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.

I-Mini, Audibus, Beatmaker 2

edited May 2013 in Support and Feedback

Hi all,

I was trying to use I-mini via audiobus in to Beatmaker 2. The first steps I take:
1. Start Audiobus.
2. Start I-mini and actually go into it.
3. Start Beatmaker 2, go into it and start a new song.

Under Beatmaker 2 I start an empty keyboard. I-mini is there as an audio track automatically. I hit the keys in Beatmaker 2 and get no signal from I-mini.

Inside of I-mini I check to see that it is getting midi in from Beatmaker 2, and it is. I go back to beatmaker 2 and make sure that the midi channel is set to all and it is sending to I-mini..... nothing.

I can actually go back to I-mini and hear sounds from its own keyboard. I hit record in Beatmaker 2 and it records the wave.

Has anybody else had issues with midi out of Beatmaker 2 to I-mini?

Thanks,
Shawn

Comments

  • edited May 2013

    If you have this app running in the background they will work together as setup above....

    https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/freewi/id485711674?mt=8

  • Also MidiBridge, but its a paid app

  • Hmmm, I'll give that a try. And you can't beat the price. Thanks Dave.

  • I have heard of midibridge. I wonder why the I-mini just doesn't work? It has all the right buttons. Maybe it's a bug or something.

  • While using Freewi to connect iMini and BM2, as soon as I touch anything in iMini (change patch, turn knob etc.) it will lock up. At this point I need to completely shutdown my Audiobus chain and restart everything to get it working again.

    Anyone else having this issue, or found a workaround? I'm using an iPad 3.

  • MidiBridge works but costs

  • FreEWI works fine here, all I do is load it up and load bm2 and iMini up and it just works with the empty preset keyboard instrument in bm2.

  • Yeah, I can get it working initially using the empty keyboard preset, but as soon as I switch over to iMini and touch anything on the screen it locks up.

    If I leave it alone, i can play the patch that was selected at startup, but that is pretty limiting. I'd be willing to consider MidiBridge if someone can convince me it is working flawlessly where Freewi does not.

  • Just a thought- I never have problems when I load the "host", or output app first.

  • Well, I've tried every combination of starting the apps, but it seems to make no difference.

    Is there anyone who is able to use iMini into BM2 using Freewi and Audiobus, without freezing in iMini when changing settings?

  • sounds like a MIDI loop. BM2 may be seeig its own echoing of iMini reflected back from freewi. make sure BM2 \MIDI echo is off.

  • MidiBridge will be more selective, freewi is promiscuous for simplicity.

  • hmmm testing now, so far no lockup ...

  • So far: running fine without Audiobus, have iMini go silent with Audiobus. Have to shut down Audiobus then iMini starts making sound again. Tried running Audiobus after getting MIDI running and ...

    Um, perhaps a silly question, have you checked the iMini track audio setup to make sure it still has Monitor enabled? If not the symptom is no noise from iMini, but UI is still responsive. Not sure why it might be getting cleared tho, if that is the problem.

  • edited May 2013

    It may be you have it selected as an output and input in bm2 at the same time causing it to crash or do you have freEWI and bm2 selected in iMini at the same time ? This also causes problems just try it with freEWI only as the midi selection of iMini and midi out only from bm2 and it should work.....

  • Seems very order of startup tweaky. This order worked:

    1: run FreEWI
    2: start Audiobus
    3: from AB put iMini in the Input slot.
    4: switch to iMini
    5: make sure iMini MIDI setup only has FreEWI enabled as input.
    6: check that iMini plays.
    7: Back to AB, put BM2 in Output, and switch to it. Load appropriate project.
    8: In BM2 system MIDI setup, make sure out to iMini is OFF and out to FreEWI is ON.
    9: Also turn MIDI Thru ON if you are going to use another keyboard for playing iMini.
    10: Add an empty sampler track. iMini is probably going to want out to be ch 1, which is the default.
    11: also set its In channel if you are using another keyboard.

    Now you can decide what to record: arm either (or both) of the Audio and Sampler tracks. Open the sampler keyboard and you should be able to play, hear, and record both MIDI and Audio from there. Then try A.N.Other MIDI source. BUT every time you turn on another MIDI source, check in iMini that it still only has FreEWI as its input enabled, and check in BM2 system MIDI that it is enabled as an Input, before playing any MIDI.

    With this I was able to record an Audio track of one patch using iMini's keyboard, select another patch on the iMini, de-arm that BM2 track and arm the sampler track in BM2, then record a MIDI track played from the BM2 keyboard. And play both back together.

  • Oh yes, in step 8, really really make sure In from FreEWI is OFF.

  • I used the FreEWI and it worked like a champ. Thanks for the fix!

  • edited May 2013

    @dwarman

    That's the sequence I was using, but still having lockups. Finally deleted and reinstalled FreEWI and iMini today, now working perfectly. I really hate it when that turns out to be the solution...

  • Always good to have comparisons. If the same sequence works on one machine and not another, it is not the sequence at fault. At least deleting and re-installing Apps is not too onerous, except for recovering the custom stuff. Glad you're up and running. It was a good op. for me to learn more about this combination too.

  • @dwarman, I meant to thank you for working through that in detail, as you said it pointed me in the right direction.

    While you're right that deleting an app isn't the most difficult thing, the problem is that I'll stubbornly spend hours troubleshooting an issue, so when the issue turns out to be something beyond logic it's frustrating in hindsight.

  • I find that this fix - when all else fails delete and reinstall - is pointing at some underlying iOS design or philosophy issue. Should be, either it installed OK or it did not install at all. This flaky margin is upsetting to my embedded sensibilities.

  • razraz
    edited February 2014

    @dwarman - how do you configure MidiBridge to use it instead of FreeWi for this case? I bought MB and deleted FreeWi and now it doesn't work any more :-/

  • @sealpt said:

    I have heard of midibridge. I wonder why the I-mini just doesn't work? It has all the right buttons. Maybe it's a bug or something.

    Imini has no midi channel selector unlike isem, magellan animoog, sunrizer and most of others. If only imini is on you just set the midi out on bm2 to omni and it will trigger your imini. I've never used midi bridge or any other external midi app but to be honest I'm not that bothered. Don't get me wrong, I love I mini for its simple arp and solid sounds but I don't like fiddly set ups. Bm2 has got it all midi wise, it is imini that is lacking. Also if you have some kind of beat playing from bm2 make sure it is not sending out any midi messages or it will trigger whatever other app is listening. I'm hoping arturia sorts this out soon, I'm surprised they have it on isem but not imini, such a basic function for a synth.

  • Actually BM2 is also somewhat lacking in the MIDI department. It publishes Virtual MID ports but neither sends nor listens on them. This makes it poor companion to MidiBridge. iMini itself is about as bad of a MIDI implementation as one can have and still be able to play it under some configurations. Not all. (note - initially iMini dod not even have port selection. That on its own helped it to be a better citizen than before, but only in one way. Poor VM and lack of channel selectivity are still with us. As to why iSEM is better, it was written by a different dev).

    In the case of making these two play together, no, selecting iMini as the output in BM2 does not work, simply because iMini also ignores its Virtual MIDI input port. Similarly selecting BM2 as input in iMini does not work because BM2 does not send on its Virtual MIDI output port. (I just spent the better part of an hour reverifying this, with all my MIDI tols in action).

    I'm afraid the ony thing that gets them talking is FreEWI, BM2 selecting it for output and iMini selecting it for input. You might ewant to reinstall it. It is very small in size so you won't notice the change in memory utilization.

    There are quite a few other combinations that take a lot of fiddling to find how to make them work. Not all do, and of those that do many then make it impossible to run anything else alongside them without interference.

    Unless you are running iOS 7 in which case iMini is available as an IAA device in BM2. I have not yet tested that mode. Since there are no options at the code level - only one way for BM2 to send it MIDI, only one way for iMini to listen to it, I am hopeful that it will work.

    I want to take a moment to debunk a nissaprehension I see fairly often about what OMNI MIDI mode really means. There is no such thing as an OMNI channel for devices to send on. You may sometimes - in iOS only AFAIK - see either OMNI or ALL as an output option. I can think of no occasion where is it actually uuseful since the only way to get any synths to respond where they are not themselves set to OMNI is to repeat every note out 16 times, once on each channel. This is an unneccesary waste of bandwidth, and also for synths that are set to OMNI will result in them attempting to be polyphonic on all 16 notes at once, for every note (although I have noticed so far no polyphonic iOS synth actually playing the same note number multiple times, another piece of MIDI lore lost to the ages:( They instead stop and restart on every note on of the same number even if there was no intervening note off. All OMNI means at the listening end is that the channel number part of channelized messages is ignored and so all possible chanel numbers received are played.

  • Bm2 to iMini doesn't work with IAA either. FreeWi makes them work.

  • @dwarman correct! that's exactly want omni means. ;)

  • @dwarman thanks for the info. It is appreciated. Will try FreEWI and have another try at iMini.

  • @raz - so they continue their tradition of great audio and not so much MIDI then. Thanks for checking that out for us.

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