Running into trouble recording w/ Audulus/Audiobus/Garageband hookup

I’m not entirely sure what’s wrong with my system, but here we go. First off, specs: I’m using a 2018 iPad Pro, Audulus (duh), and Garageband, connected via Audiobus 3, and all the software is up to date. But for some reason whenever I press the record button, there’s just something going on…I don’t know if Garageband freezes up or something, but not only am I unable to hear any audio (since I’m recording from program to program I usually just use the iPad speakers), but when Garageband finally stops recording, the recorded audio has nothing on it at all.
I thought that this possibly had something to do with some external hardware I was using in my current patch (I used a Focusrite Scarlett Solo to hook up my guitar), but even trying to use a patch that doesn’t utilize any microphone nodes is giving me the same issues.

Does anyone have any idea what to do? I don’t think this has anything to do with the Audulus side of things, but I was wondering if anyone else had run into something like this and had found some sort of workaround.

As always, thanks for your input—you’re all awesome.

I should also point out that this isn’t due—I think—to me using a lot of feedback and noise; all my patches use DC blockers and tanh expressions to make sure it’s even recordable in the first place, since I had that problem early on in my time with Audulus.

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If you upload your patch I can try to replicate on my iPad, I have a little time after lunch right now.

So I see that indeed this does like to crash a whole lot but I was able to get consistent results with the following technique.

  1. After you set up your Audulus patch, exit and name it. Quit out of all programs.

  2. Start Audiobus3 and let it boot up audulus and garage band.

  3. Open your saved audulus patch and start recording.

I think you will need to repeat these steps whenever you get a garage band crash. Or just record all at once and then edit separately :-/

It’s strange…I didn’t think it was crashing as much as it was freezing (not that there’s much of a difference, in a sense): like, it wouldn’t completely crash on me. But I’ll try these steps and see how it goes. Thank you! And here are the patches I was using, if that helps.Noise Setup 10.audulus (106.0 KB) Effects Rack.audulus (131.1 KB)

Okay, update: I tried using your workaround, and it didn’t work. I’d follow it through and everything worked fine until I hit the record button via the Audiobus interface tab-thing, and then my patch goes silent yet again. It’s strange…I never had this problem with my old iPad.

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Have you tried using IAA? I did a brief test and that seems to work OK. Create a track in GB using external instrument/lnter-app audio and choose Audulus from the list. You do need to double press the home button to switch back to GB to press record. You can switch to Audulus by touching the Audulus icon in the track header.

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Yeah, I tried IAA—it doesn’t work either. Literally the only sound I could get out of it was a little bit of feedback when I closed Audulus. Hm…do you think if I tried to get a hold of the GarageBand devs they’d be able to help? Or, better yet, does anyone have a better recommendation for an iOS DAW?

I like Ableton Live very much. There is a free Intro version that is pretty well-featured, lets you record, and has an 8-track limit. Bit of a learning curve on the GUI, lots of controls, but the built-in tutorials are excellent.

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But then that’s on the Mac end, not iOS like you need…

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I have Auria and Cubasis and I think Cubasis has more features and Auria has a super lean interface and fun features like pinch and pull time stretch and convolution reverb. Korg Gadget is also a DAW technically, but uses a clip-launching paradigm and makes it tougher to edit the waveforms. I have also heard good things about beat maker pro. @RileyGuy might have a better perspective on how well Cubasis works with Audulus.

Let me drink some coffee and see if I can get garage band to record it.

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Wow I got totally sidetracked messing around in garage band. The UI is pretty unfamiliar to me but I like some of the cheesy performance effects they have built in. I might revisit it for making some glitchy loops in the future.

I was about to record your patch using my method, but I guess that doesn’t help much because we have different models of iPad. So what would that prove? :thinking:

Here’s a modest proposal don’t use Audiobus at all. Just make sure your Audulus level is clean, then crank the speaker volume and record it back with the built-in mic. You will have to turn off monitoring in garageband to avoid unwanted feedback. You loose low end with this method but you get a whole lot of other weirdness including your live room noise. Plus you can apply all sorts of effects in garage band. Here’s what I did after messing around a bit.

edit: a while back you asked what everybody thought was the ugliest sound they ever made using audulus, I think this comes pretty damn close.:rofl:

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I’ve got Beat Maker 3 and it seems to be pretty flexible once you get past the somewhat confusing interface. I have to admit I haven’t used it a whole lot since I do most of my DAW type stuff on the Mac. I think it might be worth doing a little more troubleshooting with GB in any case. I’m back in the land of decent internet (hooray) so if I have time tomorrow I’ll do some more testing. Hopefully the move to AU v3 will make all these issues a thing of the past soon anyway. :cowboy_hat_face:

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There’s ton of stuff in GB available for free download if you have the space. I wonder if it’s a sneaky way to get you to buy an iPad with more storage. :cowboy_hat_face:

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no! :rofl: No more free sample libraries! I’m drowning! :swimming_man::ocean::ocean::ocean:

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Sorry I took so long to reply to this—I actually just got home from seeing Billy Joel live (no joke—it was AWESOME)…so, I’ll check out Beat Maker. It seems like my best option, though, is to maybe just purchase Ableton Live and start recording all my stuff via my laptop instead of my iPad (I bought the iPad mostly to draw, anyway), though @robertsyrett’s suggestion to record it live sounds like fun. I’m assuming I should have no trouble plugging Audulus into Ableton? Anyway, we’ll see. Thanks again for helping me out, guys—I really appreciate all your feedback.

@robertsyrett, that little audio snippet is so damn cool, also!

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I don’t think you’ll regret it, even the LITE version is super useful.

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I also use Reaper on my Mac. It’s a very powerful and full featured DAW and a non-commercial license is only $60. You can try it for free for 60 days. I bought Ableton primarily to integrate with the Push 2 controller and the clip based workflow, but I still prefer Reaper for more traditional track based recording.

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I was able to record using Audulus, Audiobus 3 and GB. I launched AB3, selected Audulus as the source, opened Audulus from the AB3 UI, loaded the patch, returned to AB3 via the tab, loaded GB, opened the GB interface, chose microphone as the source and hit record from within the GB UI. This seems to work, however I couldn’t get GB to record using the record button on the AB3 tab. If I tried to use that, everything went silent and I had to quit all three apps and relaunch. It appears that GB doesn’t handle the signal to start recording sent by AB3. I also couldn’t get IAA from within GB to work with Audulus although it works with other IAA apps. Reminded me why I don’t particularly like GB.
In any case, using your laptop to do the recording will allow you to run more CPU intensive Audulus patches on your iPad since you won’t have the overhead of a DAW running as well.

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