SonoBus - Network Audio

TheOriginalPaulB

@sonosaurus said:
Hey guys, I’ve been sitting on something new that plays in this space (but is all peer to peer, so the max group size is smaller), and actually has an iOS version in public testflight as well as Mac and Windows versions (and buildable on Linux).

It’s called SonoBus, check it out at https://sonobus.net . Still early days but worth a look! This one is open source and free.

Works best with wired Ethernet connection to your router, but Wi-Fi still works but will end up with higher latency. You can use usb Ethernet adapters on your iOS devices, along with your usb audio interfaces too (camera connection kit with usb hub, or usb-c).

Probably we should start a new thread about it....

Done.

@sonosaurus I’m going to ask... Any plans for Audiobus, AUM or AUv3 compatability?

sonosaurus

It has IAA effect support which means you can use it in AUM. Doesn’t look like Audiobus will load IAA-only effects, I’ll need to add AB support.

It will not be an AUv3 because from what I’ve tried they cannot access the network like this needs to.

espiegel123

@sonosaurus said:
It has IAA effect support which means you can use it in AUM. Doesn’t look like Audiobus will load IAA-only effects, I’ll need to add AB support.

It will not be an AUv3 because from what I’ve tried they cannot access the network like this needs to.

A bonus for adding AB support is that @Michael I tends to find a non-IAA backbone for AB should Apple device to actually the deprecated remove IAA calls.

supadom

@espiegel123 said:

@sonosaurus said:
It has IAA effect support which means you can use it in AUM. Doesn’t look like Audiobus will load IAA-only effects, I’ll need to add AB support.

It will not be an AUv3 because from what I’ve tried they cannot access the network like this needs to.

A bonus for adding AB support is that @Michael I tends to find a non-IAA backbone for AB should Apple device to actually the deprecated remove IAA calls.

The minus is that AB already has its own latency which will be added on top.

Poppadocrock

Cool just downloaded beta. Gonna give it a go soon with my 2 i devices

TheOriginalPaulB

@sonosaurus said:
It has IAA effect support which means you can use it in AUM. Doesn’t look like Audiobus will load IAA-only effects, I’ll need to add AB support.

It will not be an AUv3 because from what I’ve tried they cannot access the network like this needs to.

Interesting. So you would load an instance of SonoBus into an AUM channel’s FX slot to stream your audio to the network? What about other players’ audio coming off the network? Would that be arriving in the FX track? I assumed SonoBus would be loaded into an input slot for that.

supadom

Anybody tried it yet? I’ve had terrible experiences with jamulus and co due to latency but not giving up. What I do is quite rhythmic so I’m not having high hopes but this seems reasonably straight forward.

Krupa

I did get it playing an aum channel into ableton on my Windows laptop this morning but it kept dropping out, occasional glitches etc but seems to somewhat work...

nuno_agogo

i had an session today. in standalone is't quite stable but i had multiple crashes connected to AUM.

but all in all i am happy with it

TheOriginalPaulB

@sonosaurus
So in standalone mode, Sonobus can only take audio input from the hardware audio in?
Is there any reason it couldn’t be made to host AUv3 plugins? That would cater for those who only use virtual instruments.

sonosaurus

@TheOriginalPaulB said:
@sonosaurus
So in standalone mode, Sonobus can only take audio input from the hardware audio in?
Is there any reason it couldn’t be made to host AUv3 plugins? That would cater for those who only use virtual instruments.

That's a possible solution to the issue, but making a good host is a lot of work!

TheOriginalPaulB

@sonosaurus said:

@TheOriginalPaulB said:
@sonosaurus
So in standalone mode, Sonobus can only take audio input from the hardware audio in?
Is there any reason it couldn’t be made to host AUv3 plugins? That would cater for those who only use virtual instruments.

That's a possible solution to the issue, but making a good host is a lot of work!

I’ll let you get on with it then.

rs2000

@sonosaurus said:
It has IAA effect support which means you can use it in AUM. Doesn’t look like Audiobus will load IAA-only effects, I’ll need to add AB support.

It will not be an AUv3 because from what I’ve tried they cannot access the network like this needs to.

What kind of network access do you need? Raw UDP packets?

sonosaurus

@rs2000 said:

@sonosaurus said:
It has IAA effect support which means you can use it in AUM. Doesn’t look like Audiobus will load IAA-only effects, I’ll need to add AB support.

It will not be an AUv3 because from what I’ve tried they cannot access the network like this needs to.

What kind of network access do you need? Raw UDP packets?

It uses basic UDP and TCP stuff... but when I built it as an AUv3, none of the network stuff worked. I wasn't surprised that they would be sandboxed like that... maybe there is a secret handshake I need to find, but I haven't seen any reference about the issue one way or the other online. I'd be happy if someone proved me wrong!

sonosaurus

I stand corrected, I just built it and now networking works fine within the AUv3 plugin version! A few other wrinkles appeared, but hopefully I'll have a fully working AUv3 version for iOS shortly.

All that said, this thing really benefits from being on a wired network if you want any semblance of low latency, so if you want to pursue it seriously, invest in a USB ethernet adapter...

@sonosaurus said:

@rs2000 said:

@sonosaurus said:
It has IAA effect support which means you can use it in AUM. Doesn’t look like Audiobus will load IAA-only effects, I’ll need to add AB support.

It will not be an AUv3 because from what I’ve tried they cannot access the network like this needs to.

What kind of network access do you need? Raw UDP packets?

It uses basic UDP and TCP stuff... but when I built it as an AUv3, none of the network stuff worked. I wasn't surprised that they would be sandboxed like that... maybe there is a secret handshake I need to find, but I haven't seen any reference about the issue one way or the other online. I'd be happy if someone proved me wrong!

rs2000

@sonosaurus said:
I stand corrected, I just built it and now networking works fine within the AUv3 plugin version! A few other wrinkles appeared, but hopefully I'll have a fully working AUv3 version for iOS shortly.

All that said, this thing really benefits from being on a wired network if you want any semblance of low latency, so if you want to pursue it seriously, invest in a USB ethernet adapter...

@sonosaurus said:

@rs2000 said:

@sonosaurus said:
It has IAA effect support which means you can use it in AUM. Doesn’t look like Audiobus will load IAA-only effects, I’ll need to add AB support.

It will not be an AUv3 because from what I’ve tried they cannot access the network like this needs to.

What kind of network access do you need? Raw UDP packets?

It uses basic UDP and TCP stuff... but when I built it as an AUv3, none of the network stuff worked. I wasn't surprised that they would be sandboxed like that... maybe there is a secret handshake I need to find, but I haven't seen any reference about the issue one way or the other online. I'd be happy if someone proved me wrong!

Wow! I've already asked for help somewhere else but that's great news!!
I'd love to test it with different WiFi routers, with and without encryption and do some latency measurements to hopefully find a few sweet spots.
Can the communication be configured to use only UDP?

sonosaurus

All audio is peer to peer via UDP of course. The TCP is just for talking to the connection server for group/user matchmaking, has no bearing on the audio itself.

The network receive safety/jitter buffer ends up needing to be higher when on Wi-Fi to cover the increased jitter that Wi-Fi often introduces, to avoid underruns (and thus glitches/dropouts). So if either end is on Wi-Fi it’s going to affect the end result.

cian

@sonosaurus - how many channels does it support?

nuno_agogo

anyone knows a trick how to route a stereo signal to sonobus with AUM?

sonosaurus

@nuno_agogo said:
anyone knows a trick how to route a stereo signal to sonobus with AUM?

There’s a weird thing with iOS audio if you are using the builtin hardware input then the IAA app’s input is also stuck at mono... but if you have an audio interface attached that has multiple inputs available then SonoBus will be able to handle stereo in.

When I get the AUv3 version working this should not be an issue anymore.

rs2000

@sonosaurus
Thank you very much for your excellent work! 🙏🏼👍🏼

supadom

I’ve tried it with my mate down the road from me. First we tried the mac version and the the iPad which gave the same results because both times we were both on wireless connection as he has a newer MacBook without the Ethernet port. We got around 50ms latency which we both found impossible do live with but hoping this will get better when we try it wired with his older computer.

The positive thing is that the set up was very quick which cannot be said about all other solutions like Jamulus etc.

What’s the difference in latency between wired and wireless connections in ms? @sonosaurus

nuno_agogo

@sonosaurus said:

@nuno_agogo said:
anyone knows a trick how to route a stereo signal to sonobus with AUM?

There’s a weird thing with iOS audio if you are using the builtin hardware input then the IAA app’s input is also stuck at mono... but if you have an audio interface attached that has multiple inputs available then SonoBus will be able to handle stereo in.

When I get the AUv3 version working this should not be an issue anymore.

ahh, good to know. looking forward for the au3. thanks for your efforts, sonibus is great!

sonosaurus

The next version of SonoBus for desktop is out, and so is the equivalent iOS TestFlight version, which now includes AUv3 support, yay! And it is even a multi-bus output so you can route the individual connected users different places.

Version 1.1.0 (actually shows up as 1.0.3 (35) in the TestFlight version, because I didn't want to wait an extra few days for "approval")

• Added multi-track options for the recording feature, can now record separate files for the mix, yourself, mix-minus-yourself, and for all individual connected users. (See Recording tab in settings popup).
• Added support in the plugin versions for multi-bus output, to allow individual connected users to be routed independently
• Improved Auto jitter buffer, to try to prevent it from creeping up as often
• Added new jitter buffer Initial Auto mode, which is good for those of you optimizing for low latency. It will automatically try to the use the smallest jitter buffer at first, and increment it until the audio stream is stable, after which it will stop incrementing it (as if you were using Manual).
• Bugfix for connection window not closing sometimes

Desktop-only items:

• Added support for Avid ProTools AAX plugin format
• Now correctly restores device audio buffer size on Windows
• Added option to override (or not) the device sample rate when starting up
• Added option to automatically check for an update

Get all the versions here, including link for public beta TestFlight iOS version. New User Guide is up too.

https://sonobus.net

Poppadocrock

Sweet

Charlesalbert

Woow

espiegel123

@sonosaurus said:
The next version of SonoBus for desktop is out, and so is the equivalent iOS TestFlight version, which now includes AUv3 support, yay! And it is even a multi-bus output so you can route the individual connected users different places.

Version 1.1.0 (actually shows up as 1.0.3 (35) in the TestFlight version, because I didn't want to wait an extra few days for "approval")

• Added multi-track options for the recording feature, can now record separate files for the mix, yourself, mix-minus-yourself, and for all individual connected users. (See Recording tab in settings popup).
• Added support in the plugin versions for multi-bus output, to allow individual connected users to be routed independently
• Improved Auto jitter buffer, to try to prevent it from creeping up as often
• Added new jitter buffer Initial Auto mode, which is good for those of you optimizing for low latency. It will automatically try to the use the smallest jitter buffer at first, and increment it until the audio stream is stable, after which it will stop incrementing it (as if you were using Manual).
• Bugfix for connection window not closing sometimes

Desktop-only items:

• Added support for Avid ProTools AAX plugin format
• Now correctly restores device audio buffer size on Windows
• Added option to override (or not) the device sample rate when starting up
• Added option to automatically check for an update

Get all the versions here, including link for public beta TestFlight iOS version. New User Guide is up too.

https://sonobus.net

Can this be used to get audio output from a Mac back into the iPad? For example could I send MIDI to my Mac where it would trigger a sampler and use the Sonobus AUv3 to receive it and process with other AU on my iPad where I would record the result in AUM?

Alfred

@sonosaurus Do you know ninjam? It very cleverly makes online jamming possible by delaying the returning audio an adjustable amount of beats, beats per interval.
It is also open source code. Have been dreaming of some developer making ninjam for iPad.
Maybe you can incorporate the ninjam protocol too, that would give us access to all the ninjam servers available...

TheOriginalPaulB

This is about MIDI over internet, not audio, but is nevertheless an interesting video analysis of the effects of latency on a live jam between two players using identical kit.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=emb_title&time_continue=956&v=PJJ5e6fNPJs

sonosaurus

Get all the versions here, including link for public beta TestFlight iOS version. New User Guide is up too.

https://sonobus.net

Can this be used to get audio output from a Mac back into the iPad? For example could I send MIDI to my Mac where it would trigger a sampler and use the Sonobus AUv3 to receive it and process with other AU on my iPad where I would record the result in AUM?

Yes, you could do this. There will be some extra latency though which might be a problem if you are playing something live. If it is sequenced and you can later shift the recording manually it might be fine.

espiegel123

@sonosaurus said:

Get all the versions here, including link for public beta TestFlight iOS version. New User Guide is up too.

https://sonobus.net

Can this be used to get audio output from a Mac back into the iPad? For example could I send MIDI to my Mac where it would trigger a sampler and use the Sonobus AUv3 to receive it and process with other AU on my iPad where I would record the result in AUM?

Yes, you could do this. There will be some extra latency though which might be a problem if you are playing something live. If it is sequenced and you can later shift the recording manually it might be fine.

This works brilliantly!

Sonobus is amazing.