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Development: Audiobus – Live Audio Routing Between iOS Apps
A Tasty Pixel and Audanika – the developers behind Loopy and SoundPrism – have provided some details about their upcoming project called “Audiobus”.
Audiobus is said to “change the way people create music on iOS”. Quite bold words but if they have managed to pull this off it really will be a game changer!
From what we’ve been told so far Audiobus is a virtual mixing board and FX processor for iOS allowing live app-to-app audio streaming, and involves an SDK that app developers include in their projects as well as a separate ‘co-ordinating’ app that will connect the two apps together. It is said to even work over WiFi (~60ms latency).
iOS app developers can sign up to get more information about Audiobus and register their interest in the SDK beta programme at audiob.us.
If all goes well users should start seeing Audiobus released and the functionality implemented into iOS apps in the next couple of months.
Here are some mockups of the main Audiobus interface…
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So it got approved by Apple and we are now waiting for the initial round of developers to implement it before it goes mainstream. I can’t wait for AudioBus!! :-)
I think I read somewhere that it would cost $10 for the main AudioBus app. Considering most musicians using iPad are going to want to buy this above any other app I think that is too high a price. $10 will just limit the amount of users that will buy it. $4.99 or even $2.99 would be better. Maybe 10 times more people will buy it if it’s half or quarter the price. It simple economics.
But what I am most worried about is that some developers that incorporate AudioBus into their app are gonna want to make some money from it and charge for it through IAP. This would really suck. I own about 30 or 40 music apps and if they all charged for AudioBus then that would add up to quite a lot of money. Companies like WaveMachineLabs are bound to charge. I hope this doesn’t happen or AudioBus could end up being really expensive to use.
$10 doesnt sound too bad to me, but it would be nice to have an introductory offer on that! As for individual developers, I believe that they are getting the code for free to incorporate into their apps, and I think they would see it as an added feature to stay competitive, and therefore not charge.
InApppurchases would be ok if the developers will update their apps with the AudioBus feature, that would be better than not supporting it and to encourage developers to add AudioBus, you can’t get everthing for free, a lot of the synth apps are around €5,- and only a few cost €10+ so it would be allright for me! Price should be around €0,79 and hopefully a lot of music apps will support AudioBus!
would be nice if I could route some synth app to moogs filtatron or likewise
then I dont need 2 ipads
and with ipad3 it should be nice I suppose
I also have problems with ipad1 and animoog and samplewiz at the sametime or likewise
they play, but noises appears and sometimes the ipad frozes, I could not turn it off for 5 minutes for reboot
nah, apple wont shoot this app down, anything that will attract more people to take ios production more seriously and thus purchase more i devices will be accepted, its just another roundabout method of multitasking with ability to record. this will reduce need for acp instantly
but…dev told me yesterday app is still a few months away from release, dont hold yer breath just yet..now i must find out about where we stand with Auria release….
I’m hoping that I’ll finally be able to use MultiTrack DAW’s punch in feature in conjunction with one of the guitar apps like AmpKit or JamUp. I love ACP, but having punch in ability on a guitar/bass track is something that would help my workflow. I hope Apple doesn’t shoot this down. I think we’ve all been wanting something like this for the past few years.
Wow! I somehow missed this story LOL This is great, I can’t wait!! My guess is that this makes use of some system level Core Audio stuff. Do you think there’s any chance that Apple won’t approve this? Would be a dark day for iOS music if that happened.
Must say that I have given up on virtual midi due to the continual shift of interfaces. I also think it is pretty tiresome tomset up the different channels. Almost reminds me of the slow proces of setting up midi hardware. Now with a routing system it all just seems to get even more convoluted. I have returned to the simple and fast way: I record some basics in one app, say Rebirth or iMS20, then export it to Nanostudio or beatmaker and finish it with their onboard synths loaded with my favorite samples. nothing beats the workflow of this procedure so far.
i think it would be especially cool for recording live jamming, i speculate and say that you can click on an app icon within this app and go back and forth, instead of multitask gesture
but acp is great but still, you need to go back and forth between apps, thus this would be like genome where u hear what sounds good, or bad together at same time
however, i think this routing will be quicker and more efficient…
Wow.So hopefully within a couple of months I’m scrolling through my ipad DAW track recording inputs to select from another app or one of the soundcard multi inputs.
Virtual midi was only here in October, things are moving along nicely…..
damn right things are moving along nicely, so much so, with this and forthcoming Auria, we will see ios as being a genuine force in music production. ive been saying this all along but some whiners think that only laptop or pc software can do this\\
it is a case of developers waiting and seeing what the idevices can do and watching with faith that apple keep making the devices faster and more able
this year is going to be unprecedented and we will see a lot more mindblowing stuff
Maybe just maybe this new protocol is more effective and has less drain on CPU, we don’t know yet
But IF it did add a record feature that would be great, that is the only thing missing from genome, I mean, it’s all very well sequencing on genome, then you still have to acp to say GarageBand or whatnot to sequence it properly . So what is actually needed is a proper sequencer and mastering app
Auria looks to be that one methinks
Ive been discussing with the developers, they told me directly this app WILL have a record feature, in other words, whatever you have multitasking, as long as it has their sdk I think, will be recordable, so lol, jam on live and record the results. The devs have my full support on this, virtual midi seems limited if it cannot record and we want to record. Now if genome adopts this sdk, you can link that to audiobus and do your thing, then when ready record it for posterity!
This sounds like it could open up some great creative possibilities. Being able to route a software synth to something like Filtatron, for instance, would be huge. I’m surprised Apple hasn’t done something like this in ios yet.
Hmm..with background audio there is really no need to route any audio from one app to the other, since you can play them at the same time. However, if you can route audio from the apps in a virtual midi session, and say, record the final product in Beatmaker,NanoStudio, Meteor or whatever, it would be a whole new playground. But there would still be drawbacks. The iPad 2 can not run more than about 4 apps at the same time and even if it could, you have to switch interfaces all the time to mix the deal. And some apps don’ t even have a pan option nor an equalizer.
I like to hear more about it though.
Cheers
Ipad2 only four apps in virtual midi? I had six running on ipad1
Erm did you disable multitasking and reboot device?
When I said 4 devices it is devices like Sunrizer, Animoog, Alchemy and Nlog pro which are fairly heavy on cpu use. I would be impressed if you could run these simultanously on an iPad 1 one without hick ups, I’d say.
Just did it with addition of two more, was a bit slow, but when I took additional apps off, worked fine. Remember the issues with that game infinity blade 2? Ipad1 users had trouble with that, and ipodtouch4 for that matter. I never did,I launched the game and first time it crashed before loading, then I reinstalled and held finger on screen as game launched and it was fine from then on, maybe I’m lucky but I believe that not all problems/ limitations are universal.
Obviously I can’t prove it but ipad1 is doing ok for multitasking/ background audio/ virtual midi
Sorry for my skepticism mate. But if you are saying that you have runned alchemy, sunrizer, animoog and Nlog Pro with two other apps on your iPad 1, I would need a video to believe it. I guess your claim is that you have runned them from Genome
i just tried with those apps after reading your comments, works fine on my ipad1 and 2 WITHOUT genome, just jamming….must be a problem with your pad
Then I get it. You might be able to play them all at once just controlling them from a midi keyboard all right but do try to set them up in Genome, where you make a different track for each of them on different midi channels. Doing this most people report being able to control 3-4 apps. Genome also takes a deal of cpu in this respect and beatmaker 2 that now have virtual midi takes even more.
Cheers
Haha sorry. You’re full of it if you claim you run sound from all of these at the same time.
dude,each persons experience is their own
dont deny them that by branding them liars
not fair or polite mate, believe what u want but we
all have our own unique experience
lol
“Dude”. It’s not about “unique experiences”.
Get a grip.
really?my experience has to be the same as yours? you accused me of lying “dude” and i just told you that was wrong. it is absolutely not my fault if i get a few apps running at the same time, and its true, some get different results…please do not argue with me, accuse me of lying or tell me to get a grip, i was just reporting on my own experiences with multitasking and so it seems was another guy. we have that right as do others and i dont think we are the only ones…just allow other people the right to have their own experiences which may well at times differ from yours..this is how wars start actually, people trying to deny individuality and personal experience.
why diss me publicly? have you actually accomplished something useful by doing so apart from giving vent?
subject of this thread is to investigate an amazing development in ios music making, not to argue sir.
at least we agree virtual midi sucks right? lets focus on what we agree on. not what we dissagree on, would be more productive perhaps?
This is huge. The kind of announcement I was waiting for, some kind of virtual audio cable/routing (soundflower, rewire…). I really hope they manage to get this working soon, and that is massively adopted by other developers.
Thanks to A Tasty Pixel and Audanika for their effort!