Audio Units and IAA

Audio Units and IAA (Inter App Audio) are effect or virtual instrument plug-ins from other manufacturers. Thousands of these can be found in the App Store, free and paid. Once installed on your device, the instrument plug-ins will be listed underneath the installed Soundfonts, in alphabetic order (first all AU's, then all IAA's). Please note that IAA's are deprecated by Apple: if there is an AU variant of the same instrument, it is best to use the AU because it is more stable and you do not have to swap between different apps. IAA's run as a separate app in the background, whereas AU's behave as a real 'plug-in'.

Due to the fact that these plug-ins are made by other companies, we cannot show images of how they are used and each plug-in interface itself will also be different. But once you have used a Soundfont, you will find that these work in a similar way. Here, we explain only the differences:

Audio Units

Audio Units are the most close to the behavior of Soundfonts. After selecting an Audio Unit, the instrument selection dialog will close and you'll have the same options as Soundfonts: you can use the piano roll editor, external MIDI keyboards or the virtual keyboard. The latter is slightly different: when tapping on the keyboard icon in the channel strip, the virtual keyboard will be displayed, and on tablets, the user interface of the Audio Unit will be displayed as well. To show the user interface of the Audio Unit full screen, tap on the AU button. Any available presets that the Audio Unit offers, can be selected by pressing the Preset button.

IAA

IAA's behave somewhat different, because their user interface cannot be displayed inside the app since they run as a separate app in the background. After selecting the IAA in the instrument selection dialog, the IAA app will open. To get back to Audio Evolution Mobile Studio, the IAA app either provides a button with our logo, or you'll have to double-tap on the iPhone's/iPad's round button and select Audio Evolution Mobile Studio. The virtual keyboard and piano roll editor can still be used from within Audio Evolution Mobile Studio though. To return to the IAA app, you can either select the IAA app by double-tapping on the iPhone's/iPad's round button again and selecting the IAA app, or opening the virtual keyboard and pressing the  AU button.