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
Really significant update! So far, overall it seems like he did the midi stuff well. Intuitive
I thought I would be able to load iaa into ns2 with this update, but seems not...
Is it letting you record midi now from the au keyboards and midi sequencers ? Didn't get a chance to test before work
No, IAA suport not planned... (at least in term of loading IAA into NS - you can load NS itself as IAA generstor now in AUM or ther IAA compatible host - but this is just result of added Audiobus compatibility
Not directly for now (still in todo list), but very easy to do with MIDI Tools Route plugin, check this video :
I think you can send to it from AB3. This should let you pipe IAA into NS2
Happy about Audiobus, re-installed, now I can record Au midi with midiflow adapter (or should be able to haven't tried it yet)
(Can't load StepBud. Can someone confirm please.)
Edit:
Apparently loads fine today... strange
Check my video above, it's lot better to record it directly in NS to other track just usimg Route plugin
Also midiflow (or other middleware) app is not needed anymore for recording of midi from external apps, because NS now provides virtual MIDI IN port "Nanostudio 2" whivh you can choose in midi out settings of any external app, somyou can send MIDI directl from any app to NS (KB-1 for example, or other)
Yes. Though MidiFlow adapter is no longer needed for that kind of thing since some time now.
no external standalone app is needed at all for recording of AU MIDIfx output now, just Route plugin :-) you can stay in the box :-)
Thanks for the AB plumbing record explanation guys great stuff.
Thank ya man I'll check that out!
Ya there are deff some great iaa apps out there, I wish they were au but for now just gotta do the work arounds as it seems iaa causes a lot of grief in programming daw like apps
Yay! So happy to be able to use StepPolyArp Unit now.
Reminder to update App Store reviews, especially if you were one of those turkeys that complained about no AudioBus support (like I did).
Awesome post .. just for my info how did you figure the 32 note polyphony part .. especially the #32
If it’s a pro device it should be fine. I’ve done this with 2 AudioLayer pianos which were very large, not for reasons of polyphony but for layering. Always worth experimentation to see what’s possible. I'm not saying it will definitely work, but worth a try
Well, while I was playing I noticed some weird behavior on my pedal and I thought it was a cable problem or a pedal malfunction, but it only happened after several notes in a row and not in short passages. So I decided to count the notes.
The polyphony issue can be checked just pressing the pedal and playing a repetitive 4 notes chord with both hands (8 notes in total), you’ll hear that after the 4th repetition (4x2x4=32) it stops working properly. You can also play a long legato arpeggio over several octaves on the keyboard, you’ll notice that after you play the 32nd note polyphony is exhausted.
I’m still encountering intermittent problems with StepBud in NS2, even after both are updated. Sometimes it works, other times....bizarre and unpredictable stuff. For examples:
-when controlling Troublemaker, the Volume knob swings constantly, as if connected to an LFO ~1hz.
-when controlling Obsidian, it sounds like the note pitch is affecting some other parameter, like cutoff or wavetable position.
-when controlling Poison 202, I get note repeats where I haven’t programmed any.
-the NS2 Keyboard looks like I’m pressing almost all the keys at once
Can anyone confirm weird things like this?!?
StepBud doesn't work properly in NS2 at all for me... It seems like StepBud is sending a million note ons for every step. FWIW StepBud works perfectly in AUM when I replicate the same setup.
More info in this thread:
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/31727/work-in-progress-new-auv3-midi-sequencer-app#latest
As more of an audio guy, I bought NS with faith that audio would be added soon. I know AB is just one step towards that but it’s a huge game changey step!! Super excited! The barrier is broken.
Wow you actually checked the polyphonic capacity note by note! Kudos!
This is a great update and I've been getting into NS2 a bit more now
I still find some of the workflow a bit frustrating though in some things. Is there a shortcut for going from the midiFX page to the synth view and back again? Seems you have to go to the mixer view first each time.
Unfortunately no, but at least you can from mixer view tap that small "MIDI FX" text on left side of channel stripe and then it jumps directly to MIDI FX tab ..
Thanks, that's what I've been doing but hopefully there'll be a shortcut one day. If you're working with a sequencer it can be quite a lot of jumping around.
Yeah it's why I prefer AUM/ape/AB3 for beginning projects, which require a lot less menu navigation for these things. However, when you need to arrange something then it works well.
NS2 is usually 1 - 2 taps to get anywhere. Other apps are no better in that respect.
I understand Carnbot's issue. It's "just" 2 taps from synth (or generaly any) screen go back to mixer detail tab - but i understand that it needs some level of attention "where i should tap to get exactly at place where i was before" - which can work as distraction especially if you're in "creative flow" mental stage ..
@Carnbot we will think about "one tap" solution for returning back to track detail view tab from synth / sequencer / part editor screens .. for sure it would be handy, there are some ideas how to do it - we need to evaluate them.
Btw. any UI/UX idea is always welcome, but ideally directly on NS forum as separate thread so we can discuss it and most importantly Matt can check that discussion, all ideas and opinions and eventually put it to his queue ;-)