Grain Science 1.4 has been released, and the headline feature is Audiobus support!
Some of you just read that, and are already heading to the App Store to update (and some of you will have already updated before reading this!), but some of you may be wondering: what’s this Audiobus business?
Audiobus is a new technology (and a new app) for iOS that allows you to link audio apps together. Just like you might take a real audio cable and connect (for example) a synth to a reverb unit, and the reverb unit to a recording device, you can now launch Audiobus, and connect Grain Science to other apps on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch.
Grain Science has always had the ability to record its output, and send it to other apps using AudioCopy/AudioPaste, but that’s an “offline” process: you start recording in Grain Science, play some notes, and once you’re finished, stop recording, then you send the audio across.
Audiobus is live: the apps are running simultaneously, and the audio is sent across in realtime. So if you want to play Grain Science through a separate FX app and into a live looper, well, now you can – just connect them up in Audiobus, and start playing!
Currently, you can only use Grain Science with Audiobus as a source of audio. This was the simplest to implement, and by focusing on this, it meant the update could get released before the App Store review team went on their holidays – and so you get to play with it over your holidays :)