Being a (hopefully) forward-looking musician, using the iPad and iPod Touch in Quarkspace’s and my own music is a no-brainer. The revolutionary touchscreen interface on the iPad allows for a host of innovative techniques for creating and manipulating music in real time.

Moog’s Animoog app and Korg’s iMS-20 app are now regular parts of our music vocabulary at Eternity’s Jest Records, and production apps like Beatmaker 2 offer the ability to create finished musical works all on a tablet computer.

Getting iPad Music Apps to Talk Audio

One problem with doing music on an iOS device is the lack of an effective method to virtually route audio between apps in real time. Apple thankfully added MIDI capabilities in their iOS 4.2 update, that doesn’t help at all with audio routing. Having to render a waveform in Animoog and paste it into Beatmaker can be an inspiration-killing drag.

Enter Audiobus.

Audiobus allows for the live, real time communication of audio between iOS apps. So now I can run Animoog directly into Beatmaker 2 in real time. How cool is that?

The folks at Audiobus provide their magic in an easy to use API for iOS music app developers add support to their software. Many of most popular iPad music apps are supposedly on board, including Moog and Beatmaker developers, Intua. There’s also little worry of Apple spoiling the soup, as they have already approved the Audiobus concept.

Expect Audiobus to retail for less than $10

The folks at Audiobus in their FAQ mention the expected price for their app will be under $10. Arguably the best money a musician ever spent on an iPad app — except for those lucky ones who got Animoog for 0.99 when it was released!

While waiting for its release, like the Audiobus Facebook page, and hope it appears at the App Store very soon — along with versions of Animoog, Beatmaker 2, etc. updated with Audiobus support!