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.
Comments
This app is making some crazy sounds
Hence you have the name The Strange Agency.
OMG! I love that kind of stuff.
Now I am probably going to have to get this one too.
Seems there is some confusion about this app. Someone on the devs website asked for AB/IAA and when told it didn’t have it asked how he was going to get something out of the app and that this was a reason not to buy. In reality it records internally and you can export to AS and other destinations. It’s not in the app description for some reason but it’s clearly stated on the website. FYI for anyone (like me) who misunderstood the I/O capabilities.
PS - it’s very cool!
I'm pretty sure I can't resist this
A total sucker for granular with movement.
I really like what this thing does, sort of reminds me of cooking a leak and potato soup, but I can dip/pour my audio in and out of the pot and make it boil, turn up the heat, stir the soup.
Cooking my audio.
I should ask the dev if they would consider adding a hot chilli option,
and even an option to throw in ice cubes, or sugar to sweeten the results?
We could then trade recipes.
anyone got any links to some beats going through it or some drums?
Yeah my thoughts too.
Really need to see/hear more from this one.
Can someone who owns it show how you load files in please?
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Doug, are you there?
BTW, the example you posted sounds like EVP, without the attendant risks.
Me too. My first impressions on this is it looks better than it sounds and there doesn't seem to be a lot of options but it might grow into something more interesting.
Well I took one for the team...
I cannot see how you bring in a wav file to manipulate. I might be being a daftee but it doesn’t seem to create a Soup folder that you can access via the Files app. In Soup, you can record to wav and then export to Files but I cannot see how to bring a wav file in. When you are in Audioshare you can select a wav file and then ’Open in‘ Soup but I can’t see where it puts it. i must be missing something.
Anyone else? I have left a comment on the developer’s FB as well.
Well as far as I can tell there does seem to be an issue with the import function of the app.
When you press import it opens up an empty folder not connected to anything. There is NO
indication of which app you can upload a file from. You can stream audio into the app via internal mic input.
There are three "MAIN" options available to manipulate the incoming audio, WRITE, STIR, and READ.
"WRITE"- allows you manipulate the incoming audio with a red sphere that appears in the granular soup. You have to activate this by pressing the on button. "STIR"- is the center button on the main control area when engaged it allows you to stir the granular soup and reconfigure the "GRAINS" in the soup. The "WRITE" option allows you to manipulate the already imported audio by using the green sphere with you finger/apple pencil. Then you are able to record the session and export to other apps. I successfully exported 3 test files into either Samplist or Audioshare. The recorded project files DO appear in the file input folder and can be imported back in to the app.
I have also sent an email to the developer at The Strange Agency. [email protected]
I can’t create an INIT patch to only hear my own sounds as well. There always seem to be some trippy aaaahs still swirling around in that soup no matter what you do to try and get rid of them.
You have to press the CLEAR button total silence ..........
I press that old Clear button over and over
the aaaahs keep coming back lol
Hello everyone
I'm the lead developer at The Strange Agency and the developer of Soup. I was pointed to this thread by 93 Wisdom and thought I'd chime in.
It seems that the consensus on the AudioBus forum is that the app should have AudioBus
Jokes aside, I'm curious to hear about your ideal workflow. Are you thinking Soup would run in the background as a plugin? Or is it more about recording the output? Granulating audio from other outputs?
The discussion here and other comments I've gotten prompted me to share my thoughts, and I'm glad to also read yours.
As for import/export, indeed this was iTunes only during the beta, but at the prompting of testers sharing was added. You can open files using the action sheet from DropBox, AudioShare, the Files app, etc.
Opening a file from another app makes it the source in the FILE section of the INPUT, but doesn't actually add it to the file list in the app. That list is strictly recordings and files added via iTunes.
Similarly, recordings can be shared from the app using the action button in the OUTPUT section.
Hello tsa @Disqus I am 93 wisdom
we have been talking about this app
You should send Doug from the soundtestroom Youtube channel a code so he can demo the app......he is the best
Soup would be cool as an effect plugin running through Audiobus effect slot or AUM or AU plugin
allowing the user to stream audio through it and effect it like any other effect app and record the results
in say Auria Pro or Cubasis. Adding Audiobus alone would make the app way more user friendly.
You cant tell when you have added an audio file there is no visual representation...
From what I hear a lot of musicians do not like ITUNES myself included. too much restriction
It's about being able to run what ever we want through the app, importing files, granulating the output from other apps.
A musician might want it to run in the background as well, maybe for a live set or something
Also having multiple ways to import and export audio to and from the app.
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Do they sound like a choir? If so, it may be the ‘Aahhh Souls.’
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Welcome, Dr Strange.
I would be curious to know if the IOS music making community are in any way your target market. Or do you intend Soup to be mainly for boys, girls and those who aren’t sure, to have fun with odd noises.
If you want to capture the music making market, which is VERY enthusiastic for good quality, innovative apps, then a certain amount of connectivity is necessary.
IAA and AU3 would win you a whole bunch of fans. At the price point, it seems rsther strange - no pun intended - that you only included iTunes, which is awful.
Hi tsa, great to see you here, Welcome!
I have a couple of your older apps, Curtis, & 1919, which i thought were very interesting and unique. They are both semi languishing on my iPad 4 (32 bit), which dosn't get powered up nearly as often as it should, due to laziness! I have a couple of options to process audio from stand alone apps, (without IAA ) , being able to route them into various outboard gear, and then into Ableton 10 on my PC for recording & post processing. The problem is, that, i rarely turn it all on these days, because i can do pretty much everything without it all, on my Air 2, plugged into my PC & Ableton via a single lightening-USB cable. However for this to work ios apps need to have IAA at the very least, so that they can be hosted in Studiomux (which is a bridge between the two systems) Audiobus, Aum, or any of the other apps which will host an IAA enabled app. Without what is now considered to be, basic functionality, most musicians, dabblers, experimenters, et al, probably will not buy your app, regardless of how good it is.........there are just too many other great apps that will be able to do something similar, which do have the functionality.
I would probably buy your new app in an instant, if it had IAA ( at the very least,) so that i could integrate it into the wider IOS infrastructure, and beyond to my computer DAW.
The Strange Agency apps are unique & potentially inspiring, but without basic connectivity are ultimately not of much use to me.........sorry! ............. hope this message has been of some use to you..........cheers.....Iso.......... (not my real name!!)
Speaking personally, I need my music apps to have some kind of basic in/out connectivity. E.g: AU/Audiobus/IAA/Audioshare
At least one of the above is essential for me.
+1 for a Doug vid
@tsa great to see you here! Thank you for asking for feedback. I love unusual sound design and have bought most of your apps in the past. They are very innovative. It is a shame some of them did not get upgraded to 64bit so I cannot use them anymore. I still went ahead and purchased Soup though as it looked like a new take on granular and I had faith that it would be developed further.
My Soup feedback:
Connectivity
So many of us chain everything through iOS DAWs and AUM and Audiobus as our workflow. To have soup as an AU effect would be amazing. The iOS platform seems to be settling on AU as the preferred format and some of us are starting to rarely use anything else so I am surprised when new developed apps are not compatible with AU. Maybe it is just too much work? At the very least IAA so that we could route sounds through it and chain more effects onto the output.
File management
it is not clear what files are loaded. I would like to be able to see the samples that I have loaded and be able to add and remove them from the mix one at a time.
An INIT patch that clears all samples and all sound. I might be doing something wrong here but even after I hit clear, there still seems to be sound when I touch the soup!
Thank you for brightening our paths with strange noises. We appreciate it!!
Gus
Ok peeps - re my #3. My mistake. My mic line input couldn’t have been fully off when I was hitting clear and that’s why I was getting residual noise. It works fine if you make sure your line input is off.
Oh, and Soup sounds really good with a drum loop! The loop repeats and you can mix the granular in and out with the fader.
Liking this more and more! I really hope @tsa is up for some extra love and care on the connectivity and file management front...
Thanks for all the feedback guys. I hear you regarding connectivity. We'll look into what can be done. Soup is different from most AU plugins in that it's very visual and there's a ton of computation going on in that visual thread. Even if we background the app, all that fluid particle math has to happen, and that's not going to play well with others. Anyway, we'll explore the avenue and see if it makes sense.
@gusgranite I'm not sure if this is already clear, but only one sample is being played into the fluid at a time. Once it's recorded onto the fluid, there's really no way to turn a sample off. I take your point about showing which file is currently playing though.
It would be nice to be able to switch the samples on / off
Soup is different from most AU plugins....
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Eh? Is Soup AU3 compatible? If that is the case, then I’d become much keener.
I think the point is Soup isn’t AU because it has to much visual stuff happening
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Ah, okay. Now you put it like that, I see what Dr Strange meant.
Would be really good if there was an option to turn off the visuals, and turn on genuine AU3.
@tsa ah, I thought the whole point was that you can mix samples together in the soup. My mistake. (That would be cool though!).
@tsa it would be nice to have a version of Soup that minimized the visual processing so it could integrate more easily into an audio chain. Thank you for your consideration.