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.

Second Mixing Link, or Zoom L-12?

I have a kind of dual setup at home. I have my regular guitar pedalboard plugged into an amp. The last pedal on that board is an Eventide MixingLink, which is used to send line level output from the pedalboard down a balanced XLR cable to my desk, on the other side of the room.

On that desk is a Zoom R8, which is hooked up to monitor speakers, and also sometimes to an iPad, for recording etc. the nice thing about the R8 is that it can work as a USB interface to the iPad, but also as a standalone mixer. This means I can leave the loud valve amp switched off, and go through the monitors, or headphones.

However, when I use the Zoom, I like to use it with the Joyo American Sound amp sim (I don’t like the Zoom’s built-in amp sims). This means a lot of unplugging stuff, and it gets even worse when I add in other pedals on the desk, like a Trio+. I also can’t plug the line-level XLR into those pedals. Here’s the current setup.

The R8 has no effects loop, so I was thinking I could either:

  1. Add another MixingLink on the desk. This would accept the XLR, and then I would hook it up to the Zoom’s input. Then, I can use the MixingLink’s own effects loop to add any other effects I like.

  2. Replace the R8 with the Zoom L-12, which is a bigger version of the R8. It has more inputs , and I think I can use its headphone mixes as effect sends, and then bring the effected signal back into one of the regular channel inputs.

The advantage of the MixingLink is that it’s half the price, and way smaller. The L-12 is huge, in comparison, and the hardware effects send is a bit of a kludge for a function I definitely need.

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Or experience with similar setups? Has anyone used their L-12 with external effects?

Comments

  • As a fellow R8 user, I'm wondering if you made the upgrade. Have been thinking about it, but sticking with the R8 for now

  • I never did. In the end I got a Mackie mixer, and an iConnect audio interface. Recording is easy enough on my iPad.

    L12 looks sweet though, if you want to record. And Tascam has a new mixer/recorder out at NAMM too.

  • @mistercharlie said:
    I never did. In the end I got a Mackie mixer, and an iConnect audio interface. Recording is easy enough on my iPad.

    L12 looks sweet though, if you want to record. And Tascam has a new mixer/recorder out at NAMM too.

    Thank you... Yes, saw that Tascam; looking forward to some reviews

  • I just recently got a used R8, really nice little machine. I use a hardware amp sim so don't have the same issue you had. With the addition of External drive access to iOS 13 it is really nice being able to transfer audio files between the R8 and iPad.
    It is simple to go from using the R8 as stand alone or as an interface, making 'backing' tracks on the ipad and sending them to the R8 and then play them back looped on the unit while recording full length takes alongside them ... and then send it all back to Cubasis for editing and mixing.
    I wonder how I ever coped without this little machine. :)

Sign In or Register to comment.