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.
Can AudioBus route many-to-many?
I'm new to AB and new to iPad music. I'm designing my setup for live performance, and can't see how to make it so that 3 or 4 sources can each be routed to three different loopers, with the ability to switch the routing on the fly with a MIDI CC. Because apps like Ostinator and Thumbjam are apps, not AUs, AB won't let me use multiple instances (with main in/outs). I frankly haven't yet sussed out the reasoning and rules of what apps will work where in the three-step channels so I'm going by trial and error at this point.
Question: is there any way to do branching and/or sub- mixing to set up many-to-many routings? I don't see it, and I couldn't find mention of it anywhere in this forum.
Or do I need to go to AUM, which claims it can do this kind of routing?
Everything I do is for live performance--I'm a one-man band and rely heavily on loopers to build up my electro-symphonic sound. The whole reason I'm migrating to iPad loopers is because my hardware loopers (Infinity, Boomerang) don't give me the refined features hat looper apps do, and I want to incorporate three or four different ones for different musical ends.
Thanks,
Steve
ThinAirX.com
Comments
Many to many routing in AB essentially consists of multiple single "lanes" using the same input and output as necessary. So instead of thinking of multiple tree branches and/or roots in a single lane, try putting the same input and output apps in multiple lanes.
@lukesleepwalker Thank you for your comment. However with some apps AB won't let me put them in multiple lanes (because they're really just links to apps). I think I could chain things together in a line using that method, but the branching and mixing is what I need.
Steve
With some clever bussing, you could do this in AUM. Everything in AUM is MIDI-controllable, you could have a sound source set up to send to 3 different buses (for example) and have a MIDI CC value set to determine the send level (or even as an on/off toggle) for a bus. With a little Mozaic scripting, you could make the switching pretty fancy.
iOS can’t handle more than one simultaneous external USB audio interface, so any multi routing has to conform to that restriction.
Ah right. AUM busses might indeed work better for your use case.
Thank you all for your helpful hints. I just spent a couple hours learning AUM and I see that's probably my solution for complex routing. I'm comfortable building with sub-busses, but I don't know Mozaic. I'm planning to consolidate the controllers into a live-performance interface with MIDI Designer.
I discovered that a lot of reviewers and explainers of AUM suggest that AUM and AB work well together, because each do different things well. That's the route (pun intended) that'll I'll pursue.
My external interface is iConnect 4+, so I think that should handle multiple outs from the iPad (I haven't tried it yet). Correct?
Steve
@ThinAirX If you go the AB plus AUM route, I realy would like to see your AB preset.
Maybe you can upload here?
@tja I'd be happy to share. I've had some success getting the integration to work, yet still working through some frustrations. So nothing I want to show yet.
I've learned how to do sub-bus routings in AUM, which is very powerful. AUM is a joy to work with, it's so well designed. AUM is my main focus and core, but I see I need AB to handle the apps.
Steve
I think ApeMatrix is the king of routing on those scenarios . All in one screen
Does it provide the same extensive midi-mapping of bus controls that AUM provides?
Zero Control on buses , even on the ‘new’ send/return AU
My point is that on one screen (one of the total three Matrix) ,you can easily route by hand , up to 10 apps .
Of course every app has a midi assignable on/off, mute/solo,level, pan ....
But you are right . The luck of midi control on the buses is mystery