Audiobus 3 has a major new update out now. The handy little tool for iOS musicians and sound designers allows many of those audio apps in your collection to talk to one another and it just got a whole lot more fluent.
More specifically, for those that aren’t familiar with the app, Audiobus essentially allows compatible apps to pass live audio and MIDI data back and forth within a simple to use interface. That means you can send MIDI data performances to your favorite iOS synths or even process the output of one instrument in another one completely, for example. You can “add effects on top of your favorite synth, use your favorite step sequencer to drive the whole lot, and record it all in your favorite DAW, sampler or looper.”
The app also has hardware integration. Plugging your iOS-compatible MIDI controller in and using a keyboard splitter to drive several different iOS apps via a single performance would be another interesting example. The possibilities really are almost endless here.
I personally find the app to be a must-have for anyone looking to get any kind of serious work done without being hindered in some way (or at some point) by DAW third-party plug-in compatibility issues. GarageBand on iOS is a great all-in-one solution for completely avoiding inter-app situations entirely, but there’s just too many amazing third-party instruments and tools out there to ignore.
The new and completely free 3.1 update is out now and has a number of very interesting additions. On top of the usual minor enhancements, you can now use compatible iOS Audio Units as MIDI sources and in FX-like processing setups. That means many of your sequencer, chord-maker and modulator MIDI Audio Units can all be integrated in to your workflow via Audious 3.1. Anything that pushes wider spread adoption of Audio Units on iOS sounds like good news to me at this point as many have been waiting for a more complete level of MIDI support.
Hardware integration is getting a little deeper as well. You will now be able to route individual app outputs to specific outputs on your hardware audio interface. That includes the ability to send a master output to a headphone jack and a connected audio interface at the same time. Beyond that, Audiobus now finally supports wireless Bluetooth MIDI controllers on iOS and adds full-screen Audio Unit views
Audiobus 3 and the brand new free update are available now on the App Store for $9.99.
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