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
In what ways? Both apps have features the other lacks.
GB has a number of unique features no other app has.
What do you want to do with the apps?
No keyboard animations in playback mode.
No manual freezing of tracks (it’s automatic optimization kills workflow)
Limited automation.
No MIDI out.
no mixer view on channels
GB reassigns all incoming MIDI (from an external controller, at least) to MIDI channel 1.
Cubasis has the advantage that you can have midi FX but Garageband has better midi modulation (speeding up/slowing down, swing, reverse, transpose etc.) Garageband doesn't have MIDI AU FX yet, but it could someday. Garageband has better buildin sounds than Cubasis and a better sampler. Whether or not Garageband's Alchemy is better than Cubasis's Micrologue is up for debate, but my vote, unsurprisingly is with Alchemy.
I use Garageband about as often as I use Gadget. The reason I like Gadget (besides all the beatboxes and synths it provides) is because of the scale aware step sequencer, and TBH the black/green colour scheme in GB doesn't wow me as much as Gadget's light blue or Cubasis's white.
If I had to work with audio clips, I'd probably prefer to do it in Cubasis than Garageband because Cubasis has some better grid options. Cubasis does have good builtin sounds, as well as decent MIDI quantisation for recording. I find it's layout of tools in the piano roll unfriendly, but GB's tap popup menus aren't much better either.
NS2 deserves some mention here as well. I still haven't dived deeply into it. I will when the dev updates the app to get audio tracks and there's an AU polyphony bug that makes using it a dealbreaker for me.
Having all the apps, I try to use them all in even measure, and things that can't be easily done in one app can be done better in another.
To sum it up...
There is a TON of fun to be had in GB and Cubasis. GB's Drums, Drummer, Beat Sequencer, Loops, Live Loops, Sound Library, Smart Instruments, Alchemy, Jam Session... are the best on iOS and fun. It is free and so, doesn't hurt to have it.
MobileMusic said: You can use RouteMIDI, MIDI Flow and other apps to export MIDI out of GB. I used RouteMIDI which is simpler.
How is it possible? Garageband has no MIDI Out whatsoever.
The RouteMidi AUv3 Plug-In sends out the midi to a destination of your choice.
This method works very well too:
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/41813/heres-a-trick-on-how-to-get-midi-out-of-garageband-using-beathawk
I tried using LK instead of Beathawk and it worked fine too.
I like GB, it got many of us started on the iOS path, it’s very capable and I still use it to sketch and plan arrangement. Besides the lack of mixing and mastering functionality, the actual deal breaker for me has always been the “normalize” feature. Any stem you export or any track you complete gets normalized to an unbearably loud overall volume, which makes all the previous work with track levels useless. The workarounds for this (turning down the track gain to -20 or screaming at the end of the track and cutting that part off post export) are inefficient and ineffective in preserving your levels. GB on Mac has the option of turning this Normalize on export feature off. It should be a no brainer feature on iOS as well, but we’re stuck with it. Anyone find a workaround? I don’t want GB to force my peak to 0db every time and squash my headroom and dynamic range, leaves nothing to work with in the next stage.
Thanks for the pointer to routemidi and midiflow in Garageband, that is cool.
Can you also use midiflow to convert CC to notes and store that in a track in Garageband (and then convert the notes back to CC when the track is played)?
That wouldn't really compete with gadget taipei, but still would be nice, particularly since Garageband can actually record ios synth audio, unlike gadget zurich AFAIK (unless you have some kind of loopback I guess).
All right. I am at a loss here. Could MobileMusic or Samu kindly walk me through how to use RouteMidi?
I start it and get a screen stating "RouteMidi is now ready for use in the host app of your choice."
Then, in GB on my iPad, I go to choose an external audio unit extension but RouteMidi is not in the list of apps.
Try force-quitting GarageBand and restarting it. If that doesn't work, try rebooting your device.
Wow. Thanks. Now GB is connected to RouteMidi and I can explore further its use.