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.

Using AUM as a live performance mixer

This video demonstrates how I use AUM as a live performance mixer. I started by recording a few loops with various iOS music apps using AUM (this track is %100 iOS). I then created a few file player tracks in AUM - enabled loop & sync - and loaded the loops I had recorded. After that, I set up a few effects bus tracks using mostly Audio Damage AUv3 effects, as well as a master track with a compressor that all audio is routed to.

I mapped the Launch Control to filter cutoff, effects send, and loop start/stop for each track. Once all the tracks were setup and MIDI mapped, I just kinda hit play and winged it. Since AUM syncs loops to it's internal master clock, the workflow is very similar to using Launchpad, or working with clips in Ableton. I think I've found my new preferred method for composing and performing with the iPad!

Hardware: iPad Pro 9.7, Novation Launch Control, iPad mini 2 for visualizer
Apps: AUM, Audio Damage Dubstation 2, Audio Damage Replicant, Blamsoft Resampler, Audio Damage Rough Rider 2, Quantum VJ (visualizer). Loops were originally created using Blocs Wave and iMaschine 2.

Comments

  • Love seeing how other people use AUM. I’ve taken it pretty far for performance purposes too, yet everyone seems to have individually discovered their own unique avenue of creativity with it. Fantastic software!

  • Good to see a video like this which shows your approach to using AUM.

    Being able to automate just about everything in AUM (e.g. pan, volume, mute, bus mix) including being able to filter/route plus set parameter ranges for MIDI opens up a lot of possibilities. The ability to control AU exposed parameters via MIDI is great as well. Combining AUM with other MIDI apps and hardware only adds to your options.

  • @OscarSouth said:
    Love seeing how other people use AUM. I’ve taken it pretty far for performance purposes too, yet everyone seems to have individually discovered their own unique avenue of creativity with it. Fantastic software!

    AUM is definitely one of the most versatile apps out there, brilliantly simple while managing to be infinitely complex. I feel like every time I launch the app, I find new ways to use it!

  • @InfoCheck said:
    Good to see a video like this which shows your approach to using AUM.

    Being able to automate just about everything in AUM (e.g. pan, volume, mute, bus mix) including being able to filter/route plus set parameter ranges for MIDI opens up a lot of possibilities. The ability to control AU exposed parameters via MIDI is great as well. Combining AUM with other MIDI apps and hardware only adds to your options.

    When I discovered that pretty much everything in AUM was MIDI mappable, my mind was blown. I feel sorry for anyone who overlooks AUM as "just an audio mixer" - so much potential with this app!

  • Cool video! Very nice to see my app coming to use :)

  • edited October 2017

    AUM is one of the best apps on my iPad, and revolutionised how I make 'music' on it. Essential.

  • @j_liljedahl said:
    Cool video! Very nice to see my app coming to use :)

    I'm assuming that means you're the dev? If so, God bless you my dude.

    @MonzoPro said:
    AUM is one of the best apps on my iPad, and revolutionised how I make 'music' on it. Essential.

    +1. All of my iOS music-making starts and ends with AUM.

  • @j_liljedahl said:
    Cool video! Very nice to see my app coming to use :)

    Quick Q - can AUM recieve relative CC input data? If not.. Feature Request!

  • @pink_sky said:

    @j_liljedahl said:
    Cool video! Very nice to see my app coming to use :)

    I'm assuming that means you're the dev? If so, God bless you my dude.

    That's me! Thanks :)

  • @OscarSouth said:

    @j_liljedahl said:
    Cool video! Very nice to see my app coming to use :)

    Quick Q - can AUM recieve relative CC input data? If not.. Feature Request!

    That's on my TODO list already, but you should know that the list is quite long...

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  • @j_liljedahl: Great to see you here! I'm the developer of Xequence and have recommended AUM umpteen times in the manual and inside the app!

    PLEASE, add the ability to NAME buses! (Or did I overlook that?). It gets really messy when you don't remember if Bus H is that long reverb send or the drums subgroup ;)

  • @SevenSystems said:
    @j_liljedahl: Great to see you here! I'm the developer of Xequence and have recommended AUM umpteen times in the manual and inside the app!

    PLEASE, add the ability to NAME buses! (Or did I overlook that?). It gets really messy when you don't remember if Bus H is that long reverb send or the drums subgroup ;)

    Yeah, that's yet another item on my TODO list actually :)

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  • @j_liljedahl said:

    @SevenSystems said:
    @j_liljedahl: Great to see you here! I'm the developer of Xequence and have recommended AUM umpteen times in the manual and inside the app!

    PLEASE, add the ability to NAME buses! (Or did I overlook that?). It gets really messy when you don't remember if Bus H is that long reverb send or the drums subgroup ;)

    Yeah, that's yet another item on my TODO list actually :)

    I hope you can add App search function on selecting apps inside a chain like Audiobus has as scrolling down app lists trying trying to find the AU or IAA one you want is now a pain with all the great apps we have.

  • Seeing @SevenSystems and @j_liljedahl talking obviously make me think: "hey, those two, together, tightly coupled, and our wish for flexible midi/audio daw alternative is done". Right? :)

  • edited October 2017

    @hellquist: Heh, there were times during development when I actually had the same thought ;) as I said, I do think AUM + a good sequencer ;) is currently the best way to have a workable, flexible studio setup on iOS... @j_liljedahl should probably pay me commissions for all the AUM mentions the manual :D

  • @SevenSystems said:
    @hellquist: Heh, there were times during development when I actually had the same thought ;) as I said, I do think AUM + a good sequencer ;) is currently the best way to have a workable, flexible studio setup on iOS... @j_liljedahl should probably pay me commissions for all the AUM mentions the manual :D

    Thanks! :)

  • @SevenSystems: Just a thought from the sideline: would it be possible, in any way, to make it so Xequence could be loaded as an IAA in AUM? That way you'd get host sync and could piggy-back AUM's Link capability, as well as making it easier for people to save their set-up. You'd also be able to get the metronome from AUM.

    I'm sure I'm missing something important in all of that, but right now, after reading lots and lots of Chinese spam, what I wrote almost makes sense to me.

    I know I often load ModStep in AUM on a channel strip of its own, not to get any audio out from it (I only use it for midi sequencing), but just to ensure I can start everything from one place (AUM). I'd love to be able to replace ModStep with Xequence in such a scenario.

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  • @d4d0ug said:
    ...or make Xequence ab3 state save ?

    That would be nice too, though I (personally) was more aiming for the host sync capabilities, thinking it could be a quick way (depending on how tricky it is to make IAA compatibility) to get Link functionality in to Xequence, which by the looks of it (in the other threads) seem to be the most requested thing for Xequence. :)

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  • @hellquist said:
    @SevenSystems: Just a thought from the sideline: would it be possible, in any way, to make it so Xequence could be loaded as an IAA in AUM? That way you'd get host sync and could piggy-back AUM's Link capability, as well as making it easier for people to save their set-up. You'd also be able to get the metronome from AUM.

    Regarding the sync: Good idea, but Xequence can't currently slave to another clock, it can only be Master. However, Ableton Link works a little different and is easier to implement than full clock slaving, so we will just implement Link directly in the coming weeks, as part of the Audiobus integration. And we'll probably also add a simple audio metronome, so that's sorted.

    Regarding state saving: There's really only two steps you have to do to get your project up and running if you're using AUM and Xequence: 1) Launch AUM and load the session. 2) Launch Xequence and load the project.
    Xequence is really good at finding and restoring outgoing MIDI connections, so even if you first load the Xequence project (without AUM running) and THEN load AUM and return to Xequence, it should find the newly initialized MIDI destinations and connect them. (this will be further improved in the next maintenance update).

    Many people don't seem to be sure about this, so that's why I just wanted to mention it... you don't have to restore all the MIDI destinations on the "Instruments" screen when you load a Xequence project, it does that automatically.

  • @d4d0ug said:
    ...or make Xequence ab3 state save ?

    When we do AB3 integration, we will of course look into that :)

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