The Apollo Series of Apps
Fast Wireless MIDI and Audio for iOS and Mac
At the Secret Base, we have multiple iOS devices, and a variety of laptop and desktop computers -- and you probably have more than one device too. The Apollo apps are designed to let you use multiple devices together, in different ways.
- Apollo MIDI over Bluetooth lets you send MIDI messages, with much lower latency than you can get with WiFi. You can send MIDI between a pair of iOS devices, or between an iOS device and a Mac; there's support for iOS 6.0 and newer, and OS X 10.7 and newer.
- Apollo Remote Recorder is a unique way to capture iOS synthesizers and sequencers, and bring the recordings to other devices. A feature of Apollo Remote Recorder that you might not expect: it can stream audio over WiFi.
- Apollo Sound Injector catches the streamed audio from Remote Recorder
- For iOS, get the Apollo Sound Injector app in the iTunes store.
- For OSX, use the AU plug-in with your desktop DAW. Free? Yes, free! (This is a beta version. We will be improving the plug-in, and it will always be free). The AU works with Logic X, GarageBand, and Reaper, but is currently not compatible with Ableton and Cubasis. A slightly more complex set-up will get Sound Injector working with most DAWs; see the details below.
- For Windows, use the 32-bit VST DLL or the 64-bit VST DLL with your DAW. Free? Yes, free! (These are alpha versions. We will be improving the plug-in, and it will always be free). The VST works with Reaper and Ableton Live; we have not heard of difficulty with other DAWs. There is a known bug that can cause a crash, particularly when removing the plug-in. Please save your work, and use the plug-in with caution; of the two plug-ins, the PC VST is more experimental. As with the Mac AU, we are working to improve support and stability, and will release updates as things progress.
Setting things up for the Mac
Using the Sound Injector AU on a Mac can be a little bit tricky; the video below will walk you through setting things up. If you add Soundflower and Hosting AU to your system, you can get a versatile set-up that will integrate easily with many DAWs. The things you'll need:
- AUApolloSI.component -- The AU plug-in. Place this in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components (the directory you install this in is important!)
- Soundflower from Cycling74. This is an OS X kernel extension that lets Mac applications send each other audio (sort of like Audiobus).
- Hosting AU from JU-X. This is a simple Audio Unit hosting app, which works well with the Apollo Sound Injector plug-in. You can use this to route audio from the plug-in to the Mac built-in audio, or to Soundflower. Most OS X DAWs can then accept the audio from Soundflower; you can treat your iOS device as a regular audio interface.