Audio Apps and AudioUnits (AUv3) for Apple platforms (iOS, iPadOS, macOS and visionOS)
We transmitted 2 new TestFlight betas:
Both are release candidates and scheduled for release soon. These are super universal releases, available on iOS, iPadOS, macOS and the Apple Vision Pro.
There will be intro prices (9.99$) possibly with pre-orders for both items and early adopters. Final price probably will be 17,99$ and becomes active after preorder period.
We also renewed the latest public beta versions for our release candidates.
Manuals are available for JAX Dynamics Flow JAX 3Verb.
The second item in our upcoming Berlin Series of synthesizers is JAX Tempelhof.
This is a Multi Channel Drum Computer with 16 freely assignable pads and a key triggered performance sequencer (polymetric/polyrhythmic) with swing parameter. There is an independent sequencer for each key/pad.
It comes with 78 (ROM) drum sets, each with 24++ sampled drum (and also melody) sounds. The drum sounds for each pad/key can be assigned individually from the available drum kits. each pad/key is plying on its own internal sound channel (16 sound channels in sum). But the drum computer responds to MIDI channel 10, which is mainly for traditional reasons.
JAX MOABIT is the first synthesizer item in our BERLIN SERIES and it is a bass synthesizer with certain recognizable DNA. But rather than just cloning a 303 legend, we decided to extend the features significantly.
We will also transit our entire UI (user interface) frameworks to real 3D, meaning we will use Apples spatial environment views and programming APIs for the BERLIN SERIES releases. This ensures best performance and user interactivity, even prepared to be used in augmented spaces on the Apple Vision Pro natively later.
If you develop x-platform projects with AudioUnits (AUv3) we want to warn you, updating to Sonoma 14.5 !!!
You will no longer be able to debug and test your apps on the Mac directly, as Apple has broken AudioUnit registration. ( A similar problem still consists on the Apple Vision Pro simulator since appearance, not registering AudioUnits at all – making testing compatibility for this case even impossible. ) The units do not get registered on the machine and will fail to load therefore.
We currently do not know how this will affect users and distributed files via the AppStore. But one just cannot test the Mac compatibility locally anymore.
You have to debug on the real iOS devices explicitly, which complicates everything. It is also not sure, whether this breaks iOS AUv3 units on the Mac in general. We think : PROBABLY YES. And usually such problems do not get fixed by Apple.
( There are some rumours from users, that there are several annoying (extremely delayed) loading problems with some AUv3 ( designed for the iOS platform ) after update, now suddenly not loading correctly anymore. or needing ages to load… )
This problem also applies to all Mac Catalyst apps with embedded audio units, so even specifically compiled apps for the macOS.
Apple promised to run iOS apps seamlessly on the Apple Silicon Macs, which now is no longer the case ( if you even managed to get that working at all due to several inconsistencies with ‘auval’ validation ), especially if you distribute apps with embedded audio units this most likely will result in diverse problems.
Be careful with promises, that the iOS apps and embedded audio units will run on Apple Silicon Macs or that the audio units will be usable with any supporting macOS host application. If the system does not register the components ( technically app extensions ) correctly, no host ever would be able load these AUv3 units, as these are sandboxed and registration is a private system process, out of the focus of a 3rd party developer.
If such extreme problems with Apple platforms continue, we seriously have to think about stopping all development for it, as it consumes endlessly giantly (wasted) time and everything, possibly years of active developments, may be broken the day, Apple releases an update.
Note: At first we thought it is the latest Xcode compiler update (15.4) causing this issue. But this is not the case. I checked twice and it took several hours of research. It is definitively the latest macOS update (14.5), making everything worse, tracing the development efforts with AudioUnits AUv3 to the extreme now.
Fortunately we have updated merely one Mac with this shitload from Apple. So we can continue developing on another machine.