) so don't see them make this possible on ipad logic anytime soon ...

    but on desktop logic you can record midi into track POST MIDI FX (default is PRE MIDI FX) - or to be more precise you can select exactly after which MIDI FX (when you have more of them) should be midi recorded into track - there is option which when you select you also see visually in mixer from where in midi chain are data recorded to track.

    Isn't there something like that on iPad ?

    Yes, you have the same thing.

  • Thanks to @auxmux in one of the other threads (I’ve totally lost track of which topic is being addressed in which thread at this point!) this can be achieved by making a midi loop using MidiFire or MidiFlow (I’m using midiflow)

    Open midiflow/fire and set Logic Virtual Midi Out as the input and Logic Virtual Midi In as the output.

    In Logic on the track you want to send midi out of, put External Instrument in the instrument slot and set the Midi destination to Logic Virtual Out. Add whatever midi fx you want

    On the midi receiving track open the track inspector and select Logic Virtual In as the midi input. Make sure your track is record enabled and you should be receiving midi from the first track

    I’ve had success loading Poly2, sending midi out to all channels and receiving midi in multiple tracks filtering by midi channel. I would imagine this would work with Fugue Machine etc

    hope this helps!

  • Fwiw I’ve had some success on Logic Desktop by doing similar with the IAC driver. But man it’s so much easier in ableton!

  • Follow up - this seems to be only working about half the time lol. I’m not sure if Midiflow is the culprit- I don’t have midifire to test. Will continue to experiment

  • edited May 2023

    @hightunnels said:
    Follow up - this seems to be only working about half the time lol. I’m not sure if Midiflow is the culprit- I don’t have midifire to test. Will continue to experiment

    I had been thinking of using AUM for basically the same setup (my earlier experiment had more of the complexity on the AUM side, but just a simple patch of "Logic Virtual Midi Out" -> "Logic Virtual Midi In" would mean not needing to load a more specific setup per project. Total overkill using AUM just for that, of course).

    The suggestion of MIDI Bus seems like it does what I - and I think you - want. Definitely an advantage having things saved with the Logic project rather than relying on an external app for routing.

    It looks as though it should hypothetically work on desktop as well (I notice in the App store it says MIDI Tools is "Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS"). Otherwise it could be something of a disadvantage having something saved into the project that would then need a different kind of config for transferring to macOS.

    And yes, it is so much easier in Ableton!

  • MidiFire working well with Logic. This is a lot more complicated than AUM, that’s for sure.

  • @Alfred said:
    Midi routing seems to be omitted in Logic Pro.
    Makes me love Aum even more and I would like it on my mac as well.
    Anyways, I found that audio Veek's midi bus au works to get midi to other tracks.
    Watch out, in the bundle there is also midi router, this plugin will crash Logic.

    Midi Curve from the same Midi Tools pack does not work on Logic. Might contact the dev and see if he will check compatibility.

  • @Gavinski said:

    @Alfred said:
    Midi routing seems to be omitted in Logic Pro.
    Makes me love Aum even more and I would like it on my mac as well.
    Anyways, I found that audio Veek's midi bus au works to get midi to other tracks.
    Watch out, in the bundle there is also midi router, this plugin will crash Logic.

    Midi Curve from the same Midi Tools pack does not work on Logic. Might contact the dev and see if he will check compatibility.

    Good luck!
    But, havn’t Victor Porof left the iOS/iPadOS arena and that not be any updates of his apps?

  • @Gavinski For midi curves I use my own Mozaic script curveMaker.

Sign In or Register to comment.