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.
MIDI-CI and iOS?
There’s been some discussion about MPE support on our beloved platform. In some ways, we’re quite lucky. From Minimoog Model D and ThumbJam to GarageBand and iFretless Brass, we have quite a few MPE-savvy synths on iPad and iPhone.
http://www.rogerlinndesign.com/ls-recommended-sounds.html
But how about MIDI-CI? In a thread about physical modelling, a couple of us mentioned the new spec, which “paves the way for the future of MIDI”. CDM’s Peter Kirn also thinks MIDI-CI is the most important part of what the MIDI Manufacturers’ Association has announced two months ago.
Apart from demos involving synthesized drawbar organs, been a bit fuzzy on the details. Maybe some of you can explain a bit more what it’s about.
So it sounds likely that MIDI-CI will become a big deal. But will it come to iOS?
@InfoCheck said:
@Enkerli you might want to create a new thread on the MIDI-CI spec. In some ways it seems to extend MIDI using more of a layered network protocol like OSC or document types used in designing web pages like HTML. With increasingly more powerful small computing devices which can network with each other, it does seem like the time is ripe for coming up with a MIDI spec that can utilize this functionality. As we’ve seen with MIDI MPE, I think Apple will be on board with this as it will allow them to use one of their strengths which is hardware integration and partnering with other companies to create a seamless environment for the user (this is their goal at least) with iOS and MacOS devices playing a central role along with the app developers who build on top of this musical infrastructure.
Very interesting point. How will it work? Can devs implement it already? For instance, could @brambos use it in Rozeta? Does it replace, in any way, the use of plugin parameters?
Comments
Perhaps in some respects, MIDI-CI will be like state savings for your entire setup provided all of the devices, and software you’re using in a project all have and support MIDI-CI? All of your hardware and patches, would be remembered and I would speculate that the setup could be shared with someone else who has a similar setup but perhaps a different DAW? Maybe there’ll be a network component to this so remote coordination will be possible? Cross platform/hardware/DAW compatability/transportability seems to be the impetus behind this so users will spend less time setting up or having to remember their equipment and getting it all to coordinate with each other?
I've done some reading up on MIDI-CI. Some of the exciting aspects are the bi-directional communication, and the profile exchange (not sure what it's called), but MIDI endpoints can basically send over their parameters, and banks, presets etc... which I think should make an idea like instantly mapping a control surface to a synth, possible. Seems all backward compatible with MIDI 1.0, but will probably take a few years forward to implement - I mean, MPE is now ratified, but they still haven't released the standard! (but hint, I think the MPE documentation in the Roli projucer is about as close they come to what the final MPE standard will look like).
Really liking where this is going.
Maybe people accept the status quo but it’s “crazymaking” how difficult it can be to keep track of all patches in all synths. Answered a Sounds.com survey, today, and one of the questions related to this (though it focused more on “loops”). State-saving in AUM or Audiobus can be very useful. But organizing those save states across multiple sessions and projects and songs and devices can get mindboggling.
Can’t think of a really good analogy but it’s a bit like having a full colour palette spread across different assortments based on parts of the spectrum. You have red pencils and red paint in a case, but blue watercolours and markers are in a bag. When you want to create something purple, you need to mix items from different sources.
Ok, pretty bad analogy. But isn’t kind of weird that we have all sorts of “analog lead” and “ambient pad” sounds spread across so many iOS apps? Maybe y’all remember where you kept your coolest sounds for most purposes, but it’s becoming hard for me to keep track of these things.
Could perceive an important role for Audiobus, in this world. Or Camelot. Imagine if you could have one app get info from all synths (software and hardware) as to which controls they expose and what patches are available. And think of a scenario in which you have a way to know which sound came from which patch on which device or app. In fact, there could be cases where you could convert a patch from one synth into an equivalent patch for another synth, focusing on those minute differences such as the characteristic contribution of a filter. Maybe this is far-fetched, but there’s a compelling problem, here. It’d be surprising if a healthy business couldn’t be built from solutions to this problem.
MIDI-CI is out there now for iOS and macOS - anyone working on this for apps?