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.

Does an apps UI make a difference?

2

Comments

  • See how differently people rate some app's UIs?
    To me it shows that there is a large grey zone of UI design that is loved by some and hated by others.
    The more popular apps with few complaints in this regard seem to be apps that hit a good compromise between minimizing controls, offering everything important visible from one page, using UI elements and symbols that are understood by most people, have controls that can be tapped by humans without trying twice (hey, even Apple have failed with their default widgets in some areas!) and use as much screen space as possible and intelligent little helpers for the more fiddly operations like editing in a piano roll, editing automation and waveforms, tweaking complex routings, scrolling through large lists and speeding up finding what you're looking for, drag-and-drop operations etc.

    Good examples like Samplr, Cubasis, NanoStudio 1, AUM, AudioShare, Auxy (the first version), Yellofier, Genome Midi, BlocsWave, Loopy, TwistedWave, SpaceCraft, Galileo Organ, DM1, ChordPolyPad, most Klevgrnd apps, BeatHawk to some extent ... seem to do many of these aspects right, just to name a few.

  • @rs2000 said:

    @pauly said:
    What I would really like to see for the IOS Model 15 is the ability to save patches as patch sheets, so you could print them off. It's actually be really easy: The patches are saved as human readable XML files.

    It wouldn't hurt for sure and it's really not much work for a developer (well, not more than writing a good manual ;)) but I doubt that more than 1% of its users would profit from that.

    Anyone with knowledge of XHTML could craft a web page template that could do this. That person is not me though. ;)

  • edited September 2018

    Re sequencing Shoutouts to @SevenSystems because Xequence is well thought out with the users interests at heart. Folks at Cubasis such as @lfs seem genuinely sincere as well. I’m reserving all praise and criticism for BM3 until after 3.1 releases.

  • @wim said:

    @rs2000 said:

    @pauly said:
    What I would really like to see for the IOS Model 15 is the ability to save patches as patch sheets, so you could print them off. It's actually be really easy: The patches are saved as human readable XML files.

    It wouldn't hurt for sure and it's really not much work for a developer (well, not more than writing a good manual ;)) but I doubt that more than 1% of its users would profit from that.

    Anyone with knowledge of XHTML could craft a web page template that could do this. That person is not me though. ;)

    Even better, there are Mac applications that let you design all kinds of UIs including iOS-related properties and they let you export XCode compatible templates for development.
    Unfortunately not every developer starts with putting lots of time and thoughts into the UI before writing the first line of code. For some, the functionality itself is more straightforward to do, that's why you sometimes see two people behind an app: A designer and a coder.

    But I like the idea @wim. Who knows, this forum could be the place to discuss and design new apps visually before development even starts :smiley:

    @LucidMusicInc said:
    I’m reserving all praise and criticism for BM3 until after 3.1 releases.

    TBH I don't expect any dramatic UI changes, it's already taking ages to fix what's in the pipe :o

  • The UX of UI is not easy. I’ve spent my entire life as an artist and designer and writer and lecturer, always involved in one or the other of the visual interpretation of action, or the visual interpretation of sound.

    Only this week for example I was bemoaning the fact that in all of humanity there is no good visual iconic representation for ‘undo’ or changing your mind or going back to how things were. There are many undo icons. None of them are any good. Many of them are different. If they’re different, how can that be? Which is the correct one, if any?

  • edited September 2018

    @u0421793 said:
    The UX of UI is not easy. I’ve spent my entire life as an artist and designer and writer and lecturer, always involved in one or the other of the visual interpretation of action, or the visual interpretation of sound.

    Only this week for example I was bemoaning the fact that in all of humanity there is no good visual iconic representation for ‘undo’ or changing your mind or going back to how things were. There are many undo icons. None of them are any good. Many of them are different. If they’re different, how can that be? Which is the correct one, if any?

    What's wrong with either the curved left arrows for undo and right arrows for redo? I guess most users don't have issues with them.
    But I hear you, there's no guarantee for any icon to work, you have to rely on "common sense", common experiences and still some people will complain about weird symbols that just don't tell the story.
    It's always a compromise.
    Still, apps like Samplr habe been very popular with very little criticism about it, so there seems to be a stack of things you can do without irritating many people.

  • edited September 2018

    Curved arrows going left or right on a product that has time representation such as a timeline can easily mean “now go to that point over here” or “over there”. It doesn’t universally mean I’ve changed my mind.

    Also: time representation actually doesn’t progress from left to right. It is commonly and incorrectly depicted like that, but that’s a mistake made over and over.

  • @u0421793 said:
    Curved arrows going left or right on a product that has time representation such as a timeline can easily mean “now go to that point over here” or “over there”. It doesn’t universally mean I’ve changed my mind.

    That's what locators are for (in DAWs or audio editors).

    Also: time representation actually doesn’t progress from left to right. It is commonly and incorrectly depicted like that, but that’s a mistake made over and over.

    Hmm. Who cares when everybody's got used to it? ;)

  • Yep. For me I always find myself working far more on "all in one" apps than "I do one thing well" apps. I hate setting up inter app audio routing, midi etc.

    In my ideal world I would have ONE modular app that did everything I wanted from synth, beats, effects, sequencing etc. Hoping Drambo will do this when its released.

  • @u0421793 agreed that there is no good visual symbol that truly is representative of the undo. But we have all casually strolled through this paradigm shift in our culture that has molded us into the association of a curved left arrow representing a step back in time, before the event that just happpened. It all started with cave drawing and will continue until the written language disappears. We are at the point now where compleat conversations can be had only by the use of emoji’s. So we started out with cave drawing and we are returning to cave drawing. Humanity has come full circle.

    Now what color do you want that curved left arrow? :)

  • If Auria had Cubasis’s GUI, would you like it better?

  • If Cubasis had Auria graphics I would like Cubasis better.

  • edited September 2018

    @u0421793 said:
    Curved arrows going left or right on a product that has time representation such as a timeline can easily mean “now go to that point over here” or “over there”. It doesn’t universally mean I’ve changed my mind.

    Also: time representation actually doesn’t progress from left to right. It is commonly and incorrectly depicted like that, but that’s a mistake made over and over.

    WTF? :D

    I’m just grateful to have an undo button. But the more I think about it... the the idea of “undoing” does seem to pose a kind of existential dilemma ...

  • @JudgeDredd said:
    I have been going trough some of the apps that I seldom use and noticed they all had a few things in common. They all have UI issues that just don’t appeal to my creativity. They are not arranged well in my own opinion, making work flow more cumbersome or just the graphic design is unappealing. Now saying this, in no way am I saying the app doesn’t sound amazing or do a spectacular job at what it is supposed to do. But it distracts from my own personal feng shui. I prefer apps that don’t try and look like a real instrument or amp or such. It can have the look of real knobs and faders as long as its done well. But the simplistic straightforward crisp and clean look is more appealing to me.

    Does this affect anyone else? Are any of you the opposite and like it when developers try and make software look real even at the cost of workflow?

    Thanks for playing along.

    If it (skeuomorphic design) gets in the way of workflow, then it’s not good design. If it’s not good workflow then you won’t like using the app.

    Personally I like that sort of thing when it works well, as it gives me the impression I’m using hardware. But when it doesn’t work as well (e.g. Zeeon), then I’d prefer they had used a flat, simple UI style.

  • Yes, since most tools sounds good or very good the GUI and workflow makes a huge part of it if i buy something or not.

  • edited September 2018

    We’ve had bad UI threads in the past but it’s worth repeating that there’s all kinds of possibilities for pop up options and gestures that are under utilised. The long press is the right click and the right click is where all the magic happens in the desktop world. No need for cluttered UIs with things like tabbed pages and long press menus. Long pressing a parameter to have a number entry seems very obvious to me but so many apps miss the opportunity and instead make us fiddle. Point being, more long press menus needed.

  • @LucidMusicInc said:

    @JudgeDredd said:

    @iamspoon said:
    Is this the right thread for my annual moan about the (uninspiring) sea of blue that makes Gadget so hard to love?
    :smile:

    This is that thread. And Gadget for me, hits both the workflow and not so sexy nails into the coffin of unused apps.

    The blue is the least of the problems plaguing Gadget. They need to kill the animations and put some tabs in the screen allowing us to get where we need to get to without a dozen taps tapping in and out of scenes. Some combination of Electribe and Gadget would be perfect.

    +1

  • @rs2000 said:

    @wim said:

    @rs2000 said:

    @pauly said:
    What I would really like to see for the IOS Model 15 is the ability to save patches as patch sheets, so you could print them off. It's actually be really easy: The patches are saved as human readable XML files.

    It wouldn't hurt for sure and it's really not much work for a developer (well, not more than writing a good manual ;)) but I doubt that more than 1% of its users would profit from that.

    Anyone with knowledge of XHTML could craft a web page template that could do this. That person is not me though. ;)

    Even better, there are Mac applications that let you design all kinds of UIs including iOS-related properties and they let you export XCode compatible templates for development.

    That’s more than I was saying. I was referring only to the “patch sheet” suggestion. XML can easily be presented as a web page using XHTML similarly to creating any web page. I was mentioning a way an ambitious person could do that outside the app.

  • edited September 2018

    @LucidMusicInc said:
    We’ve had bad UI threads in the past but it’s worth repeating that there’s all kinds of possibilities for pop up options and gestures that are under utilised. The long press is the right click and the right click is where all the magic happens in the desktop world. No need for cluttered UIs with things like tabbed pages and long press menus. Long pressing a parameter to have a number entry seems very obvious to me but so many apps miss the opportunity and instead make us fiddle. Point being, more long press menus needed.

    If you (anyone) were to encounter an unfamiliar control which had a long press affordance, how would you prefer to get a clue about this without actually having to try it? In other words, how would you prefer circumventing low discoverability?

    (And why does the iPhone keyboard suggest circumcision before circumventing?)

  • @u0421793 said:
    Only this week for example I was bemoaning the fact that in all of humanity there is no good visual iconic representation for ‘undo’ or changing your mind or going back to how things were. There are many undo icons. None of them are any good. Many of them are different. If they’re different, how can that be? Which is the correct one, if any?

    My humble proposal...

  • @wim said:

    @u0421793 said:
    Only this week for example I was bemoaning the fact that in all of humanity there is no good visual iconic representation for ‘undo’ or changing your mind or going back to how things were. There are many undo icons. None of them are any good. Many of them are different. If they’re different, how can that be? Which is the correct one, if any?

    My humble proposal...

    Took me a while to see the facepalm. Fail! (For me at least)

  • edited September 2018

    @Philippe said:

    @wim said:

    @u0421793 said:
    Only this week for example I was bemoaning the fact that in all of humanity there is no good visual iconic representation for ‘undo’ or changing your mind or going back to how things were. There are many undo icons. None of them are any good. Many of them are different. If they’re different, how can that be? Which is the correct one, if any?

    My humble proposal...

    Took me a while to see the facepalm. Fail! (For me at least)

    I think it's quite funny actually.
    When we as users make a poo poo that equals a facepalm it's time for undo :)

  • iWavestation is a beast of a synth, hidden behind a convoluted interface.

    Model 15 has great sound, but also proves you can't squeeze a modular synth from the 70s onto an iPad screen.

    UI absolutely matters.

  • edited September 2018

    @u0421793 said:

    @LucidMusicInc said:
    We’ve had bad UI threads in the past but it’s worth repeating that there’s all kinds of possibilities for pop up options and gestures that are under utilised. The long press is the right click and the right click is where all the magic happens in the desktop world. No need for cluttered UIs with things like tabbed pages and long press menus. Long pressing a parameter to have a number entry seems very obvious to me but so many apps miss the opportunity and instead make us fiddle. Point being, more long press menus needed.

    If you (anyone) were to encounter an unfamiliar control which had a long press affordance, how would you prefer to get a clue about this without actually having to try it? In other words, how would you prefer circumventing low discoverability?

    (And why does the iPhone keyboard suggest circumcision before circumventing?)

    No need for any visual clue. It’s a right click, or command click. Hence anything that is tappable should be long tappable to get at least one or more additional functions or context menus.

    Re point 2: Take it up with the Geniuses at your local Apple Store and let us know the result! ;)

  • @LucidMusicInc said:

    @u0421793 said:

    @LucidMusicInc said:
    We’ve had bad UI threads in the past but it’s worth repeating that there’s all kinds of possibilities for pop up options and gestures that are under utilised. The long press is the right click and the right click is where all the magic happens in the desktop world. No need for cluttered UIs with things like tabbed pages and long press menus. Long pressing a parameter to have a number entry seems very obvious to me but so many apps miss the opportunity and instead make us fiddle. Point being, more long press menus needed.

    If you (anyone) were to encounter an unfamiliar control which had a long press affordance, how would you prefer to get a clue about this without actually having to try it? In other words, how would you prefer circumventing low discoverability?

    No need for any visual clue. It’s a right click, or command click. Hence anything that is tappable should be long tappable to get at least one or more additional functions or context menus.

    Yes, but what is an unfamiliar person to do? Try long-tapping absolutely everything they see anywhere on the screen, in all variations and modes of what they then see? Nobody will. I certainly won’t. If a functionality is hidden, it doesn’t exist (until it randomly gets discovered, then it does, for a very small minority of users – not enough to make a difference).

    For an example of undiscoverability: those of you who are watching this on an iPad and you don’t have a keyboard connected – enter a text field and get the onscreen keyboard. With two finger, split the keyboard apart (if you get the gesture correct, that is) and you’ll end up with two small half-keyboards either side. Two fingers to draw them together will return you a whole keyboard. I’d estimate about 0.1% of the iPad owner population even know it can be done (and the same percentage of those, actually ever use it).

  • edited September 2018

    @u0421793 said:

    @LucidMusicInc said:

    @u0421793 said:

    @LucidMusicInc said:
    We’ve had bad UI threads in the past but it’s worth repeating that there’s all kinds of possibilities for pop up options and gestures that are under utilised. The long press is the right click and the right click is where all the magic happens in the desktop world. No need for cluttered UIs with things like tabbed pages and long press menus. Long pressing a parameter to have a number entry seems very obvious to me but so many apps miss the opportunity and instead make us fiddle. Point being, more long press menus needed.

    If you (anyone) were to encounter an unfamiliar control which had a long press affordance, how would you prefer to get a clue about this without actually having to try it? In other words, how would you prefer circumventing low discoverability?

    No need for any visual clue. It’s a right click, or command click. Hence anything that is tappable should be long tappable to get at least one or more additional functions or context menus.

    Yes, but what is an unfamiliar person to do? Try long-tapping absolutely everything they see anywhere on the screen, in all variations and modes of what they then see?

    Yes

    Nobody will. I certainly won’t. If a functionality is hidden, it doesn’t exist (until it randomly gets discovered, then it does, for a very small minority of users – not enough to make a difference).

    For an example of undiscoverability: those of you who are watching this on an iPad and you don’t have a keyboard connected – enter a text field and get the onscreen keyboard. With two finger, split the keyboard apart (if you get the gesture correct, that is) and you’ll end up with two small half-keyboards either side. Two fingers to draw them together will return you a whole keyboard. I’d estimate about 0.1% of the iPad owner population even know it can be done (and the same percentage of those, actually ever use it).

    I never suggested the Apple keyboard, nor did I suggest gestures. Don’t like those much either. I suggested context sensitive pop up menus on not a select few items but on all items. It is defacto in the desktop world so it should be adopted on touchscreen as well particularly since touch screen devices tend to be a lot smaller. Think of it as an extra layer of functionality only instead of tapping once you touch and hold...

  • Right-clicking is a pure desktop UI pattern. So having a hidden long-press as a replacement for something that is already foreign to the platform in the first place is perhaps not as obvious to mobile users as desktop users may expect.

    I try to avoid using it completely.

  • @u0421793 said:

    @LucidMusicInc said:

    @u0421793 said:

    @LucidMusicInc said:
    We’ve had bad UI threads in the past but it’s worth repeating that there’s all kinds of possibilities for pop up options and gestures that are under utilised. The long press is the right click and the right click is where all the magic happens in the desktop world. No need for cluttered UIs with things like tabbed pages and long press menus. Long pressing a parameter to have a number entry seems very obvious to me but so many apps miss the opportunity and instead make us fiddle. Point being, more long press menus needed.

    If you (anyone) were to encounter an unfamiliar control which had a long press affordance, how would you prefer to get a clue about this without actually having to try it? In other words, how would you prefer circumventing low discoverability?

    No need for any visual clue. It’s a right click, or command click. Hence anything that is tappable should be long tappable to get at least one or more additional functions or context menus.

    Yes, but what is an unfamiliar person to do? Try long-tapping absolutely everything they see anywhere on the screen, in all variations and modes of what they then see? Nobody will. I certainly won’t. If a functionality is hidden, it doesn’t exist (until it randomly gets discovered, then it does, for a very small minority of users – not enough to make a difference).

    For an example of undiscoverability: those of you who are watching this on an iPad and you don’t have a keyboard connected – enter a text field and get the onscreen keyboard. With two finger, split the keyboard apart (if you get the gesture correct, that is) and you’ll end up with two small half-keyboards either side. Two fingers to draw them together will return you a whole keyboard. I’d estimate about 0.1% of the iPad owner population even know it can be done (and the same percentage of those, actually ever use it).

    My god it works, but what’s it for....

  • @brambos said:
    Right-clicking is a pure desktop UI pattern. So having a hidden long-press as a replacement for something that is already foreign to the platform in the first place is perhaps not as obvious to mobile users as desktop users may expect.

    I try to avoid using it completely.

    Respectfully disagree. We already have it and it’s vital not foreign at all. My original point is that it’s under utilised.

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