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.

BIAS Amp 2 for iPhone is free right now

Comments

  • Mine showed up as already purchased, I think I bought it previously as the first version on sale. Maybe for $5 or $10.

    I'm pretty frustrated right now by the whole Positive Grid experience. When I started with iOS music (late 2013), they had a decently functional product in JamUp Pro. Yes, there were tons of opportunities to spend money on IAP, and I did (probably $50 to $100 worth), but at least it was an all-in-one suite with amp models, effects, and AudioBus integration all in one place. It was basically the primary way I played electric guitar for an entire year.

    Ever since the release of BIAS, and later with BIAS FX, BIAS Pedal, and their various experiments with hardware, it's just been kind of a mess. My IAP's for JamUp have no value for use in BIAS, and JamUp itself would usually just crash if I tried to open it.

    Now, with this "BIAS 2" update, unless I'm missing something, they took the whole ToneCloud access that was just a part of the original BIAS I paid for, and tied that to a $15 unlock price for the new upgrade. Which is too bad because on my 12.9" iPad Pro, I finally got it to where it sounded pretty decent without clicks or latency. I just never have much confidence that it's going to work consistently whenever there's an update or change to iOS.

  • I don’t know if it’s free. On iPad they made Bias amp “free” for new users. For existing users that mistankingly upgraded they made the app sound awful, took away cabinets, destroyed user presets, and asked for $15-20 USD to upgrade to Bias 2, which I heard didn’t fix the features lost. I was going to attempt an A-B comparison since I had the old version on my iPad Air 2, but got so depressed and the difference was so much I stopped comparing.

  • @StormJH1 said:
    Mine showed up as already purchased, I think I bought it previously as the first version on sale. Maybe for $5 or $10.

    I'm pretty frustrated right now by the whole Positive Grid experience. When I started with iOS music (late 2013), they had a decently functional product in JamUp Pro. Yes, there were tons of opportunities to spend money on IAP, and I did (probably $50 to $100 worth), but at least it was an all-in-one suite with amp models, effects, and AudioBus integration all in one place. It was basically the primary way I played electric guitar for an entire year.

    Ever since the release of BIAS, and later with BIAS FX, BIAS Pedal, and their various experiments with hardware, it's just been kind of a mess. My IAP's for JamUp have no value for use in BIAS, and JamUp itself would usually just crash if I tried to open it.

    Now, with this "BIAS 2" update, unless I'm missing something, they took the whole ToneCloud access that was just a part of the original BIAS I paid for, and tied that to a $15 unlock price for the new upgrade. Which is too bad because on my 12.9" iPad Pro, I finally got it to where it sounded pretty decent without clicks or latency. I just never have much confidence that it's going to work consistently whenever there's an update or change to iOS.

    Hi,

    I bought Bias Amp for 5€ in the past and I updated to BIAS AMP 2. I didn’t pay for any IAPs and I have full access to Tonecloud so I think you should recheck again your experience with BIAS AMP 2.

  • You should really have a look(an ear)at those celestion irs).game changer.

  • edited June 2018

    @AlexB said:

    @StormJH1 said:
    Mine showed up as already purchased, I think I bought it previously as the first version on sale. Maybe for $5 or $10.

    I'm pretty frustrated right now by the whole Positive Grid experience. When I started with iOS music (late 2013), they had a decently functional product in JamUp Pro. Yes, there were tons of opportunities to spend money on IAP, and I did (probably $50 to $100 worth), but at least it was an all-in-one suite with amp models, effects, and AudioBus integration all in one place. It was basically the primary way I played electric guitar for an entire year.

    Ever since the release of BIAS, and later with BIAS FX, BIAS Pedal, and their various experiments with hardware, it's just been kind of a mess. My IAP's for JamUp have no value for use in BIAS, and JamUp itself would usually just crash if I tried to open it.

    Now, with this "BIAS 2" update, unless I'm missing something, they took the whole ToneCloud access that was just a part of the original BIAS I paid for, and tied that to a $15 unlock price for the new upgrade. Which is too bad because on my 12.9" iPad Pro, I finally got it to where it sounded pretty decent without clicks or latency. I just never have much confidence that it's going to work consistently whenever there's an update or change to iOS.

    Hi,

    I bought Bias Amp for 5€ in the past and I updated to BIAS AMP 2. I didn’t pay for any IAPs and I have full access to Tonecloud so I think you should recheck again your experience with BIAS AMP 2.

    I hope that you are correct. I hit "restore purchases" and did not immediately see where I could access the ToneCloud amps I had downloaded in the past. But I did not try for too long, so it sounds like it is user error.

    It's still tough for me to commit to any new IAP's in the BIAS ecosystem for the reasons I cited above. It's worth noting that the three BIAS apps total about 2GB in size, and that's a lot of content unless you can commit to making it your go-to iOS guitar modeler. The reverb in BIAS Amp improved, but it's always turned me off that you need to go outside the app to get a simple delay, or even a boost. The whole POINT of playing guitar on an iOS is that you can get literally piles of gear accessible from a single screen (and without having to purchase a room-full of the real-life equivalent).

    I suppose I really should spend more time with FX and Pedal given that I already paid for them and wasn't able to get much use out of them. The concepts are great the potential is massive, but the reliability issues and latency really drove me away and back towards pedal-based setups. Perhaps I should give all this stuff a second chance because I was really hopeful that community-supported amp and effect designs would allow me to tinker without always looking for "one more pedal".

  • I'm pretty firmly entrenched in the Yonac Tonestack camp, for the reason you mentioned... one stop shop for all of my amps and effects. I'll probably give this a try. Maybe I can get a decent Plexi tone out of it or something.

  • edited June 2018

    Yeah this is a good example of quality products mixed with bad marketing strategies that end up ruining the quality of life of the end user 😎

  • I was joking by the way 😉

  • Goot point, meaty. This strategy is all too familiar in the realm of iOS games.

    My guess is the sales of the new Bias app have been lackluster so they're trying to lure more users who will hopefully buy the IAP.

  • Regarding the free iPhone BIAS app, thanks for the information @Coloobar - I picked it up today, having refused until now to put more money into the PG apps. It does seem to have all 36 amps and I downloaded a test preset from ToneCloud without any problem. I haven’t played through it yet though :p

    I’ve had a similar experience to others here with the iPad app, I don’t think they handled the upgrade to v2 very well... it it still confusing to understand the value of the v2 IAP upgrade, so I haven’t bothered. In fact, my iPad is still on the v1 app, I upgraded the app on my wife’s iPad Air because I didn’t have the confidence it would be a smooth process. Thankfully I was right! They have since fixed some of the bugs, such as being unable to turn on or off the cab sim on certain amps (turns out it was amps with closed backs, weird). I don’t know about losing ToneCloud presets because I didn’t have any on that iPad, however in the course of troubleshooting the bugs, I deleted and reinstalled the app and my previously purchased IAP (Glassy pack) didn’t repopulate the presets. It recognises the IAP but wont bring the presets back. By referring to the presets on my own iPad, I managed to find ToneCloud presets that matched the names, all from PG, so I’ve downloaded those; but I don’t know if they are exactly the same or not!

    I’ve had various email conversations with the developers and some of them have been constructive, but mostly I get the impression they are busy doing other things...

    I can’t see anything that was in the old version of BIAS that isn’t available in the v2 app, so I don’t think it is necessary to buy this ''2.0 features pack” to retain the same functionality...

  • edited June 2018

    So far have not seen any reason to upgrade. Plus bias doesn't ever seem to load properly in audiobus 2 or 3. Not sure why.

    Also I'm in the tonestack yonac camp. One stop for just about any tone. Runs like a dream too. Think I'll stick with that. Wish they'd update the sound a bit. Could stand to be a bit warmer and id been 100% disinterested in anything else

    Yonac expressed interest in making tonestack Au3. At the end of year (maybe). No set date but they are gonna release Galileo vst first I think

  • It looks like the app only supports bluetooth midi now. That's worthless to me unless they allow support for wired midi controllers. I like the amp tones and would pay some money to upgrade if I could actually use the app in a live situation. Sad.

  • Anyone know if the Bias Amp 2 IAP on an iPad also applies if you have the iPhone version or would you need to buy it on both?

  • You need to buy both.

  • edited June 2018

    It's a little bit frustrating that you can't share your IAPs bertween iPhone and iPad versions. I bought almost everything within Bias for iPad, but if I want to use the same gear on iPhone I have to pay twice :neutral:

    As far as I remember, several years ago we had similar situations with Amplitube by IKM. Fortunately IKM refused the idea of geting money for the same thing from different apps. And I hope that Positive Grid will do it sooner or later too.

  • That’ll prolly keep my from buying IAP on either. I wonder if they consider the number of users whose enthusiasm they kill with this policy. I like the sim but this policy is likely to drive me to ToneStack whose free version I tried out (and liked) for no other reason than not being able to afford to buy IAPs for both the phone and iPad.

  • edited June 2018

    The plexi sounds friggin' awesome though. If only this app was more like Tonestack. Dang.

  • Some sounds are really great ,but got a nice buzzz when disconnected all at sudden from AB3. Twice .

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