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Inter App Audio Apps

WTF Is Inter-App Audio Apps?

Nestled away in Apple’s newly updated Garageband iOS app v2.0, Inter-App Audio Apps function  aims to bridge the gap between all your audio creation apps.

On paper, it’s a fantastic idea – emulate the functionality of 3rd party programs like Audiobus and Jack, but make it Garageband native, improving stability and essentially “cutting out the middle man”.

In practice? Well, in practice things aren’t quite as simple as that…  

 

How Does It Work?

If there’s one thing Apple is really good at, it’s making their features and apps intuitive and easy to use. IAAA is no exception – uh… actually this isn’t strictly true this time around. You see, in order for the IAAA option to appear in your instrument selection screen, you first must have an Inter App Audio compatible app installed on your iDevice (There’s an up to date list of compatible apps near the bottom of this post if you need to grab one).

Not the most intuitive design choice in the world…

Anyway – let’s take a look at how it works…

 

 First off, open the instrument selection screen and select Inter-App Audio Apps.

Inter App Audio Apps #1

 

You’ll be able to choose whether to link an instrument App or effect App to your Garageband project. For the purposes of this guide, i’ll continue having chosen Amplitube Fender™ as the effect app.

Inter App Audio I:E

 

Next, you’ll find yourself at the Audio Recorder screen, with one very important difference: the input icon (it looks like a wee jack plug) has the icon of the App you currently have linked to the track.

*Your message here may be different to the one shown – I attached my iRig HD, so got this one. If you set up without anything attached to your iDevice, you’ll get something along the lines of: “Point your iPhone/iPad towards the sound you want to record then tap the Record button above to begin.”

Inter App Audio #3

 

Tapping the jack icon will open the input settings screen, where you can switch between linked Apps, select which channels to use (Stereo, Left or Right) and switch the monitor function on and off (you’ll want this on if you want to hear what you’re playing…)

Inter App Audio #4

 

Tapping the icon of the App linked to your track will switch the display to that App – with the addition of a small control panel.

1. Switches back to Garageband  2. Skips back to the start of the project  3. Plays the project  4. Records audio from the linked App into your Garageband project.

Inter App Audio #5

 

Success! your recorded audio from your linked App will show up in your Garageband project.

Inter App Audio #6

 

What’s Not To Like?

Now you know how to use Inter-App Audio Apps in Garageband, the world is your oyster, right? You’re free to link all of your audio Apps to your Garageband iOS projects…. right?

Hold your horses, cowboy – it isn’t that simple, i’m afraid.

You see, at the time of writing, there’s not a whole lot of Apps that are actually compatible with Garageband’s newest feature…

Here’s a list of the apps that currently work with Inter-App Audio in Garageband:

 

 

Compare that to the frankly staggering number of Apps you can link up with Audiobus (or even Jack) and it’s obvious that Apple has a ways to go before Inter-App Audio Apps become’s the iOS musician’s go-to linking solution..

Don’t get me wrong – I can’t wait to see how the feature works out in the long run, but for now, i’ll be sticking with Audiobus for the majority of my App linking needs…

What do you think? Had a chance to try Garageband’s Inter-App Audio Apps function yet? Let me know what you thought of it in the comments below!

Show Comments (36)
  1. I agree Patrick. Inter app audio doesn’t come close to beating audiobus. I’ve used it for the last year with garageband and I don’t think i”l be switching any time soon.

    Thanks for the tut!

    1. Theres a headphone jack emblem top left (where u go to set noise gate) when your prepared to record

  2. Have you updated to the latest version of Garageband iOS Jules? Head to the App store and check the updates tab to see if you’ve downloaded Garageband version 2.0.

    1. You need to have an app that is compatible with the Inter App Audio function installed in order for the choice to show up in the instrument menu…

      Go grab a copy of Amplitube Free (or any other of the compatible apps listed) and check it out!

  3. I recorded a short piece using Alchemy in GarageBand and, not ever having used Audiobus, I thought it was a pretty cool feature although I did experience a little stuttering with the program while recording. Fortunately I didn’t hear it in the finished product. I’ll definitely be recording more with it and am excited to see how they develop it further and add more inter audio apps.

  4. OF COURSE you have to have IAAA apps installed on your device in order for GB’s IAAA to even bother with them!! Am I missing a logic train here? How could functionality for something called ‘Inter-App Audio’ even be relevent IF YOU DON’T HAVE OTHER APPS, hello?

  5. I agree, Audiobus has Apple beat hands down. Apple should buy them, hire their staff and get down to the difficult work of making this really work much more seamlessly.

  6. We’ll there is one thing Audiobus fails at miserably and that’s the bit depth / frequency limit of 44.1/ 16 bit. This is simply to low for hi end quality recording where as IAA supports upto 32 bit 96 KHz recording. Now that’s a game changer!

    Audiobus is in trouble unless they address this quickly and raise there game. This may not matter to people ” playing ” with music on there iPad but if your into serious recording this is just huge.

    1. Hi!

      I want to use the InterAppAudioHost example as host and then use a drumkit app as node.
      Unfortunately I haven’t found any Drum Kit App that supports IAA and can be used as a node. I only find big drum kit apps, like GarageBand that works as a host.

      Do you know any good Drum Kit app that support InterAppAudio and work as a node?

  7. Have recorded my acoustic guitar with Amplitude Fender app to GarageBand thru IAAA with success but when using Audio Mastering app I get a very bad delay or latency are there any settings or work arounds I’m missing?

  8. Can anyone recommend an app that uses IAA that I can use for Garageband recorded mix downs and will link to Luminair to trigger DMX lighting?

  9. Just to inform anyone who reads this article;
    Peavey’s ampkit link is compatible with most recent GarageBand.
    Just hook your guitar up to the ampkit box, run it into your Ipad and open up the ampkit app (free)
    I usually set the tones on the ampkit app as clean as possible (so that I can use the GarageBand amp simulators to full effect.)
    The ampkit app doesn’t come with a whole load of amps/pedals. You have to buy them all separately, which is why I constantly use the pedals/amp combos on GarageBand.
    I have absolutely no complaints with GarageBand’s inter app function, it’s given me some fantastic tones, great virtual pedals and super efficient recording.
    I can’t put my iPad down.

  10. Thanks for this, I was wondering if I should purchase the add on the audio us that allows for more inputs. This answered my question.

  11. More and more apps now support IAA and they work as they are expected to. But there’s still one big gap that needs to be filled: giving us the option to send MIDI from the master app to nodes just like we would on a Mac or PC with VSTs or AU or through ReWire. Until this happens, in my opinion, iOS music making will be lacking a very important feature.

  12. Just so folks know, Multitrack DAW from Harmonicadog now supports IAA, as well. Haven’t had a chance to use it, so I can’t speak to how easy it is, but it’s there.

  13. Thanks for your great site.

    I have a guestion.

    I would like to edit a vocal track that I recorded in iPad Garageband with an effect app (like Helicon Voice Rack). I am trying to use the inter-app effects, and I can load the App, but when I select an effect. It doesn’t change the track.

    I have also tried with audiobus, with no luck either.

    I do not own a Mac Computer, so I should manage to do it with the iPad.

    Is it any way to edit existing tracks in GarageBand using other effect apps through inter-app or audiobus? I would be very happy if you post a commen about it.

    Thanks a lot

  14. Hey there
    Just last night I recorded a simple guitar track , using the amplitude Orange amps suite in g.b.
    I linked it together with the inner audio app that your talking about. I’m positive I saved it as song 3.
    This morning I went to listen to it again and I have no guitar sound , only the metronome clicking away. I checked the instrument display were it shows the musical data that you can edit. And I see my guitar track with amplitude being shown. But I get no audio. I’ve messed with the settings and still get nothing.
    Can you help me??

    1. Man I have the same issue, but when i export the file, the track recorded with IAAA dissapears!
      Anyone knows how to solve this?

  15. IAA works pretty much flawlessly in both Audioshare and AUM. I could not work without it in iOS, and the list of available instruments, FX and output sources is huge, more than I will use in the next few years.

  16. Hi, I’m new to this world of aaps and IAAA, but this is now 2018, 5years since the article was written, lots of aaps to choose from, infact jamup pro is now available!!
    The problem I come across with my iPad Pro, more often than I can care for, is the message “the aap is not available at this time” so I have to restart the iPad, and sometime it works and sometime the problem persists.
    Does anyone know why this happens and if so, how to fix it?
    Thank you

  17. Have you tried to record to record into cell from inter app when you’re in Grid view? I couldn’t do that.

    Ruslan

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