Am I expecting too much?

I’m new to this forum, so hello everyone :slight_smile:

First off, just want to say Cubasis is amazing! Can’t believe how much they’ve managed to cram into this app, so well done Steinberg you’ve done a fantastic job :smiley:

My setup is IK Multimedia iRig Pro Keys, iPad Air with iOS 7.1, Cubasis 1.7.2 and various apps such as Animoog, SampleTank, iGrand Piano etc, I’ll refer to these as “sound generator apps” from now on.

I was hoping someone would be able to explain how I go about controlling my sound generators from Cubasis, i.e. I want to use my MIDI keyboard to record MIDI into Cubasis while at the same time have it pass THRU to the sound generator app, then I want the audio from the sound generator app to come back into Cubasis on an audio track so I can hear what I’m playing and add real time effects etc. Then when I hit play in Cubasis, I want the recorded MIDI to go into the sound generator app and it’s audio to play back through the Cubasis audio track.

During playback, if I mute a sound generator app’s audio track in Cubasis I want it to stop sounding (even though MIDI is still going into it from the Cubasis MIDI track).

I guess basically I’m trying to use my sound generator apps like VST instrument plugins on a computer DAW.

I was hoping to achieve this via Audiobus version 1 or 2, but that doesn’t seem to have any control over the MIDI side of things and the audio output from the sound generator just bypasses Cubasis completely. Inter App Audio also doesn’t give me this functionality and Virtual MIDI just seems to have a mind of its own!

So my question is; Is what I’m trying to do even possible?
If it is, does anyone know how I do it please?
If it isn’t, does anyone know if Steinberg are working on a solution to this, or am I basically just expecting too much?!

Thanks

What you describe sounds like the way it usually works in Cubasis, maybe I’m missing something?

If you create a track and set the instrument to an inter-app audio app, playing within Cubasis should play that app, and you’ll get sound back from it too.
MIDI channels should also work, but that may depend on the apps you use, and make sure you set them to match on both apps.

Check you MIDI settings in the Cubasis preferences/setup screen too, to make sure it’s all as you want it.

When Muting a track, it will do what you say (mute audio and stop sending MIDI).

Thanks for the response Bry, that’s been REALLY helpful. Its working really well with Steinberg Nanologue.

I’m just wishing all my other sound generator apps supported Inter App Audio now!

This sort of integration is crying out to get “standardised”. Most of my apps support Audiobus and Virtual MIDI but these methods seem pretty useless when trying to tightly integrate apps in this way.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Steinberg and Apple get their heads together and create a true standard, just like Steinberg did when they invented VST, and it would be the icing on the cake if they also came up with way of saving the sound generator app’s settings within the Cubasis project.

Hopefully this will happen in the not too distant future :slight_smile:

Yeah, I’d love to see inter-app audio evolve a bit further, I already like it much better than Audiobus.
I like that I don’t have to open a third app just to setup the connections and that I just need to launch Cubasis and the used inter-app apps get opened in the background automatically.

If they expand on that it will be great, it’s probably on Apple’s side though, but Steinberg should increase the inter-app audio sample rate support.

… Ah, I thought things were going to well.

Got three InterApp audio tracks in my project; Nanologue, Arturia iSEM and DM1

Got “MIDI Input; Only for armed tracks” switched on in the settings.

Got MIDI data on each of the three tracks that I recorded using Cubasis’ on-screen keyboard with no problems.

It plays back fine, i.e. Each app plays the correct notes and mute/solo etc works as expected.

However, when I connect and play my MIDI keyboard, Arturia iSEM sounds even if I have not got its track selected or record armed. Arturia iSEM is not open, i.e. It’s not there when I double click the iPad’s home button. It’s just running in the IAA background like Nanolgue and DM1.

… Weird :confused:

I get the feeling this whole IAA thing is still a bit of a flaky technology, and like you say Bry it’s probably down to Apple to develop it further and make it more robust.

It should work…

Check the routing on your track, make sure the midi is set to the app and then use different midi channels for the different tracks, and match them within each app.

Arturia iSEM and iMini have some. MIDI incongruences I wish they would fix.

Another tip, MIDI can get easily “broken” on iOS.
I recommend installing cMemory (free), and before using Cubasis closing all apps, running cMemory and them restarting.
This is especially useful when using Other apps via MIDI or external MIDI interfaces.

So no problem to connect iRig Keys to Cubasis? Or was it just a separate midiconnector? I can’t get iRig Keys to play anything in Cubasis though it shows up in the app. :frowning:

I recommend analyzing midi problems of any kind with the app MTBe
Bodo