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.

Possible/practical to use BM3 with AB3?

To anyone with experience playing with this:
Is there a finicky boot process or some such but otherwise stable, or is it no go?

Cheers,
Oscar

Comments

  • There is no state saving, no multichannel output so only thing you get is being able to mix the output of BM3 with other channels in AB3. Also, BM3 is quite unstable but I (subjectively) had more crashes when routed via AB3 so I let it be.
    It may work for you, but overall BM3 is pretty painful to use when you dig a bit deeper, the crashes are quite common, autosave is not always helping (BM3 only autosaves when leaving the app, not in some timed interval, so you usually lose the work you were focused on for some longer time...)

  • @skrat said:
    There is no state saving, no multichannel output so only thing you get is being able to mix the output of BM3 with other channels in AB3. Also, BM3 is quite unstable but I (subjectively) had more crashes when routed via AB3 so I let it be.
    It may work for you, but overall BM3 is pretty painful to use when you dig a bit deeper, the crashes are quite common, autosave is not always helping (BM3 only autosaves when leaving the app, not in some timed interval, so you usually lose the work you were focused on for some longer time...)

    I use BM3 every day and I've forgotten the last time I lost any work to a crash. In fact, I can't remember the last crash I had full-stop.

    To anyone reading this, I would suggest that once you begin to learn what are 'riskier' activities, you also learn to save before doing them.

    There is no reason to feel overly anxious when making music in BM3, you just have to take control of your own saves. BM3 should be enjoyed, not avoided.

  • @skrat said:
    There is no state saving, no multichannel output so only thing you get is being able to mix the output of BM3 with other channels in AB3. Also, BM3 is quite unstable but I (subjectively) had more crashes when routed via AB3 so I let it be.
    It may work for you, but overall BM3 is pretty painful to use when you dig a bit deeper, the crashes are quite common, autosave is not always helping (BM3 only autosaves when leaving the app, not in some timed interval, so you usually lose the work you were focused on for some longer time...)

    yep, its pretty unstable, it will crash when you zoom in too much onto the sample which always gets me, I never get used to saving before doing such creative actions. Maybe the recently mentioned update will resolve it.

  • I also use BM3 all the time and can't recall the last crash I encountered. To the OP: BM3 into AB3 works but doesn't seem to offer many advantages. What are you trying to do?

  • Hey @OscarSouth as someone already mentioned, there’s no state saving etc. All you get is the universal transport. As for folks bashing BM3; I dunno, I feel like it's tomato juice, either you love it or hate it. I would not call it unstable because I rarely experience crashes, if ever. And I do a lot with BM3. As @tk32 said, you gotta know what is risky. I guess it depends on what you want to do.

  • it crashes when i zoom into samples not every time but it happens, I don't mean it as bashing, its just my experience. I'm all for BM3 getting better.

  • Heavy BM3 user with not many stability issues with BM3 after realizing “hot” creating banks and certain AUs were causing my issues. Outside of Egoist it’s by far my fav sampler on any platform and very solid for everything it does.

    Not sure what you’re looking to do with Audiobus and BM3 that BM3 can’t do by itself tho. What workflow are you desiring? Might help us all out also.

  • I use BM3 everyday and I'm auv3 heavy specially with fx like Fabfilter, ToneBooster, korvpressor etc... For AUv3 instruments I use Ravencroft, bs16i, and gospel musician stuff. No crashes here and I don't save that often.

  • @tk32 said:

    @skrat said:
    There is no state saving, no multichannel output so only thing you get is being able to mix the output of BM3 with other channels in AB3. Also, BM3 is quite unstable but I (subjectively) had more crashes when routed via AB3 so I let it be.
    It may work for you, but overall BM3 is pretty painful to use when you dig a bit deeper, the crashes are quite common, autosave is not always helping (BM3 only autosaves when leaving the app, not in some timed interval, so you usually lose the work you were focused on for some longer time...)

    I use BM3 every day and I've forgotten the last time I lost any work to a crash. In fact, I can't remember the last crash I had full-stop.

    To anyone reading this, I would suggest that once you begin to learn what are 'riskier' activities, you also learn to save before doing them.

    There is no reason to feel overly anxious when making music in BM3, you just have to take control of your own saves. BM3 should be enjoyed, not avoided.

    Yeah I also use BM3 as an instrument host live performances aallll the time, fully loaded up to the devices processing capacity. Never had a crash doing this -- ever. Nothing comes close on iOS as a performance host (and daaaammmn, that sampler is nice!!).

    @ph8aerror said:
    Hey @OscarSouth as someone already mentioned, there’s no state saving etc. All you get is the universal transport. As for folks bashing BM3; I dunno, I feel like it's tomato juice, either you love it or hate it. I would not call it unstable because I rarely experience crashes, if ever. And I do a lot with BM3. As @tk32 said, you gotta know what is risky. I guess it depends on what you want to do.

    @WillieNegus said:
    Not sure what you’re looking to do with Audiobus and BM3 that BM3 can’t do by itself tho. What workflow are you desiring? Might help us all out also.

    In this case I basically want all the lovely parts of BM3 in their own isolated environment plus a few extra things hosted in AB3 (which I need to use for them as I need AB3 to handle their tempo based transport). BM3 doesn't need to do anything extra as a hosted instrument, just to exist inside AB3 without throwing a fit. Maybe it's even possible to just run both apps in parallel at the same time? Will have to try. I'm just looking for a stable setup incorporating both hosts at the same time, really.

    Cheers for the discussion all.

  • @[Deleted User] said:
    it crashes when i zoom into samples not every time but it happens, I don't mean it as bashing, its just my experience. I'm all for BM3 getting better.

    I find it crashes when the buffer is set low. It never crashes if you're using 512 or higher.

    That rules out playing by hand for me. But then again the MIDI note overlap bug makes it unusable for any kind of interesting unquantized playing anyway.

  • @BroCoast said:

    @[Deleted User] said:
    it crashes when i zoom into samples not every time but it happens, I don't mean it as bashing, its just my experience. I'm all for BM3 getting better.

    I find it crashes when the buffer is set low. It never crashes if you're using 512 or higher.

    That rules out playing by hand for me. But then again the MIDI note overlap bug makes it unusable for any kind of interesting unquantized playing anyway.

    Ah cheers from that info, I’m at 128. I will wait for the possible update coming out mentioned in the other post and give it a go then.

  • @OscarSouth said:

    @tk32 said:

    @skrat said:
    There is no state saving, no multichannel output so only thing you get is being able to mix the output of BM3 with other channels in AB3. Also, BM3 is quite unstable but I (subjectively) had more crashes when routed via AB3 so I let it be.
    It may work for you, but overall BM3 is pretty painful to use when you dig a bit deeper, the crashes are quite common, autosave is not always helping (BM3 only autosaves when leaving the app, not in some timed interval, so you usually lose the work you were focused on for some longer time...)

    I use BM3 every day and I've forgotten the last time I lost any work to a crash. In fact, I can't remember the last crash I had full-stop.

    To anyone reading this, I would suggest that once you begin to learn what are 'riskier' activities, you also learn to save before doing them.

    There is no reason to feel overly anxious when making music in BM3, you just have to take control of your own saves. BM3 should be enjoyed, not avoided.

    Yeah I also use BM3 as an instrument host live performances aallll the time, fully loaded up to the devices processing capacity. Never had a crash doing this -- ever. Nothing comes close on iOS as a performance host (and daaaammmn, that sampler is nice!!).

    @ph8aerror said:
    Hey @OscarSouth as someone already mentioned, there’s no state saving etc. All you get is the universal transport. As for folks bashing BM3; I dunno, I feel like it's tomato juice, either you love it or hate it. I would not call it unstable because I rarely experience crashes, if ever. And I do a lot with BM3. As @tk32 said, you gotta know what is risky. I guess it depends on what you want to do.

    @WillieNegus said:
    Not sure what you’re looking to do with Audiobus and BM3 that BM3 can’t do by itself tho. What workflow are you desiring? Might help us all out also.

    In this case I basically want all the lovely parts of BM3 in their own isolated environment plus a few extra things hosted in AB3 (which I need to use for them as I need AB3 to handle their tempo based transport). BM3 doesn't need to do anything extra as a hosted instrument, just to exist inside AB3 without throwing a fit. Maybe it's even possible to just run both apps in parallel at the same time? Will have to try. I'm just looking for a stable setup incorporating both hosts at the same time, really.

    Cheers for the discussion all.

    BM3 would be running parallel to AB3 not inside it in any case.

  • @espiegel123 said:

    @OscarSouth said:

    @tk32 said:

    @skrat said:
    There is no state saving, no multichannel output so only thing you get is being able to mix the output of BM3 with other channels in AB3. Also, BM3 is quite unstable but I (subjectively) had more crashes when routed via AB3 so I let it be.
    It may work for you, but overall BM3 is pretty painful to use when you dig a bit deeper, the crashes are quite common, autosave is not always helping (BM3 only autosaves when leaving the app, not in some timed interval, so you usually lose the work you were focused on for some longer time...)

    I use BM3 every day and I've forgotten the last time I lost any work to a crash. In fact, I can't remember the last crash I had full-stop.

    To anyone reading this, I would suggest that once you begin to learn what are 'riskier' activities, you also learn to save before doing them.

    There is no reason to feel overly anxious when making music in BM3, you just have to take control of your own saves. BM3 should be enjoyed, not avoided.

    Yeah I also use BM3 as an instrument host live performances aallll the time, fully loaded up to the devices processing capacity. Never had a crash doing this -- ever. Nothing comes close on iOS as a performance host (and daaaammmn, that sampler is nice!!).

    @ph8aerror said:
    Hey @OscarSouth as someone already mentioned, there’s no state saving etc. All you get is the universal transport. As for folks bashing BM3; I dunno, I feel like it's tomato juice, either you love it or hate it. I would not call it unstable because I rarely experience crashes, if ever. And I do a lot with BM3. As @tk32 said, you gotta know what is risky. I guess it depends on what you want to do.

    @WillieNegus said:
    Not sure what you’re looking to do with Audiobus and BM3 that BM3 can’t do by itself tho. What workflow are you desiring? Might help us all out also.

    In this case I basically want all the lovely parts of BM3 in their own isolated environment plus a few extra things hosted in AB3 (which I need to use for them as I need AB3 to handle their tempo based transport). BM3 doesn't need to do anything extra as a hosted instrument, just to exist inside AB3 without throwing a fit. Maybe it's even possible to just run both apps in parallel at the same time? Will have to try. I'm just looking for a stable setup incorporating both hosts at the same time, really.

    Cheers for the discussion all.

    BM3 would be running parallel to AB3 not inside it in any case.

    I'd personally count IAA hosted by another app as 'inside', for practicalities sense.

  • @OscarSouth said:

    @espiegel123 said:

    @OscarSouth said:

    @tk32 said:

    @skrat said:
    There is no state saving, no multichannel output so only thing you get is being able to mix the output of BM3 with other channels in AB3. Also, BM3 is quite unstable but I (subjectively) had more crashes when routed via AB3 so I let it be.
    It may work for you, but overall BM3 is pretty painful to use when you dig a bit deeper, the crashes are quite common, autosave is not always helping (BM3 only autosaves when leaving the app, not in some timed interval, so you usually lose the work you were focused on for some longer time...)

    I use BM3 every day and I've forgotten the last time I lost any work to a crash. In fact, I can't remember the last crash I had full-stop.

    To anyone reading this, I would suggest that once you begin to learn what are 'riskier' activities, you also learn to save before doing them.

    There is no reason to feel overly anxious when making music in BM3, you just have to take control of your own saves. BM3 should be enjoyed, not avoided.

    Yeah I also use BM3 as an instrument host live performances aallll the time, fully loaded up to the devices processing capacity. Never had a crash doing this -- ever. Nothing comes close on iOS as a performance host (and daaaammmn, that sampler is nice!!).

    @ph8aerror said:
    Hey @OscarSouth as someone already mentioned, there’s no state saving etc. All you get is the universal transport. As for folks bashing BM3; I dunno, I feel like it's tomato juice, either you love it or hate it. I would not call it unstable because I rarely experience crashes, if ever. And I do a lot with BM3. As @tk32 said, you gotta know what is risky. I guess it depends on what you want to do.

    @WillieNegus said:
    Not sure what you’re looking to do with Audiobus and BM3 that BM3 can’t do by itself tho. What workflow are you desiring? Might help us all out also.

    In this case I basically want all the lovely parts of BM3 in their own isolated environment plus a few extra things hosted in AB3 (which I need to use for them as I need AB3 to handle their tempo based transport). BM3 doesn't need to do anything extra as a hosted instrument, just to exist inside AB3 without throwing a fit. Maybe it's even possible to just run both apps in parallel at the same time? Will have to try. I'm just looking for a stable setup incorporating both hosts at the same time, really.

    Cheers for the discussion all.

    BM3 would be running parallel to AB3 not inside it in any case.

    I'd personally count IAA hosted by another app as 'inside', for practicalities sense.

    It really isn't. There isn't any shared memory space. AB3 is not hosting IAA apps in any sort of meaningful way. Whether BM3 is stable using AB3's ports, I don't know. But BM3 is not running inside AB3.

  • edited August 2019

    @espiegel123 said:

    @OscarSouth said:

    @espiegel123 said:

    @OscarSouth said:

    @tk32 said:

    @skrat said:
    There is no state saving, no multichannel output so only thing you get is being able to mix the output of BM3 with other channels in AB3. Also, BM3 is quite unstable but I (subjectively) had more crashes when routed via AB3 so I let it be.
    It may work for you, but overall BM3 is pretty painful to use when you dig a bit deeper, the crashes are quite common, autosave is not always helping (BM3 only autosaves when leaving the app, not in some timed interval, so you usually lose the work you were focused on for some longer time...)

    I use BM3 every day and I've forgotten the last time I lost any work to a crash. In fact, I can't remember the last crash I had full-stop.

    To anyone reading this, I would suggest that once you begin to learn what are 'riskier' activities, you also learn to save before doing them.

    There is no reason to feel overly anxious when making music in BM3, you just have to take control of your own saves. BM3 should be enjoyed, not avoided.

    Yeah I also use BM3 as an instrument host live performances aallll the time, fully loaded up to the devices processing capacity. Never had a crash doing this -- ever. Nothing comes close on iOS as a performance host (and daaaammmn, that sampler is nice!!).

    @ph8aerror said:
    Hey @OscarSouth as someone already mentioned, there’s no state saving etc. All you get is the universal transport. As for folks bashing BM3; I dunno, I feel like it's tomato juice, either you love it or hate it. I would not call it unstable because I rarely experience crashes, if ever. And I do a lot with BM3. As @tk32 said, you gotta know what is risky. I guess it depends on what you want to do.

    @WillieNegus said:
    Not sure what you’re looking to do with Audiobus and BM3 that BM3 can’t do by itself tho. What workflow are you desiring? Might help us all out also.

    In this case I basically want all the lovely parts of BM3 in their own isolated environment plus a few extra things hosted in AB3 (which I need to use for them as I need AB3 to handle their tempo based transport). BM3 doesn't need to do anything extra as a hosted instrument, just to exist inside AB3 without throwing a fit. Maybe it's even possible to just run both apps in parallel at the same time? Will have to try. I'm just looking for a stable setup incorporating both hosts at the same time, really.

    Cheers for the discussion all.

    BM3 would be running parallel to AB3 not inside it in any case.

    I'd personally count IAA hosted by another app as 'inside', for practicalities sense.

    It really isn't. There isn't any shared memory space. AB3 is not hosting IAA apps in any sort of meaningful way. Whether BM3 is stable using AB3's ports, I don't know. But BM3 is not running inside AB3.

    Depends if you're thinking about it from a musical/creative or technical perspective. Both perspectives are useful and valid -- in this case I'm thinking musically, but I do understand your point.

  • @OscarSouth said:

    @tk32 said:

    @skrat said:
    There is no state saving, no multichannel output so only thing you get is being able to mix the output of BM3 with other channels in AB3. Also, BM3 is quite unstable but I (subjectively) had more crashes when routed via AB3 so I let it be.
    It may work for you, but overall BM3 is pretty painful to use when you dig a bit deeper, the crashes are quite common, autosave is not always helping (BM3 only autosaves when leaving the app, not in some timed interval, so you usually lose the work you were focused on for some longer time...)

    I use BM3 every day and I've forgotten the last time I lost any work to a crash. In fact, I can't remember the last crash I had full-stop.

    To anyone reading this, I would suggest that once you begin to learn what are 'riskier' activities, you also learn to save before doing them.

    There is no reason to feel overly anxious when making music in BM3, you just have to take control of your own saves. BM3 should be enjoyed, not avoided.

    Yeah I also use BM3 as an instrument host live performances aallll the time, fully loaded up to the devices processing capacity. Never had a crash doing this -- ever. Nothing comes close on iOS as a performance host (and daaaammmn, that sampler is nice!!).

    @ph8aerror said:
    Hey @OscarSouth as someone already mentioned, there’s no state saving etc. All you get is the universal transport. As for folks bashing BM3; I dunno, I feel like it's tomato juice, either you love it or hate it. I would not call it unstable because I rarely experience crashes, if ever. And I do a lot with BM3. As @tk32 said, you gotta know what is risky. I guess it depends on what you want to do.

    @WillieNegus said:
    Not sure what you’re looking to do with Audiobus and BM3 that BM3 can’t do by itself tho. What workflow are you desiring? Might help us all out also.

    In this case I basically want all the lovely parts of BM3 in their own isolated environment plus a few extra things hosted in AB3 (which I need to use for them as I need AB3 to handle their tempo based transport). BM3 doesn't need to do anything extra as a hosted instrument, just to exist inside AB3 without throwing a fit. Maybe it's even possible to just run both apps in parallel at the same time? Will have to try. I'm just looking for a stable setup incorporating both hosts at the same time, really.

    Cheers for the discussion all.

    Interesting that my experience triggered so many opposite reactions. Just to clarify that I am not just randomly ranting here: I was using BM3 for around 1,5 year, I love it as it is still the OS DAW that has by far the most features I use, but around half a year ago I gave up after experiencing crashes very often. I hoped that the updates from winter would make it better but I've seen no difference.
    I was well aware of the risky operations, in 99% cases it was one of these:

    • undo
    • copy/paste
    • operations with audio such as trim, with combination with undo and copy/paste within both sampler or audio channel
    • some operations with patterns, also mostly copy / paste or deleting patterns causes crashes
    • deleting channel
    • automating AU parameters
    • recording MIDI (and again, copy/pasting or undoing it)

    There are also certain AUs that very likely crashes BM3, just when interacting with their UI, and I don't experience such crashes in other hosts. Best example: K-Devices Shaper, which I like to use a lot, but in BM3 it's a no-go. I suspect there is some problem with the plugin itself and other hosts somehow secured it on their side, but not BM3. Which is maybe not direct problem of BM3, but for me as a user, the result is the same. Also other AUs are less stable and can occasionally crash BM3. Not saying other hosts don't ever crash, I actually experienced several crashes with every host out there, even AUM.
    As for IAA, I gave up long time ago, it was very unstable with BM3 in earlier versions, not sure how it is now.

    Yes, avoiding all of these is possible, but honestly, I rather tried to switch to other DAW / host.

    Now I am thinking whether it's not related to my installation, maybe my sample library is causing these troubles, or simply updating BM3 didn't went somehow well on my iPad... BTW I have a 2017 9,7" which is not great, but not terrible ;) It doesn't seem it's a HW performance problem to me.

    And BTW, there are many things that are really stable, such as:

    • Loading samples into sampler and writing MIDI in sequencer, not editing audio. Also basically all functionalities like filters, envelopes, modulators etc... inside sampler were always stable to me.
    • Internal effects were usually stable, only crashes I had was when using combination of macros and MIDI controller
    • Using "proven" AUs and triggering notes in sequencer (not automating parameters)

    I believe that for many folks, the above mentioned is all they use. If you fall into this group, then I think you don't have to worry, BM3 is very well versed for that.

  • edited August 2019

    Thanks for explaining @skrat - an interesting read.

    It certainly seems that some users are having a far worse time in BM3 than others. As you say.. it could be specific 'troublesome' plugins, it could be a particular action or sequence of actions, or it could be a RAM issue. It does appear that iPad Pro users (like myself) report far less crashes than those on regular and legacy iPad devices.

    I have created a simple poll on the Intua forum to try to spot patterns and actions that may be triggering crashes. If anyone reading this is a regular BM3 user and has experienced a crash recently, I would appreciate you submitting the details here:

  • @tk32 said:
    Thanks for explaining @skrat - an interesting read.

    It certainly seems that some users are having a far worse time in BM3 than others. As you say.. it could be specific 'troublesome' plugins, it could be a particular action or sequence of actions, or it could be a RAM issue. It does appear that iPad Pro users (like myself) report far less crashes than those on regular and legacy iPad devices.

    I have created a simple poll on the Intua forum to try to spot patterns and actions that may be triggering crashes. If anyone reading this is a regular BM3 user and has experienced a crash recently, I would appreciate you submitting the details here:

    That's a very nice initiative and I am thinking about giving BM3 a try once more, but first wiping all the BM3 files, removing the app and installing again. I should also look at some more advanced tutorial on how to clean up all traces of the app on iOS to be as confident as possible. Device reset with clean iOS installation would be awesome but I am afraid it's too much effort right now :sweat_smile:
    Also I never before had the habit to close all apps in the background when working with audio apps as I thought iOS is good with automatic memory cleaning, but I started with that recently and I have a feeling it also helps a bit (and for lower memory devices this may make the difference).

    If I have some insights, I will post it here and on BM3 forums.

  • @OscarSouth
    Hey, pardon me if anyone mentioned it already, but how about having each channel of BM3 (via IAA) routed out to AUM channels (with AUs). I do this almost always so that I have the pattern editing and sequencing flexibility of BM3 and the AU stability in AUM. I have a few usb midi controllers, so in live jams I have 1 controller (or part of 1) selecting scenes, and other controllers with the ability to go ape in whatever spaghetti I've routed in AUM. You can route the audio however you want, either back into BM3 merged, separate or totally bypass and stay within an AUM channel.
    How about that?

  • @ph8aerror said:
    @OscarSouth
    Hey, pardon me if anyone mentioned it already, but how about having each channel of BM3 (via IAA) routed out to AUM channels (with AUs). I do this almost always so that I have the pattern editing and sequencing flexibility of BM3 and the AU stability in AUM. I have a few usb midi controllers, so in live jams I have 1 controller (or part of 1) selecting scenes, and other controllers with the ability to go ape in whatever spaghetti I've routed in AUM. You can route the audio however you want, either back into BM3 merged, separate or totally bypass and stay within an AUM channel.
    How about that?

    This sounds like a nice workflow, but I’m only using BM3 sampler instruments (oh man how I wish that was a stand alone AU..). I’m sequencing everything on the device from off-device. I don't think this'd work with the workflow you propose. I'm alright with everything from BM3 going through one channel though -- it's already submixed and just needs to go from the BM3 output to the FOH.

Sign In or Register to comment.