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.

Best way to mess with samples on a time line? - Solved!

Hi all,

My stuff mainly involves creating reams of lengthy loops, pitched or otherwise, usually running in and recorded ‘automatically’ from, AUM as original audio/midi streams and/or as pre recorded loops in the File Player.

Occasionally, I need to orchestrate the chaos a little more, which usually means resorting to Cubasis to structure the arrangement when selective channel muting alone won’t cut it, which is a faff.

Ideally what I’d like is an open ‘toolbox’ of audio sample clips, everything from single instrument hits to many seconds or even minutes of sound, which I could freely select and drag and drop onto a timeline, slide back and forth against each other, and maybe once in place pitch up or down, like sliding pieces of a puzzle around. If I could sync this timeline to a host, even better.

Anyone think of a more instinctual process than importing clips into and then out the Cubasis Media library onto tracks?

«1

Comments

  • edited June 2020

    I wish there was something on iOS that came close to a nice desktop daw for this (I like Samplitude but yah there are lots of options there).

    While not ideal the best I have found for this on iOS is actually using the sampler in Beatmaker 3. Not the actual audio tracks per se but the banks and the sampler. Yah it is not a nice classic waveform display on a timeline but for getting the job done it is the best option on iOS for me.

    Btw, it was suuuuuuper crashy/buggy when it came out but is soooo much better now. For simple audio chopping/mixing I find it very stable now.

  • I’ve used Auria for this a bit now and while it’s not perfect, it’s pretty good. Having only messed with Auditor a bit, I’m not sure but that could be good too - bit like cool edit on desktop I think, but don’t quote me :smiley:

  • @Svetlovska said:
    Hi all,

    My stuff mainly involves creating reams of lengthy loops, pitched or otherwise, usually running in and recorded ‘automatically’ from, AUM as original audio/midi streams and/or as pre recorded loops in the File Player.

    Occasionally, I need to orchestrate the chaos a little more, which usually means resorting to Cubasis to structure the arrangement when selective channel muting alone won’t cut it, which is a faff.

    Ideally what I’d like is an open ‘toolbox’ of audio sample clips, everything from single instrument hits to many seconds or even minutes of sound, which I could freely select and drag and drop onto a timeline, slide back and forth against each other, and maybe once in place pitch up or down, like sliding pieces of a puzzle around. If I could sync this timeline to a host, even better.

    Anyone think of a more instinctual process than importing clips into and then out the Cubasis Media library onto tracks?

    Worth a look

  • The two easiest apps I found for that are Garageband and Zenbeats, with Zenbeats having a slightly easier workflow for moving files to it from another app.

  • Save yourself a lot of hassle, use a desktop.

  • Ferrite is free to try (with IAPs for full unlock).
    http://www.wooji-juice.com/products/ferrite/

    My brain however doesn't compute with that app...

  • Well, one thing that could make it less laborious is to use the Files app to copy whole folders of samples into Cubasis Audio folder. If you have your samples organized in individual folders, and want to keep them in those folders when copying them into Cubasis, do not Copy the folders directly. Make a new folder in Files, and put all of the other folders containing your samples in this new folder. Then copy the new folder to the Cubasis Audio folder (the local ‘on my iPad’ location).

    When you look in the Audio section of the Media library in Cubasis, you should see the folders that contain your samples (with the samples still organized in them), and that new folder you created and copied here is now gone.

    If you copy a folder that just contains files, but no sub-folders, in this way, you will see all of your samples get dumped into the main Audio folder and lose the organizing you did. If you do have sub-folders, those get put in the Audio section intact.

    For syncing with Audiobus, I posted this in another thread this morning. You should be able to follow it and get it working.
    If not, just ask.

    For syncing AB and Cubasis, try this:
    In AB, turn on receive Midi clock, and select Virtual Midi as the clock source.
    I also have Link enabled, with link start/stop enabled, but I don’t think that is required.

    In Cubasis, turn on Send Midi clock (midi settings) and also set the Precount to 1bar (metronome settings). Turn on Count In (Recording Mode options at the bottom of the Tempo panel. Tap the BPM display).

    When you hit Record in Cubasis, it pre-counts 1 measure, and then AB starts playback as Cubasis starts recording. If you don’t use the pre-count AB plays back all garbled for the first measure, I think while it syncs all the clocks. This may be because I have Link start/stop enabled.

  • edited July 2020

    Hey folks, thanks all for the great suggestions. and especially @robosardine : through your previous thread, which I had missed somehow, I think I found a winner: Multitrack DAW https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/multitrack-daw/id329322101.

    It’s a free download to try eight tracks, and just £7 (!) to upgrade to 24 tracks, which is as many as I’ll ever need. Still trying the free version out now but I’ll likely spring for the upgrade because a) it isn’t trying to charge me another fifty quid for an app I bought already, b) it seems to handle AU fx just fine and c), and this is the deal maker for me, you can just drag , drop, split, and edit wavs direct from the Files app in slide over mode onto tracks, and copy and slide them about on the timeline to your hearts content. Exactly what I was looking for. It’s not pretty (in fact, the UI is positively plain) but it seems to work, and all fairly instinctively too. Good enough for me. :)

    Quick update - and it plays nice with AUM too! Recording from AUM channels, or appearing as either a single mix track or individual channel ins in AUM. This means although Multitrack DAW is strictly audio only, I can hand off any MIDI source duties to AUM and run their output live into Multitrack. I know I can do that in Cubasis, too, but the workflow in this (especially with slide over) just seems a lot more immediate, somehow.

  • @Svetlovska said:
    Hey folks, thanks all for the great suggestions. and especially @robosardine : through your previous thread, which I had missed somehow, I think I found a winner: Multitrack DAW https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/multitrack-daw/id329322101.

    It’s a free download to try eight tracks, and just £7 (!) to upgrade to 24 tracks, which is as many as I’ll ever need. Still trying the free version out now but I’ll likely spring for the upgrade because a) it isn’t trying to charge me another fifty quid for an app I bought already, b) it seems to handle AU fx just fine and c), and this is the deal maker for me, you can just drag , drop, split, and edit wavs direct from the Files app in slide over mode onto tracks, and copy and slide them about on the timeline to your hearts content. Exactly what I was looking for. It’s not pretty (in fact, the UI is positively plain) but it seems to work, and all fairly instinctively too. Good enough for me. :)

    Quick update - and it plays nice with AUM too! Recording from AUM channels, or appearing as either a single mix track or individual channel ins in AUM. This means although Multitrack DAW is strictly audio only, I can hand off any MIDI source duties to AUM and run their output live into Multitrack. I know I can do that in Cubasis, too, but the workflow in this (especially with slide over) just seems a lot more immediate, somehow.

    Multitrack is my goto for long audio and sometimes even arranging. Even the stock effects on it are really nice

  • Nice choice. The only thing I don’t like about MTD is that you can’t just drag a clip on the timeline. First you have to long-press and enter move mode. Unless I’m doing it wrong.

  • @Svetlovska said:
    Hey folks, thanks all for the great suggestions. and especially @robosardine : through your previous thread, which I had missed somehow, I think I found a winner: Multitrack DAW https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/multitrack-daw/id329322101.

    It’s a free download to try eight tracks, and just £7 (!) to upgrade to 24 tracks, which is as many as I’ll ever need.

    Where do you find the free demo? Apple wants $10 from me to download it. I’m putting Cubasis in my rear view mirror; time to move on.

  • @Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr : Hi, I’m in the UK, don’t know if you are and if it makes a difference? For me, as of this morning UK time, the single listing for Multitrack DAW https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/multitrack-daw/id329322101 was a free download for the fully functional 8 track version, and an upgrade to 24 tracks inside it as an IAP.

    Consulting the forum dedicated to it on another matter via the in app help link, I did read a thread where it sounds like the upgrade situation could be complex if you had downloaded and/or purchased earlier versions of the app: https://forum.harmonicdog.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2773#p7850

  • I was wondering about that too, also in UK, shows as £9.99 here...

  • edited July 2020

    @Krupa : uh, well...

    I literally just paid £7.99 (although pretty sure it was £7 at 2am this morning?) having confirmed today that it is the lean and focused audio sample wrangler I was after, and now have the full version installed.

    Yes @mistercharlie , you do have to long press and select edit from the pop up toolbox to be able to slide the track, but I find that quick enough.

    The only thing absent which I would have actually liked, and which I know Zenbeats can do, would be the option to repitch the clip in place. Start adding in features, though, and before you know it, you’ve got another impenetrable monster DAW. Speaking of which:

    @anickt : yeah, Zenbeats is clearly powerful. I have it, and as a big workhorse DAW it looks like it can eat Cubasis’ lunch, with goodies like a good piano roll, and clip launching, on top of the in app instruments and FX, etc, but I just don’t have the bandwidth to learn another complex and to me at least somewhat non-intuitive workflow. Maybe one day.

    Example: Having watched the drum tutorial, (thank you, illuminating!), I still couldn’t find an intuitive way to do the specific task Multitrack can handle for me, which is simply to make it easy to drag lengthy clips I’ve made straight out of AudioShare and into a track in a single Slide over operation. Maybe Zenbeats does do it, and I just didn’t find it? If so, that kind of proves my point. In Multitrack, I just did it, without RTFM, and it worked exactly like I thought it would. It (seems to, anyway) work for my AUM focussed flow.

    I go back and forth between AudioStretch, AudioShare and a DAW so often when stitching together one of my Frankensteinian sample mangled compositions it’s not even funny. So not having to go another two or three steps from AudioShare into a Media bay of some sort and back out again is worth it to me.

  • Nice, you must have already had it at some point I guess :)

  • @Krupa : don’t recollect so, but to my shame, that is entirely possible, since at some point, I have had almost All The Things... :)

  • @Svetlovska said:
    @Krupa : don’t recollect so, but to my shame, that is entirely possible, since at some point, I have had almost All The Things... :)

    Hah, preach 😁

  • @Svetlovska said:
    @Krupa : uh, well...

    I literally just paid £7.99 (although pretty sure it was £7 at 2am this morning?) having confirmed today that it is the lean and focused audio sample wrangler I was after, and now have the full version installed.

    Yes @mistercharlie , you do have to long press and select edit from the pop up toolbox to be able to slide the track, but I find that quick enough.

    The only thing absent which I would have actually liked, and which I know Zenbeats can do, would be the option to repitch the clip in place. Start adding in features, though, and before you know it, you’ve got another impenetrable monster DAW. Speaking of which:

    @anickt : yeah, Zenbeats is clearly powerful. I have it, and as a big workhorse DAW it looks like it can eat Cubasis’ lunch, with goodies like a good piano roll, and clip launching, on top of the in app instruments and FX, etc, but I just don’t have the bandwidth to learn another complex and to me at least somewhat non-intuitive workflow. Maybe one day.

    Example: Having watched the drum tutorial, (thank you, illuminating!), I still couldn’t find an intuitive way to do the specific task Multitrack can handle for me, which is simply to make it easy to drag lengthy clips I’ve made straight out of AudioShare and into a track in a single Slide over operation. Maybe Zenbeats does do it, and I just didn’t find it? If so, that kind of proves my point. In Multitrack, I just did it, without RTFM, and it worked exactly like I thought it would. It (seems to, anyway) work for my AUM focussed flow.

    I go back and forth between AudioStretch, AudioShare and a DAW so often when stitching together one of my Frankensteinian sample mangled compositions it’s not even funny. So not having to go another two or three steps from AudioShare into a Media bay of some sort and back out again is worth it to me.

    Zenbeats does not support slide over at this time. But I’ll trade that for what it does do. A large part of the projects I’m currently working on are heavily based in audio tracks. Zenbeats works for me but I certainly don’t expect that to be true for everyone simply because many of the iOS workflows I’ve seen described would send me to the fetal position shaking and whimpering! 🤣 To each their own!

  • wimwim
    edited July 2020

    Long-press on the timeline where you want the popup audio in Zenbeats, then tap on the file. I can't see how that's more difficult than setting up a split view and dragging onto the time line.

    But ... totally agree, MTD is focused and elegant for handling audio files. It's lightweight, stable, and proven over many years. I love a tool that is specialized for what it does. If I was focusing solely on arranging already existing audio I'd probably reach for it too. The less distractions the better.

  • I'm gonna necro this thread... :lol:

    My iPad Mini 2 suffers with too much stuff going on. So trying a workflow where I play with midi sequencers (Xequence 2, LK, Quantum, Fugue, Xynthesizr, Rozeta, Lumbeats stuff, etc.), but depending on the app, wish to record it's audiotrack when applicable in parallel to midi. I'm between BM3 (I prefer BM2 audio tracks, but gotta keep just one) and BlocsWave

    Out of curiosity, @Svetlovska, are you still using MTD? This one was always on my radar since the beginning of times, but I still don't justify buying another DAW.

    TL:DR - Trying to figure a light on the CPU multitrack recorder just to record audio tracks in a timeline :lol:

  • I’ve been using samplebot quite a bit recently. It has Link as well as other features which make it easy to work with.

  • @robosardine said:
    I’ve been using samplebot quite a bit recently. It has Link as well as other features which make it easy to work with.

    Oh... interesting one, mate... Maybe i'll give it a try with koala first, but samplebot is cheap and always had an eye on it :wink:
    Thanks so much!

    Just an additional information, most of my performance issues came with ios12. Performance was better on 11, but I wanted those extra updates, features and new apps with the new OS

  • Why I cannot record samples with Koala in GarageBand? I used Koala Sampler inside GarageBand as a Interapp App but I do not see the record button.

  • No, no....I need people to be telling me that Zenbeats is indeed ideal for this and thus is worth the candle as regards learning the basics which I keep putting off....

  • @Montreal_Music said:
    Why I cannot record samples with Koala in GarageBand? I used Koala Sampler inside GarageBand as a Interapp App but I do not see the record button.

    From what I understand, GB is hosting Koala. So Koala should be a sound source, not the destination. If you wanna sample GB into Koala, I guess you should put Koala as output in AB, for example

    @JohnnyGoodyear said:
    No, no....I need people to be telling me that Zenbeats is indeed ideal for this and thus is worth the candle as regards learning the basics which I keep putting off....

    :lol: For me it has something interesting going on but at the same, it seems to have a challenging learning curve :tongue:

  • @Montreal_Music said:
    Why I cannot record samples with Koala in GarageBand? I used Koala Sampler inside GarageBand as a Interapp App but I do not see the record button.

    To record, it needs to be in an effect slot. I’ve not used it with GarageBand. So, I don’t know if that is possible in GB.

  • Yeah... Koala doesnt show as an FX AU in GB
    And GB cannot be hosted anywhere :neutral:

  • @Montreal_Music maybe I just don't know the best way... But you either record/sequence the instrument in GB and export the track. Or you record your screen.

    Then throw it into Koala :wink:

Sign In or Register to comment.