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.

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Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

Public beta for new AU

I've been doing some experimenting with a couple of UI things for some things I want to build in a bit and to make my AU's work better with macOS. So, I pulled out one of my old OS X applications to test things out on. Well, after I added a few more features to it, I thought it would be worth releasing. So, I spent the last couple of days fighting with the App Store and the beta is ready now if anyone wants to play with it.

Here's the link to Test Flight.

I'm afraid this one requires iOS 14. I needed to add some features that require 14.3.

The original AU was creatively called xTrem, so I kept the name. It's a stereo only effect. The two channels are independent and the LFO's are FM based. Part of the reason I wanted to do this one is that it needs the FM LFO's and I added a feature to enable detents on the controls so that hitting values that work in an FM setting is easier than trying to dial in an integer value with touch controlled slider. Most of the other new things in this are things to enable better use of mouse and trackpad on iOS and macOS with the AU. I've also moved to using Swift for almost everything that isn't DSP, so this beta is a first test of all of the code too.

My original xTrem was a straight forward stereo trem. In this one I added a second tremolo path based on an emulation of a low-pass gate. I think this adds some pretty cool flavor to a trem. That's the main reason I decided to release this one.

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Comments

  • Thanks! I'll take a look

  • @gothamoddisee said:
    Thanks! I'll take a look

    Thanks for testing it!

    The main thing I'd appreciate feedback on is how the detent thing works on the controls. The app/manual describes it on the editing page, but the simple explanation is that tapping above the thumb on the slider moves up through the detents and tapping anywhere below the thumb on the slider moves down.

  • @NeonSilicon said:

    @gothamoddisee said:
    Thanks! I'll take a look

    Thanks for testing it!

    The main thing I'd appreciate feedback on is how the detent thing works on the controls. The app/manual describes it on the editing page, but the simple explanation is that tapping above the thumb on the slider moves up through the detents and tapping anywhere below the thumb on the slider moves down.

    Detent works really well - responsive and intuitive - wish some other devs would use similar controls...!

  • Cheers. Let’s have a look. Thanks.

  • It doesn’t want to play on my iPad AiR3.
    My Air3 is on iOS 14.3.

  • @Gravitas said:
    It doesn’t want to play on my iPad AiR3.
    My Air3 is on iOS 14.3.

    Hmm, My build settings in Xcode say 14.3 but the meta-data on App Store Connect says 14.4. I'll try doing another build this afternoon and see if I can get the 14.3 version to work.

  • @enkaytee said:

    @NeonSilicon said:

    @gothamoddisee said:
    Thanks! I'll take a look

    Thanks for testing it!

    The main thing I'd appreciate feedback on is how the detent thing works on the controls. The app/manual describes it on the editing page, but the simple explanation is that tapping above the thumb on the slider moves up through the detents and tapping anywhere below the thumb on the slider moves down.

    Detent works really well - responsive and intuitive - wish some other devs would use similar controls...!

    Excellent! Thanks very much for the feedback!

  • @NeonSilicon said:

    @Gravitas said:
    It doesn’t want to play on my iPad AiR3.
    My Air3 is on iOS 14.3.

    Hmm, My build settings in Xcode say 14.3 but the meta-data on App Store Connect says 14.4. I'll try doing another build this afternoon and see if I can get the 14.3 version to work.

    Okay cool.

  • @Gravitas said:

    @NeonSilicon said:

    @Gravitas said:
    It doesn’t want to play on my iPad AiR3.
    My Air3 is on iOS 14.3.

    Hmm, My build settings in Xcode say 14.3 but the meta-data on App Store Connect says 14.4. I'll try doing another build this afternoon and see if I can get the 14.3 version to work.

    Okay cool.

    The new build has been approved. It should be circulating soon. It says 14.3 in app store connect now. Hopefully it'll work.

  • @NeonSilicon said:

    @Gravitas said:

    @NeonSilicon said:

    @Gravitas said:
    It doesn’t want to play on my iPad AiR3.
    My Air3 is on iOS 14.3.

    Hmm, My build settings in Xcode say 14.3 but the meta-data on App Store Connect says 14.4. I'll try doing another build this afternoon and see if I can get the 14.3 version to work.

    Okay cool.

    The new build has been approved. It should be circulating soon. It says 14.3 in app store connect now. Hopefully it'll work.

    It’s here.

    Installing now.

  • Loaded up and I’ve had a listen.

    It’s really good.

  • @Gravitas said:
    Loaded up and I’ve had a listen.

    It’s really good.

    Cool, I'm happy that you like it. Thanks!

  • @NeonSilicon, I really like it so far, sounds great and I can get some real trippy stuff with it. The only thing I’ve noticed so far bug-wise is probably oddly specific but the ends get cut off on the UI in portrait mode in AUM on my iPhone 11 and any parameter set at 0 or 100% can’t be moved until I turn it to landscape. Haven’t noticed anything else though but I’ll mention it if I see something

  • @Fingolfinzz said:
    @NeonSilicon, I really like it so far, sounds great and I can get some real trippy stuff with it. The only thing I’ve noticed so far bug-wise is probably oddly specific but the ends get cut off on the UI in portrait mode in AUM on my iPhone 11 and any parameter set at 0 or 100% can’t be moved until I turn it to landscape. Haven’t noticed anything else though but I’ll mention it if I see something

    I'm pretty sure I know why that's happening, I changed a bit of the UI code from my other AU's in this series to get it to interact better when it is running on a Mac. One of the downsides of moving the minimum OS requirements up is that I can't test this one on my own iPhone 6 now. My trusty AU test host doesn't run in the simulators under iOS 14 either. So, your letting me know this is very helpful, Thank you!

    I have an idea for something that might be better than my old way of handling the smaller UI sizes. I'll give it a try and see if it works out.

    As a workaround, when you can't get to the slider control, does tapping in the area above or below the control to move through the detents work?

  • I added scaling and scrolling to the UI so that it should be easier to work with in smaller spaces. It will scale down by a max of 20% and then go to enabling scrolling of the whole UI.

    After a bit of internal testing, I'll make the current beta public. If that goes well, I'll do the actual release. I'm guessing it will be ready Monday or so if nothing goes wrong with the app store approval process.

    Thanks everyone for the feedback. It's very helpful.

  • @NeonSilicon sorry about the late response, yeah something with the 11’s screen size causes issues with a lot of apps for me. I just checked out the new update and that works perfectly with the scrolling. I’m able to access everything while still in portrait mode that way, thank you! Really digging the app so far!

  • @Fingolfinzz said:
    @NeonSilicon sorry about the late response, yeah something with the 11’s screen size causes issues with a lot of apps for me. I just checked out the new update and that works perfectly with the scrolling. I’m able to access everything while still in portrait mode that way, thank you! Really digging the app so far!

    No problem with the response timing at all. Thanks, very much for letting me know it works. I'll incorporate the solution into GyroVibe and PhaseDelayArray too.

    I've submitted the app for release and it's already been rejected for some new obscure reason that I can't follow. I've appealed. Hopefully they'll approve it soon.

  • @NeonSilicon said:

    @Fingolfinzz said:
    @NeonSilicon sorry about the late response, yeah something with the 11’s screen size causes issues with a lot of apps for me. I just checked out the new update and that works perfectly with the scrolling. I’m able to access everything while still in portrait mode that way, thank you! Really digging the app so far!

    No problem with the response timing at all. Thanks, very much for letting me know it works. I'll incorporate the solution into GyroVibe and PhaseDelayArray too.

    I've submitted the app for release and it's already been rejected for some new obscure reason that I can't follow. I've appealed. Hopefully they'll approve it soon.

    Hope so too - Apple can be a real pain with their approval process. It's a great app and deserves to be out there...👍

  • @enkaytee said:

    @NeonSilicon said:

    @Fingolfinzz said:
    @NeonSilicon sorry about the late response, yeah something with the 11’s screen size causes issues with a lot of apps for me. I just checked out the new update and that works perfectly with the scrolling. I’m able to access everything while still in portrait mode that way, thank you! Really digging the app so far!

    No problem with the response timing at all. Thanks, very much for letting me know it works. I'll incorporate the solution into GyroVibe and PhaseDelayArray too.

    I've submitted the app for release and it's already been rejected for some new obscure reason that I can't follow. I've appealed. Hopefully they'll approve it soon.

    Hope so too - Apple can be a real pain with their approval process. It's a great app and deserves to be out there...👍

    Thanks! If they don't let it through, which I don't think will be an issue in the end, I'll just reupload it as new beta every 80 days or so :D. I suspect that this time there may be some issues with Apple's web UI that caused some corruption in their database. I had to click and un-click several checkboxes to get the submission form to verify. It seems kinda broken.

  • Well, the AU has been rejected a second time. Seems I need to provide Apple a video of the app being used to get them to look at approving it again. I've appealed the rejection once and I'm now asking for clarification on what the problem is supposed to be. I don't expect an answer soon.

    I'll leave the beta live. It's good for another 80 days or so. Assuming that Apple ever approves the AU, the price is going to be free, so putting it up as a beta doesn't make any difference that way. The current beta that is up is the same as what is waiting to be released. So, it's OK to use the beta from that angle too.

  • @NeonSilicon said:
    Well, the AU has been rejected a second time. Seems I need to provide Apple a video of the app being used to get them to look at approving it again. I've appealed the rejection once and I'm now asking for clarification on what the problem is supposed to be. I don't expect an answer soon.

    I'll leave the beta live. It's good for another 80 days or so. Assuming that Apple ever approves the AU, the price is going to be free, so putting it up as a beta doesn't make any difference that way. The current beta that is up is the same as what is waiting to be released. So, it's OK to use the beta from that angle too.

    Pretty much ALL audio apps submitted to Apple should have a video of the app being used, especially midi ones. The reviewers aren’t musicians, they are barely QC.

  • @audiblevideo said:

    @NeonSilicon said:
    Well, the AU has been rejected a second time. Seems I need to provide Apple a video of the app being used to get them to look at approving it again. I've appealed the rejection once and I'm now asking for clarification on what the problem is supposed to be. I don't expect an answer soon.

    I'll leave the beta live. It's good for another 80 days or so. Assuming that Apple ever approves the AU, the price is going to be free, so putting it up as a beta doesn't make any difference that way. The current beta that is up is the same as what is waiting to be released. So, it's OK to use the beta from that angle too.

    Pretty much ALL audio apps submitted to Apple should have a video of the app being used, especially midi ones. The reviewers aren’t musicians, they are barely QC.

    I totally disagree. The reviewers aren't writers or photographers or anything else either. If Apple is going to require these go through their store, it's on them to have teams and people trained to do their job. All they have to do is open GarageBand and load the AU. I assume Apple can get them a copy of GB.

    I spent three nights writing the app. I've now spent six days trying to get it through the app store review. There is absolutely no way I'm going to waste time making a video to submit to Apple every time I need to fix a bug that was most likely caused by Apple. If this doesn't get resolved without a bunch more time and effort on my part, I'm done. I won't develop another thing for iOS until the App Store is opened up or gone.

  • I’m beginning to get convinced that Apple just hates that they’ve become a platform for music production, they really seem to half ass a lot of stuff or just willfully remain oblivious

  • @Fingolfinzz said:
    I’m beginning to get convinced that Apple just hates that they’ve become a platform for music production, they really seem to half ass a lot of stuff or just willfully remain oblivious

    There are issues certainly, but as far as the actual platform goes, they are the best and easiest to develop audio applications for. In the mobile space, they are the only platform to develop for. Nothing else is even viable.

    I think the issues are on the corporate side. They just want too much control. I fully support all of their security efforts, but macOS shows they can do this very well without the locked down app store.

  • Hi Everyone,

    I have public beta up of a new plugin, this one is called, LRC7.

    The link should be active now: https://testflight.apple.com/join/uPB4TtBN

    Please let me know if it doesn't work.

    This one is a new EQ, but it isn't really a replacement for LRC5. It has a lot of overlap with LRC5 but it is pretty much all new code, so it may have bugs and could crash. It should work on iOS 13.4 and up.

    One note to get you started is, long-press on the filter control point to select the filter type for a filter.

  • Amazing. More pleasant looking colour scheme and love the new filter types. The notch filters are cool. Have to try messing with the resonant filters later
    For quicker workflow though, I wonder if it possible to have a way of quickly turning on the nodes to a default filter type (maybe corresponding to a typical 7 band parametric), say, double taping on the nodes?

  • @Cyndilov said:
    Amazing. More pleasant looking colour scheme and love the new filter types. The notch filters are cool. Have to try messing with the resonant filters later
    For quicker workflow though, I wonder if it possible to have a way of quickly turning on the nodes to a default filter type (maybe corresponding to a typical 7 band parametric), say, double taping on the nodes?

    That's a good idea. Because of some weird interaction issues with gestures and responsiveness and working on both the Mac and iOS, I don't use most standard built-in touch gestures and do my own gesture tracking instead. I'll have to see if I can reliably track a double-tap to get this to work.

    Assuming I can make it work, what would the defaults be? Set the outer two as say four-pole Butterworth filters and the next two in as shelving and the center three as peaking? I think I'd probably default it to 4-pole high-pass on the first filter, followed by all peaking filters up to the seventh and then make that one a high-shelf. But, that's only because I don't find the low-pass on the highs as useful in typical settings?

    Thanks for the suggestion. I'll see if I can do it.

  • I've implemented the double tap to set a default filter type and it looks like the UI interaction is sensible and doesn't get confused in the interactions with other gestures. I'll need to do some more testing, but it looks like I will add this to the release. Thanks for the suggestion @Cyndilov.

    I'm open to suggestions about what the defaults should be. Anyone have a preference?

  • Nice! The classic 7-band Butterworths, shelves and 3 peakings would be the most intuitive, but your defaults also make a lot of practical sense because I imagine this double-tapping thing would be the most useful with very quick adjustments. Though, if I have my way I would probably have low cut, low shelf, high self, and one or two of the notch filters for quick frequency troubleshooting :)

  • @Cyndilov said:
    Nice! The classic 7-band Butterworths, shelves and 3 peakings would be the most intuitive, but your defaults also make a lot of practical sense because I imagine this double-tapping thing would be the most useful with very quick adjustments. Though, if I have my way I would probably have low cut, low shelf, high self, and one or two of the notch filters for quick frequency troubleshooting :)

    I'm actually trying to position LRC7 as not a replacement for LRC5. I think LRC5 is actually more appropriate for the situations where it is sufficient. So, using a different set of defaults makes sense to me that way. So, high pass (4-pole?), low-shelf, high-shelf, two peaking, and two notches? Which notches would you want as the defaults, two or four pole? Which filters would you want to be notches and which peaking? I think I'd go with notches first, followed by peaking, but it was your idea, so you get choose.

    Thanks again for the feedback!

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