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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iOS 14 and audio units

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Comments

  • @Moderndaycompiler said:

    @NeonSilicon said:

    @uncledave said:
    The missing AUv3 just happened to me for the first time. Pretty amazing, since I've been current on iPadOS 14 since November 7. I've had iPadOS 14.4 since Jan. 26, so this isn't due to a system update. When they go, they are really gone, in all apps: Audiobus, AUM, GarageBand, Drambo, AUMediaPlayer. No tricks will restore them: viewing IAA, opening AUv3 stand-alone, installing new AUv3. As already reported, restarting the iPad brings them back. Reported to Apple, of course; may not help, but cannot hurt.

    This seems to have been triggered by jetsam restarting the pkd daemon for using too much memory (highwater), logged just before. pkd maintains a database of "extensions", which include AUv3 and dozens of others. Since I've seen pkd restarted before, with no ill effect, I suspect it may be unreliable when restarted in this way, while it works properly on system startup. It might be related to the number of AUv3; I have been gradually adding them, and I may have stepped over the boundary.

    ...

    This seems like a likely path. Strange though, I just did some observing of pkd on macOS and the memory barely moves with loading of AU instances. I have three instances of pkd running at the moment, one is owned by spotlight and two by me. I can kill the two owned by me and the relaunch as expected. The are all in the about 10MB range or less. Seems weird that jetsam would restart them unless there is a memory leak.

    Does Apple provide a memory tracing tool like Valgrind to developers (both internal and external devs)?
    Tracing memory calls is expensive but it’s useful to find obscure memory leaks. I would not know where to begin debugging this one on iOS...

    Xcode has the Instruments set which provides all sorts of tools for performance tracing and inspection, this includes memory leak tracing and detection. It works on iOS. The problem is that you are restricted in what you can attach to. You have full access to your own software, but I don't know if you could attach to a running system daemon.

  • @NeonSilicon said:

    @wim said:
    I will be amused (and annoyed) to no end if two forum members find the root cause before Apple even officially acknowledges this issue (which I don't believe has happened). :D

    Has Apple's audio team ever acknowledged a bug in any product?

    Yes: to developers that have relationships with folks on the team. I know of a few devs (one-man-shops) that have developed enough of a relationship with a few people that they occasionally are able to get confirmation of issues. But i don't think Apple ever publicly acknowledges most bugs until they've been fixed.

  • @NeonSilicon
    Thanks for the information on XCode dev tools. Sounds like a tough problem to debug if a system daemon is ultimately at fault. I have yet to see the missing au issue on my iPad Pro 1st gen and any version is iOS 14. I do have an issue with MultiTrackStudio not showing an AU app icon in its display which is not the case on my 10.5 2017 iPad Pro running iOS 13.7.

  • @Moderndaycompiler said:
    @NeonSilicon
    Thanks for the information on XCode dev tools. Sounds like a tough problem to debug if a system daemon is ultimately at fault. I have yet to see the missing au issue on my iPad Pro 1st gen and any version is iOS 14. I do have an issue with MultiTrackStudio not showing an AU app icon in its display which is not the case on my 10.5 2017 iPad Pro running iOS 13.7.

    MultiTrackStudio may be experiencing the "missing AUv3 icons" bug. I saw this in Audiobus a couple of times after updating to iPadOS 14. It's easier to fix, by displaying a list of IAA apps. I did that in AUM and it restored the AUv3 icons.

  • @espiegel123 said:

    [...]

    Yes: to developers that have relationships with folks on the team. I know of a few devs (one-man-shops) that have developed enough of a relationship with a few people that they occasionally are able to get confirmation of issues. But i don't think Apple ever publicly acknowledges most bugs until they've been fixed.

    I don't think I'll count that. It would be really nice if they would expose the interface to their bug tracking system. Then I could see if at least they have accepted it as a potential bug so I can know what direction I need to take in working on it. I know it's not really that much of a big deal and that they've always been this way, but it would be nice.

  • @uncledave said:

    @Moderndaycompiler said:
    @NeonSilicon
    Thanks for the information on XCode dev tools. Sounds like a tough problem to debug if a system daemon is ultimately at fault. I have yet to see the missing au issue on my iPad Pro 1st gen and any version is iOS 14. I do have an issue with MultiTrackStudio not showing an AU app icon in its display which is not the case on my 10.5 2017 iPad Pro running iOS 13.7.

    MultiTrackStudio may be experiencing the "missing AUv3 icons" bug. I saw this in Audiobus a couple of times after updating to iPadOS 14. It's easier to fix, by displaying a list of IAA apps. I did that in AUM and it restored the AUv3 icons.

    I think you are right on missing icons bug. Just fired up MTS after while I had an AUM session running and now see the icons where previously it was showing the text AUi in place of the icon. At least I have yet to have the AUs completely disappear yet.
    But I also reboot more often after heavy music sessions so who knows.

  • Discovered when I opened Feedback for the 14.5 beta that they reopened the issue. Maybe there’s hope.

  • @ahallam said:

    Discovered when I opened Feedback for the 14.5 beta that they reopened the issue. Maybe there’s hope.

    There is, but they will have to be able to reproduce this and so far they were not (I assume). They will need to create the set of conditions that would allow the bug to even affect the device in the first place, and then create the set of conditions that would trigger it.

  • @ahallam said:

    Discovered when I opened Feedback for the 14.5 beta that they reopened the issue. Maybe there’s hope.

    But that item is wrong, because it points to the host app, saying that reinstalling it may fix the issue. We know that restarting iOS fixes it for all host apps. That points to a real system problem, not just an app-specific glitch.

  • @uncledave said:

    @ahallam said:

    Discovered when I opened Feedback for the 14.5 beta that they reopened the issue. Maybe there’s hope.

    But that item is wrong, because it points to the host app, saying that reinstalling it may fix the issue. We know that restarting iOS fixes it for all host apps. That points to a real system problem, not just an app-specific glitch.

    I think a critical piece of information in that bug report is that they haven’t had many reports of this issue. It says they have had fewer than 10 reports. As a result, the QA managers responsible for escalating and assigning resources probably haven’t authorized anyone to spend time on it. So, whatever misunderstanding there is on their part hasn’t been clarified.l.because no one has tried.

    It is also probably true that other reports have come in that they haven’t connected with this ... but (having at one time in my life having been on the inside) there probably have not been enough of those reports to get on anyone’s radar.

    There are a few possibilities that will help: lots more people reporting the issue and someone with connections bringing it to the audio team’s attention..which will have more impact the more reports there have been.

  • @espiegel123 said:

    @uncledave said:

    @ahallam said:

    Discovered when I opened Feedback for the 14.5 beta that they reopened the issue. Maybe there’s hope.

    But that item is wrong, because it points to the host app, saying that reinstalling it may fix the issue. We know that restarting iOS fixes it for all host apps. That points to a real system problem, not just an app-specific glitch.

    I think a critical piece of information in that bug report is that they haven’t had many reports of this issue. It says they have had fewer than 10 reports. As a result, the QA managers responsible for escalating and assigning resources probably haven’t authorized anyone to spend time on it. So, whatever misunderstanding there is on their part hasn’t been clarified.l.because no one has tried.

    It is also probably true that other reports have come in that they haven’t connected with this ... but (having at one time in my life having been on the inside) there probably have not been enough of those reports to get on anyone’s radar.

    There are a few possibilities that will help: lots more people reporting the issue and someone with connections bringing it to the audio team’s attention..which will have more impact the more reports there have been.

    Less than 10 similar reports? How can that even be, I think users in this community alone have reported this more 😢

    I’m losing hope this will ever get fixed..

  • Hehe... I think it’ll be similar to 48k issue from previous years...
    By the time it’s acknowledged or addressed, we’ll learn to live with it or have just enough countermeasures in place to mask it for years

  • @0tolerance4silence said:
    Hehe... I think it’ll be similar to 48k issue from previous years...
    By the time it’s acknowledged or addressed, we’ll learn to live with it or have just enough countermeasures in place to mask it for years

    The 48k issues of which I am aware aren't OS issues but developer issues. Most of the issues result from apps or plugins failing to take the hardware and/or host sample rate into account. For example, plugins choosing to run at the hardware sample rate rather than the host sample rate (which can be different) and hosts failing to account for the hardware sample rate.

    It might be annoying that Apple switched to devices having fixed sample rates when using their internal DAC - but most of the bugs were the result of developers counting on things being at a particular sample rate and not doing the necessary sample rate conversions.

  • @god said:

    @espiegel123 said:

    @uncledave said:

    @ahallam said:

    Discovered when I opened Feedback for the 14.5 beta that they reopened the issue. Maybe there’s hope.

    But that item is wrong, because it points to the host app, saying that reinstalling it may fix the issue. We know that restarting iOS fixes it for all host apps. That points to a real system problem, not just an app-specific glitch.

    I think a critical piece of information in that bug report is that they haven’t had many reports of this issue. It says they have had fewer than 10 reports. As a result, the QA managers responsible for escalating and assigning resources probably haven’t authorized anyone to spend time on it. So, whatever misunderstanding there is on their part hasn’t been clarified.l.because no one has tried.

    It is also probably true that other reports have come in that they haven’t connected with this ... but (having at one time in my life having been on the inside) there probably have not been enough of those reports to get on anyone’s radar.

    There are a few possibilities that will help: lots more people reporting the issue and someone with connections bringing it to the audio team’s attention..which will have more impact the more reports there have been.

    Less than 10 similar reports? How can that even be, I think users in this community alone have reported this more 😢

    I’m losing hope this will ever get fixed..

    How can this be?

    • Far fewer people report the bug to Apple than report it HERE.
    • There probably have been more than 10 reports but there have been few enough that no one has made the connection between them.

    Keep in mind that millions and millions of people use iOS. Even if there were 50 reports that would not be a lot to get much attention on its own -- unless the person in charge of the case actually knows/cares about iOS music creation. And most bugs that get reported are actually either user error, or happen so infrequently and randomly that they don't get assigned resources beyond a short cursory attempt to reproduce them. Have you noticed that some people here have never encountered the issue?

    The problem is random and uncommon enough that a few music developers I know that aren't Audiobus Forum members have never encountered the problem and haven't had people mention it to them.

    It is annoying that it hasn't been addressed and also (sadly) not surprising. We need lots of people to file reports and maybe a developer ally to be able to talk to their contacts and direct those folks to the reports.

    I know, I know -- it shouldn't be this hard to get their attention on this. But the reality is what it is.

  • @espiegel123 said:

    @god said:

    @espiegel123 said:

    @uncledave said:

    @ahallam said:

    Discovered when I opened Feedback for the 14.5 beta that they reopened the issue. Maybe there’s hope.

    But that item is wrong, because it points to the host app, saying that reinstalling it may fix the issue. We know that restarting iOS fixes it for all host apps. That points to a real system problem, not just an app-specific glitch.

    I think a critical piece of information in that bug report is that they haven’t had many reports of this issue. It says they have had fewer than 10 reports. As a result, the QA managers responsible for escalating and assigning resources probably haven’t authorized anyone to spend time on it. So, whatever misunderstanding there is on their part hasn’t been clarified.l.because no one has tried.

    It is also probably true that other reports have come in that they haven’t connected with this ... but (having at one time in my life having been on the inside) there probably have not been enough of those reports to get on anyone’s radar.

    There are a few possibilities that will help: lots more people reporting the issue and someone with connections bringing it to the audio team’s attention..which will have more impact the more reports there have been.

    Less than 10 similar reports? How can that even be, I think users in this community alone have reported this more 😢

    I’m losing hope this will ever get fixed..

    How can this be?

    • Far fewer people report the bug to Apple than report it HERE.
    • There probably have been more than 10 reports but there have been few enough that no one has made the connection between them.

    Keep in mind that millions and millions of people use iOS. Even if there were 50 reports that would not be a lot to get much attention on its own -- unless the person in charge of the case actually knows/cares about iOS music creation. And most bugs that get reported are actually either user error, or happen so infrequently and randomly that they don't get assigned resources beyond a short cursory attempt to reproduce them. Have you noticed that some people here have never encountered the issue?

    The problem is random and uncommon enough that a few music developers I know that aren't Audiobus Forum members have never encountered the problem and haven't had people mention it to them.

    It is annoying that it hasn't been addressed and also (sadly) not surprising. We need lots of people to file reports and maybe a developer ally to be able to talk to their contacts and direct those folks to the reports.

    I know, I know -- it shouldn't be this hard to get their attention on this. But the reality is what it is.

    I think some devs actually helped push this bug through the Apple campus door. IIRC Bram Bos wrote here a while back that he’ll try and use his rank in the force to try and push this through. Anyway yeah I’m not really hoping for anything anymore. Also pretty sure when I’ll upgrade to a new iPhone model I will not encounter this any more. That’s life...

  • Ten reports in the audio system should be enough to get attention. It might have for that matter and since it may well be caused be a bug deeper in the system, it has been run up to a team that has a lot more bugs to deal with. But, if it is caused by something deeper, then it should get higher priority because it will cause more issues.

    With the setFullState bug that I filed back in the iOS 14 beta, they didn't tie it to other reports until a few days before the fix actually came out. There were still less than five reports total and they did eventually work on it and fix it. I think one of the reasons was that I also asked about it on the developer forums (https://developer.apple.com/forums/) and other devs trying to work around the problem responded there.

  • @espiegel123 said:

    @0tolerance4silence said:
    Hehe... I think it’ll be similar to 48k issue from previous years...
    By the time it’s acknowledged or addressed, we’ll learn to live with it or have just enough countermeasures in place to mask it for years

    The 48k issues of which I am aware aren't OS issues but developer issues. Most of the issues result from apps or plugins failing to take the hardware and/or host sample rate into account. For example, plugins choosing to run at the hardware sample rate rather than the host sample rate (which can be different) and hosts failing to account for the hardware sample rate.

    It might be annoying that Apple switched to devices having fixed sample rates when using their internal DAC - but most of the bugs were the result of developers counting on things being at a particular sample rate and not doing the necessary sample rate conversions.

    Yes, that’s not on Apple... and 3-5? years later we can barely notice it.
    My point - this issue affects a tiny % of their market and soon it’s time to sell the next best we ever made.
    Time to gather the GB community :)

  • The other difficult thing about this particular one is that it's intermittent and can take days, weeks, or months of use to show up. Anyone involved with software or hardware will tell you that intermittent problems are a nightmare to run down. If anyone does find a set of reproducible steps to trigger it, then it stands a far higher chance of getting resolved.

    I don't imagine Apple will dedicate someone to sit around playing with music apps for days and weeks at a time to grab this happening in the act. Those here who are digging in to try to capture relative system state when it does happen are doing a great service toward speeding a fix.

  • @espiegel123 said:

    @uncledave said:

    @ahallam said:

    Discovered when I opened Feedback for the 14.5 beta that they reopened the issue. Maybe there’s hope.

    But that item is wrong, because it points to the host app, saying that reinstalling it may fix the issue. We know that restarting iOS fixes it for all host apps. That points to a real system problem, not just an app-specific glitch.

    I think a critical piece of information in that bug report is that they haven’t had many reports of this issue. It says they have had fewer than 10 reports. As a result, the QA managers responsible for escalating and assigning resources probably haven’t authorized anyone to spend time on it. So, whatever misunderstanding there is on their part hasn’t been clarified.l.because no one has tried.

    It is also probably true that other reports have come in that they haven’t connected with this ... but (having at one time in my life having been on the inside) there probably have not been enough of those reports to get on anyone’s radar.

    There are a few possibilities that will help: lots more people reporting the issue and someone with connections bringing it to the audio team’s attention..which will have more impact the more reports there have been.

    Doesn't that infer reports from beta testers using the Feedback app? I suspect that we're beta-shy as a group, and this bug does seem to have some pretty specific prerequisites; took over 3 months for me to see it. I suspect posts from the open user gripe channel are managed separately, and may never be correlated unless there's a huge outcry.

  • @espiegel123 said:

    @0tolerance4silence said:
    Hehe... I think it’ll be similar to 48k issue from previous years...
    By the time it’s acknowledged or addressed, we’ll learn to live with it or have just enough countermeasures in place to mask it for years

    The 48k issues of which I am aware aren't OS issues but developer issues. Most of the issues result from apps or plugins failing to take the hardware and/or host sample rate into account. For example, plugins choosing to run at the hardware sample rate rather than the host sample rate (which can be different) and hosts failing to account for the hardware sample rate.

    It might be annoying that Apple switched to devices having fixed sample rates when using their internal DAC - but most of the bugs were the result of developers counting on things being at a particular sample rate and not doing the necessary sample rate conversions.

    Completely exactly.

  • edited February 2021

    Translated to they just don’t care enough yet. I get it, it’s a niche use case of the OS. Their Byzantine way of dealing with this gets to me though. First time, the top-tier of support who had talked with engineers said, “if it happens in GarageBand, then we can look into it further.” Next time, support said “If all the components of GarageBand are working correctly, then the developers need to be contacted.” Third time, “you need to send DAW developers logs,” but not logs to the GB team. So they expect we load Bram, Jonatan, etc with more I guess.. ha

    I zero’d mine out it, reinstalled, and a week later, I’ve almost got all the main music apps set up again. This thing came back after a day.

    Now I’m also getting “content unavailable” in the files app again, which has always seemed to be a file amount issue. Largest folder has maybe 100 files. Can’t airdrop to to Files now either. iOS has issues with a large number of anything - apps, files, auv3 and uncleDave could be onto it...

    Weird thing, there was an issue with Tonality that the dev and I couldn’t figure out. Touches on screen would indicate a press on the UI and the app state wouldn’t change. At least that’s gone.

  • @Model10000 said:
    Translated to they just don’t care enough yet. I get it, it’s a niche use case of the OS. Their Byzantine way of dealing with this gets to me though. First time, the top-tier of support who had talked with engineers said, “if it happens in GarageBand, then we can look into it further.” Next time, support said “If all the components of GarageBand are working correctly, then the developers need to be contacted.” Third time, “you need to send DAW developers logs,” but not logs to the GB team. So they expect we load Bram, Jonatan, etc with more I guess.. ha

    I zero’d mine out it, reinstalled, and a week later, I’ve almost got all the main music apps set up again. This thing came back after a day.

    Now I’m also getting “content unavailable” in the files app again, which has always seemed to be a file amount issue. Largest folder has maybe 100 files. Can’t airdrop to to Files now either. iOS has issues with a large number of anything - apps, files, auv3 and uncleDave could be onto it...

    Weird thing, there was an issue with Tonality that the dev and I couldn’t figure out. Touches on screen would indicate a press on the UI and the app state wouldn’t change. At least that’s gone.

    To me if feels like they are just unable to reproduce this. If they had been able to reproduce then they probably would have fixed it by now.

  • @god said:

    @Model10000 said:
    Translated to they just don’t care enough yet. I get it, it’s a niche use case of the OS. Their Byzantine way of dealing with this gets to me though. First time, the top-tier of support who had talked with engineers said, “if it happens in GarageBand, then we can look into it further.” Next time, support said “If all the components of GarageBand are working correctly, then the developers need to be contacted.” Third time, “you need to send DAW developers logs,” but not logs to the GB team. So they expect we load Bram, Jonatan, etc with more I guess.. ha

    I zero’d mine out it, reinstalled, and a week later, I’ve almost got all the main music apps set up again. This thing came back after a day.

    Now I’m also getting “content unavailable” in the files app again, which has always seemed to be a file amount issue. Largest folder has maybe 100 files. Can’t airdrop to to Files now either. iOS has issues with a large number of anything - apps, files, auv3 and uncleDave could be onto it...

    Weird thing, there was an issue with Tonality that the dev and I couldn’t figure out. Touches on screen would indicate a press on the UI and the app state wouldn’t change. At least that’s gone.

    To me if feels like they are just unable to reproduce this. If they had been able to reproduce then they probably would have fixed it by now.

    I think that’s likely. Still not fixed in the latest beta, as Zenbeats informed me this morning.

  • @ahallam said:

    I think that’s likely. Still not fixed in the latest beta, as Zenbeats informed me this morning.

    Developers like Roland or Steinberg might have stronger influence on Apple than us average users... I don't know how hard they push it though.

  • iPAD OS 14.4 Three times in a week now I’ve lost AU connectivity. Apple please fix this.

  • @Jumpercollins said:
    iPAD OS 14.4 Three times in a week now I’ve lost AU connectivity. Apple please fix this.

    Don't tell us, tell Apple. About all you can do is use Feedback, https://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html.

  • @uncledave said:

    @Jumpercollins said:
    iPAD OS 14.4 Three times in a week now I’ve lost AU connectivity. Apple please fix this.

    Don't tell us, tell Apple. About all you can do is use Feedback, https://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html.

    This, but hardly believe they will fix it. I’ve pretty much given up hope myself.

  • @god said:

    @uncledave said:

    @Jumpercollins said:
    iPAD OS 14.4 Three times in a week now I’ve lost AU connectivity. Apple please fix this.

    Don't tell us, tell Apple. About all you can do is use Feedback, https://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html.

    This, but hardly believe they will fix it. I’ve pretty much given up hope myself.

    Yeah. But I'm sure they will fix it, just not because of our complaints about AUv3. Eventually the class or module with the bug will cause a big error somewhere, and get fixed. Or the class will be rewritten for some unrelated reason, and the new implementation will be correct. A random rewrite, "improvement", probably caused this glitch, and it will be removed the same way.

    Personally, I haven't seen it again, so I'm a one-time offender. Very strange.

  • Just want to say that I’m glad i found this thread. I thought i was going crazy! I’ll fill out a bug report.

  • @lukesleepwalker said:
    Just want to say that I’m glad i found this thread. I thought i was going crazy! I’ll fill out a bug report.

    Well, welcome to the club, @lukesleepwalker. But, what took you so long? This has been going on for almost 6 months now.

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