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.

An observation

[ This was originally written as a response to another thread but it feels more appropriate to stand alone from that ]

I often don't understand the way this community operates.

As iOS music makers we have unprecedented access to the people who create the tools upon which we rely.

Often these are lone individuals working on apps in whatever spare time they are able to find. They have families and day jobs, work with essentially no budget and yet they're expected to be simultaneously online and responding to messages, adding in new features as per endless requests, and creating new apps - all the time.

Obviously I'm not addressing this to everyone - and perhaps those who have the most bizarrely entitled attitudes won't even recognise themselves in the description of their behaviours - but it's a curious environment to be around when people who essentially take money out of developers' pockets are held aloft as heroes whilst the developers themselves are bombarded with unreleastic requests and burdened with absurd expectations.

Comments

  • Well now this is going to put the cat amongst the pigeons!

  • i agree. i see it as a very libertarian way of thinking — putting the same (or even larger) amount of market pressure on enthusiasts as on big players.

  • @PeteSasqwax said:
    [ This was originally written as a response to another thread but it feels more appropriate to stand alone from that ]

    I often don't understand the way this community operates.

    As iOS music makers we have unprecedented access to the people who create the tools upon which we rely.

    Often these are lone individuals working on apps in whatever spare time they are able to find. They have families and day jobs, work with essentially no budget and yet they're expected to be simultaneously online and responding to messages, adding in new features as per endless requests, and creating new apps - all the time.

    Obviously I'm not addressing this to everyone - and perhaps those who have the most bizarrely entitled attitudes won't even recognise themselves in the description of their behaviours - but it's a curious environment to be around when people who essentially take money out of developers' pockets are held aloft as heroes whilst the developers themselves are bombarded with unreleastic requests and burdened with absurd expectations.

    Exactly! Well said! One thing that always bugs me is “I’ll buy it only when it’s on sale and btw here’s my list of demands!”. Put yourself in that situation and see how it feels. 😻

  • Couldn’t agree more and this is, I think, is a wider issue that’s crept into every online community Over the past 10 years or so. The kind of behaviour where the blame is often aimed squarely at social media platforms. It’s not facebooks fault they are able to bring together likeminded idiots.

    I see it everywhere, thankfully it’s not as widespread on this community but I still sigh when I see exaggerated language, unfair criticism and worst of all, those posts where someone is just angry, almost like unfocused rage. This is unusable! uninstalled it! I got an immediate refund! Like petulant teenagers throwing their toys out of the pram without any clear idea how to stay in control.

    You see it in meatspace all the time, although i think it’s worse, those people that get angry with cashiers, workers in hospitality, these people don’t even make the decisions, their just usually minimum wage doing a job they probably would rather not be doing.

    It’s a bit hippy, but I think everyone should treat everyone with respect and kindness. we all have our roles to play and even if it is in our nature, we all have a choice not to be a d***k.

  • Fair points. Most of my own frustration is caused by Apple’s policies—not permitting ownership transfers or rolling back to an earlier OS. Sometimes this overflows towards the devs.

  • Yeah, well said Pete. Respect the devs 👊

  • I think sometimes people don't realize, or forget, that this is an international forum as well. Sometimes I'll see someone nagging a developer to answer their question only hours after asking it, even on a weekend. This seems like someone doesn't realize that people have a life other than this forum. They are quite likely sleeping due to time differences, working (programming takes focus!), working a day job, needing to take care of their life, taking a few days off, etc.

    These aren't companies with 24x7 staffed technical support teams. They're generally just people like us, more often than not doing this in their spare time. Heck, even most companies that have technical support don't generally respond in anything less than 24 hours during business days.

    Keeping all that in mind might help with the impatience when it seems like a question or suggestion isn't being responded to in a timely fashion.

  • @wim said:
    I think sometimes people don't realize, or forget, that this is an international forum as well. Sometimes I'll see someone nagging a developer to answer their question only hours after asking it, even on a weekend. This seems like someone doesn't realize that people have a life other than this forum. They are quite likely sleeping due to time differences, working (programming takes focus!), working a day job, needing to take care of their life, taking a few days off, etc.

    These aren't companies with 24x7 staffed technical support teams. They're generally just people like us, more often than not doing this in their spare time. Heck, even most companies that have technical support don't generally respond in anything less than 24 hours during business days.

    Keeping all that in mind might help with the impatience when it seems like a question or suggestion isn't being responded to in a timely fashion.

    but it is still a customer-business kind of relationship with all the 'customer is always right and votes with his dollar' kind of mentality.

  • The other thing I think about along these lines is people asking about when apps or feature additions are expected. I'm not saying it's wrong to do this. What I am trying to do is add some perspective.

    Software development isn't like building a woodshed. It's very difficult to estimate how long things will take. The exact number of pieces and how long they take to fashion, the possible complications for other parts of the code, the testing needed, etc. etc. etc. are far harder to anticipate. Adding to that is the fact that, as already pointed out, most music apps are developed by individuals, often in their spare time.

    Providing release date estimates is a no-win situation for developers. The only way to be reasonably reliable, the estimate needs to be generously padded. So people get upset at the timeframe. It's far more easy to be overly optimistic and end up letting people down. Then there are the many, many unexpected things that come up. Bugs to fix, iOS updates that break things, incoming feature requests that might be better to implement first, life ... Throwing out release dates ties a developer's hands. They lose flexibility. They come under pressure for something they're doing mostly for self-satisfaction.

    At the end of the day it is going to take as long as it takes. No amount of pressure is going to change that. IMO we shouldn't even be asking the question out of respect for the unfair position this puts the developer in. I know that's not a popular sentiment with some, and I don't begrudge anyone their right to do that. I just don't think it's helpful.

    Just my two cents. Please don't hate on me for being honest about it.

  • While I take OP’s points and agree with them, I would also observe that not all app-sellers fit this description of some cool dude making fun tools for our community in his spare time. I admire and respect the ones who do fit that description. But there are more than a couple very sharp-elbowed (to put it politely) businessmen in the market. A few I would not even trust to watch my drink for me in a crowded bar.

  • wimwim
    edited June 2021

    @vasilymilovidov said:

    @wim said:
    I think sometimes people don't realize, or forget, that this is an international forum as well. Sometimes I'll see someone nagging a developer to answer their question only hours after asking it, even on a weekend. This seems like someone doesn't realize that people have a life other than this forum. They are quite likely sleeping due to time differences, working (programming takes focus!), working a day job, needing to take care of their life, taking a few days off, etc.

    These aren't companies with 24x7 staffed technical support teams. They're generally just people like us, more often than not doing this in their spare time. Heck, even most companies that have technical support don't generally respond in anything less than 24 hours during business days.

    Keeping all that in mind might help with the impatience when it seems like a question or suggestion isn't being responded to in a timely fashion.

    but it is still a customer-business kind of relationship with all the 'customer is always right and votes with his dollar' kind of mentality.

    "The customer is always right" is bullshit. Customers are at least as often wrong than right. Not so much around here, as most app suggestions are actually really good. I'm commenting on that silly trope, not on the reality on this forum. The responsive developers are that way because they care, not because doing so is worth their time, I'm sure.

    On iOS "voting with his dollar" is a cruel joke as well. Almost no developers make enough for their efforts for the change in income from providing 24x7 support or not to amount to anything.

    If you feel that's an appropriate mindset in this context, that's fine. I'm not judging, just trying to offer some perspective, as I think is the intent of this thread.

  • Gotta love the folks who wont buy an app that hasn’t been updated in a year, no matter how good it is or how perfectly it would fill their needs. If it’s not broken there’s no need to fix it.

    On another note, I can still talk shit on Korg right?

  • @wim said:

    @vasilymilovidov said:

    @wim said:
    I think sometimes people don't realize, or forget, that this is an international forum as well. Sometimes I'll see someone nagging a developer to answer their question only hours after asking it, even on a weekend. This seems like someone doesn't realize that people have a life other than this forum. They are quite likely sleeping due to time differences, working (programming takes focus!), working a day job, needing to take care of their life, taking a few days off, etc.

    These aren't companies with 24x7 staffed technical support teams. They're generally just people like us, more often than not doing this in their spare time. Heck, even most companies that have technical support don't generally respond in anything less than 24 hours during business days.

    Keeping all that in mind might help with the impatience when it seems like a question or suggestion isn't being responded to in a timely fashion.

    but it is still a customer-business kind of relationship with all the 'customer is always right and votes with his dollar' kind of mentality.

    "The customer is always right" is bullshit. Customers are at least as often wrong than right. Not so much around here, as most app suggestions are actually really good. I'm commenting on the trope, not on the reality here.

    On iOS "voting with his dollar" is a cruel joke as well. Almost no developers make enough for their efforts for the change in income from providing 24x7 support or not to amount to anything.

    If you feel that's an appropriate mindset in this context, that's fine. I'm not judging, just trying to offer some perspective, as I think is the intent of this thread.

    i agree with you completely. just saying that it might be hard for people to adjust their mindsets and attitudes towards small developers while using apple's ecosystem. customer is always afraid he's being cheated, therefore this shitty attitude of 'how can you convince me to buy and use your product'. sorry for playing the devil's advocate a bit :D

  • @vasilymilovidov said:
    i agree with you completely. just saying that it might be hard for people to adjust their mindsets and attitudes towards small developers while using apple's ecosystem. customer is always afraid he's being cheated, therefore this shitty attitude of 'how can you convince me to buy and use your product'. sorry for playing the devil's advocate a bit :D

    Heh, heh. I should have considered that was what you were doing. 😂

  • Why do people “feel they’re being cheated”? A little research is a small investment for making sure an app (or any product) will or will not meet your needs.

  • wimwim
    edited June 2021

    Especially when most apps cost less than a Happy Meal.

    My son works at Walmart. Compared to what he experiences from customers every day, this place is a gathering of saints. :D

  • @wim said:
    Especially when most apps cost less than a Happy Meal.

    My son works at Walmart. Compared to what he experiences from customers every day, this place is a gathering of saints. :D

    Durkheim observed that even a society of saints will define one of their brethren as deviant, because deviance serves societal functions.

  • @wim said:
    Especially when most apps cost less than a Happy Meal.

    My son works at Walmart. Compared to what he experiences from customers every day, this place is a gathering of saints. :D

    It’ll make him stronger! 💪🏽

  • What I find difficult with some of these "why doesn't X do Y?" discussions is that I'm now occasionally thinking the same way. "Hell I paid good money for this, and now it doesn't do the thing that I wanted (and which it never said it could do)". I kind of suspect this type of entitlement is infectious.

    In real life, I'm absolutely NOT like this, and quite regularly drop $5-10 on cool-at-the-moment items that don't retain my interest later. I do this with no regret whatsoever, and consider it a normal part of living in a society where makers generally aren't rewarded for what they create. Don't even get me started on what I've paid for godawful drinks in expensive bars.

    Hopefully once I and everyone else returns to actually seeing and interacting with real humans again, some of this behaviour will disappear. "Thank you" will start to be something we all hear and say often again, as well as laughing off our own stupid mistakes and laughing along with each other.

  • @wim said:
    Especially when most apps cost less than a Happy Meal.

    Here in Brazil, it costs way more. And still, is really affordable next to desktop stuff, and let's not even mention hardware.

    It really bothers me when I notice the kind of behavior @PeteSasqwax mentions... (although not sure what happened in this specific case - but I can imagine)

    Devs already have to deal with apple's weird policies AND pay a hefty dev fee every year to deliver us products so cheap and still put up with the weird part of the userbase

  • @wim said:
    Especially when most apps cost less than a Happy Meal.

    ...and they're probably considerably more nutritious...

    I'm glad there are so many great developers who spend their time on this forum. Most people here seem to treat them with respect, but there are occasionally people who seem to not see the great deal they're getting with iOS apps and the support that is provided.

  • It's reassuring to see this thread being so well received.

    @db909 said:
    On another note, I can still talk shit on Korg right?

    I can't believe anyone is not on the Pajen AUv3 firmware versions already... 👀😉

  • I think the individual devs should be the ones to define "entitlement".

    When I release an app some day, I personally would rather know about every little feature somebody might want, far in advance. You're entitled to dream big. If the price is too high, I want to know. Which buttons are too small, which menus are too cluttered? I was probably tired when I made those decisions.

    blueveek is an example of a dev who learned to set expectations for his fans. You're entitled to nitpick, he's entitled to take breaks.

  • I'm relatively new here, which probably has drawbacks (don't know my way around yet, etc.) but also advantages (still have a relatively fresh eye to look at things). That said, the OP tackles what may be the only area where I don't like quite a lot of what I'm seeing in this otherwise pretty great community. :)

    I think it's possible to identify quite a few annoying types of typical behaviour. My "favourites" include (and I sort of think I already wrote about this in some other thread earlier):

    • the Obnoxious: "I have not even bought your app, which I state proudly, but here is what you must add to it to make it better"
    • the Non-thanker: "Thanks a lot for this great update! When are these 5 additional features going to be implemented?"
    • the Lazy Entitled: "I have not put in the work of reading the manual or even the bloody release notes, but I'm still coming back every 6th day to ask a pretend-innocent question about the implementation of some obscure function that will clearly not happen any time soon and it was already clearly explained multiple times to me and others"
    • the Well-Meaning Mercantilist: "I would even pay 4 USD for an IAP with this functionality, and I'm sure there are others like me. The developer would be able to make moneeeeey on this!!!"
    • etc.

    It's reassuring to see when other members step in and offer some perspective to the poor soul who falls into one of these traps. Still, at the end of the day I am amazed at how devs like Victor handle this onslaught as brilliantly as they do. Absolute respect. But I totally understand the ones that choose not to expose themselves to this. I mean, they can still read the forum anonymously and gather all the useful feedback, of which there is a lot as well. :)

  • edited June 2021

    @ervin said:
    I'm relatively new here, which probably has drawbacks (don't know my way around yet, etc.) but also advantages (still have a relatively fresh eye to look at things). That said, the OP tackles what may be the only area where I don't like quite a lot of what I'm seeing in this otherwise pretty great community. :)

    I think it's possible to identify quite a few annoying types of typical behaviour. My "favourites" include (and I sort of think I already wrote about this in some other thread earlier):

    • the Obnoxious: "I have not even bought your app, which I state proudly, but here is what you must add to it to make it better"
    • the Non-thanker: "Thanks a lot for this great update! When are these 5 additional features going to be implemented?"
    • the Lazy Entitled: "I have not put in the work of reading the manual or even the bloody release notes, but I'm still coming back every 6th day to ask a pretend-innocent question about the implementation of some obscure function that will clearly not happen any time soon and it was already clearly explained multiple times to me and others"
    • the Well-Meaning Mercantilist: "I would even pay 4 USD for an IAP with this functionality, and I'm sure there are others like me. The developer would be able to make moneeeeey on this!!!"
    • etc.

    It's reassuring to see when other members step in and offer some perspective to the poor soul who falls into one of these traps. Still, at the end of the day I am amazed at how devs like Victor handle this onslaught as brilliantly as they do. Absolute respect. But I totally understand the ones that choose not to expose themselves to this. I mean, they can still read the forum anonymously and gather all the useful feedback, of which there is a lot as well. :)

    Now imagine this but for hardware.

    Part of the problem comes from a culture of consumption and not creating… by which I mean the creation of tools (including virtual ones) and hard goods.

    “Why Nobody knows how to make a pencil”
    https://ddcolrs.wordpress.com/2015/09/21/why-nobody-knows-how-to-make-a-pencil/
    To my mind, is an essay that shows the contours of how expertise, craftsmanship, raw material acquisition and refinement has been obscured mostly by market forces that devalues skills. Things just pop into a consumer space without the attendant costs to time spent in human and environmental “capital”.

    Gimmetarian - give me everything I ask for - no, I demand it cost what it’s always cost regardless of circumstances. “The customer is always right” is a disease and a function of a society unaware of MAKING because our economic structure “smooths” things out by tamping down the cost of labor and skill to hide the fluctuations of raw materials and transport.

    Sigh. End rant

  • Hey @PeteSasqwax I thought you just hung out on http://llllllll.co/ ;)

  • @audiblevideo "Hi, I'm Troy McClure - you may remember me from classic Lines threads such as 'Your iOS arsenal' and '[FS] some piece of gear I bought and am now seeking to sell to finance the purchase of another piece of gear (which I will subsequently sell, ad infinitum)'..." 😂

    Beat Cult, like Wu-Tang, is for the children, ergo I have a foot in every congregation.

    (What I'm now referring to as "the pencil principle" is superb, btw!)

    @ervin those are absurdly accurate observations on all counts. I wonder if those archetypes are found in other forums or if they're uniquely ABF characters

  • edited June 2021

    @ervin said:
    I'm relatively new here, which probably has drawbacks (don't know my way around yet, etc.) but also advantages (still have a relatively fresh eye to look at things). That said, the OP tackles what may be the only area where I don't like quite a lot of what I'm seeing in this otherwise pretty great community. :)

    I think it's possible to identify quite a few annoying types of typical behaviour. My "favourites" include (and I sort of think I already wrote about this in some other thread earlier):

    • the Obnoxious: "I have not even bought your app, which I state proudly, but here is what you must add to it to make it better"
    • the Non-thanker: "Thanks a lot for this great update! When are these 5 additional features going to be implemented?"
    • the Lazy Entitled: "I have not put in the work of reading the manual or even the bloody release notes, but I'm still coming back every 6th day to ask a pretend-innocent question about the implementation of some obscure function that will clearly not happen any time soon and it was already clearly explained multiple times to me and others"
    • the Well-Meaning Mercantilist: "I would even pay 4 USD for an IAP with this functionality, and I'm sure there are others like me. The developer would be able to make moneeeeey on this!!!"
    • etc.

    It's reassuring to see when other members step in and offer some perspective to the poor soul who falls into one of these traps. Still, at the end of the day I am amazed at how devs like Victor handle this onslaught as brilliantly as they do. Absolute respect. But I totally understand the ones that choose not to expose themselves to this. I mean, they can still read the forum anonymously and gather all the useful feedback, of which there is a lot as well. :)

    Good examples, I see what you mean. So people are just not understanding software development, and are asking annoying questions about it. But it is a public forum about software. And if you release anything (album, movie, game), people will quickly start saying,

    "When's the next one??"
    "I hope the next one features ___!"
    "AWW, there's no ___ in the next one? Pass."

    I feel like those are just the thoughts that pass through your head when you're a fan of something. (Though there are also fans who get extremely upset at artists...fair to call that entitlement!)

    I'm totally down for human beings to understand each other better, but as a musician and music fan, it's hard to imagine a different relationship between creator and consumer.

    Now, the relationship between a vocalist and mixing engineer...it's really just "You're entitled, but I need clients, so here are my rules. Number of revisions shall not exceed..."

    I guess my point is, I'm not in favor of

    "policing AudioBus members for vague, subjective moral transgressions"

    but

    "establishing best practices for communicating with developers" is a good idea.

  • Just want to throw some more points into the mix… You must also see that many indie developer have the big motivation of working on a project they love, probably being musicians themselves. It’s fun to work in the spare time on a cool music app while the day job is a dull book keeping web application. Look how many of them enjoy taking the feature requests from the audience. But on the other hand as a user you must accept that the dev’s life situation can change and also the time budget they can spend. The dev can suddenly loose interest or decide to become a monk in Tibet. But hey, we spent 9.99 for the app - fair enough.

  • @PeteSasqwax said:
    @ervin those are absurdly accurate observations on all counts. I wonder if those archetypes are found in other forums or if they're uniquely ABF characters

    I think these guys are everywhere and the reason I notice them more here is that the community in general is much better than in other places, so the contrast is stronger :)

    @Skyblazer said:
    I guess my point is, I'm not in favor of "policing AudioBus members for vague, subjective moral transgressions"

    but

    "establishing best practices for communicating with developers" is a good idea.

    Agree with the first one. I'm no fan of policing, either. Establishing best practices is a noble idea; I'm not sure it would work in real life. Free speech, innit.

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