Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
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Dubstation 2 updated with GUI opened still allow for crackle free Ravenscroft 275 playing. Cpu goes from 90% DS2 closed to 40% DS2 opened. This is as AU in AUM with 128 buffers played by Nanokey Studio in chord mode (easy scale).
I removed AudioBus from the equation and the behavior is the same:
You can easily reach nearly 100% CPU and if that happens, Ravenscroft stops working and needs a restart of AUM.
So, the question is, why it is reaching 100% and if that can get fixed.
Also, why it stops working after reaching 100% CPU.
Very interesting, thanks.
But the DS2 gui needs to be visible?
So that’s not a workaround for us Sequencer users
I then also removed Xequence and only used AUM, but could not get Ravenscroft to stuck.
Most probably because the onscreen keyboard is much smaller and i could not play as many notes at the same time.
Increasing the buffer size to 512 or 1024 betters the situation.
Making it as small as 128 does not increase the CPU usage, but it leads to massive crackles, even with the CPU not near 100%!!!
A: Nothing started
B: Just AUM
C: Addding Ravenscroft AU
D : Opening and connecting the onscreen keyboard
The IAA version loaded into AUM behaves better.
It also easily reaches 100% CPU, but it is not as prone to crackles even than!
Also, it does not as easily crash in this situation and does not stop producing sound.
So, despite the hype around AU, in this case, IAA is much better than AU!
I am using RC275 strictly as IAA with no problems. Not sure why AU is important with this app. Multiple instances not as important as on a synth. Having the onscreen display also not so important to me as I choose one setting and go. Is it the principle of the thing?
I started to use AU, as many people seem to see this as better than IAA.
But my personal experience is different, IAA mostly being more stable than AU - beside the ghost processes.
But anyway, i get crackles in the IAA too!
How do you play the IAA, with a physical keyboard?
I will try if i get the crackles from Xequence also when not using the keyboard but just a MIDI track.
@tja , nothing special. RC picks up my controller as a source, I keep the volume in the upper right as low as possible. It is not perfect... An errant crackle here and there, at least 98% good and no problems with mixing down, of course,
I tried AudioBus with Xequence and AUM, then Ravenscroft as IAA in AUM and did create some track with lots of notes in Xequence.
Result: The Ravenscroft IAA hang with some disturbing constant noise and that’s it.
Resume:
The Ravenscroft is not usable at all, in similar setups, on an iPad 9.7 with iOS 11.4.1
As far as i can remember, i never had this on iOS 10
I repeated the tests with BeatHawk AU and the Acoustic Grand and it is much more stable and uses much less CPU!
I could not get it to crash or stop producing sound.
@tja, I am on 10.3 into Cubasis. Maybe the OS is the problem.
I hope 12 will clear it up as I am looking to buy a used pro 2 this week. I guess if RC gives me the same problems Beathawk will come into play.
Pianos are from the 1600's. They have to break at some point.
Maybe try one of the new toy pianos. The 88 Key "Hasbro in Pink" is a stunner for $29.99. Sampled at an actual Day Care with
children in the mix. Update your thinking of what a Piano is.
[Commenter ducks as the forum throws shoes at him].
I think selecting the right tool for the situation is key. RC275 and
Colossus are amazing solo pianos but using them in a complex CPU environment is playing with fire.
For complex DAW mixes these pianos are overkill with too many layers requiring too much attention. When I hear a @LineLineman Synthony the piano is surrounded by synths, strings and the occassional mouth trumpet. Dropping all the soft layers and release layers and all the extra stuff from RC275 would like solve the problem.
How can this be done? Maybe use a lower quality piano that cuts through the mix but holds up when the CPU is juggling 21 balls
(maybe spinning plates is a better analogy). We tend to audition pianos in isolation and find some flaw. I'll bet those flaws would be hidden when the brass section joins in.
Start with IAA instances that just plumb audio and are not made to run multiple instances in 340MB RAM spaces with makes them need disk streaming and a lot of attention from the DAW.
Good candidates for lower but not unacceptable pianos?
I'm sure there are more. Use the right tool for the situation and you'll get more work done. Cheaper tools produce a lower level of quality but only marginally so.
Anything that reduces CPU at recording time can help:
No FX in the AU/IAA App
The largest latency you can live with
Reduced polyphony for Linear Jazz without sustain pedal
But those are production tricks. You just want to create right?
Of course, buying the iPad Pro might help give more CPU support for the perfect piano that lights your fire. Worth a shot and let us know if that's the solution.
For those with limited funds... settle for the piano that seems to lets you make tracks with the least pain.
I bought the BeatHawk Acoustic Grand on sale and as an AU instrument it's just awful. Inside BeatHawk it's really nice.
BeatHawk was designed for a different use case than say Korg Module.
We rated piano products in isolation but in a complex mix I'll bet we'd go for the one that cut through the mix which is usually just the piano with the most high end frequencies.
We suffer in a world of constraints but the technology keeps advancing to allow us more and more control over our music.
Or less control with better results if you like to sprinkle in randomness and automated composing tools.
Life continues to be good. Create!
@McDtracy What i am trying to say is, that Ravenscrofts has some bug that just eats too much CPU when playing multiple notes.
This is without anything else but just a minimal setup for sending MIDI to Ravenscroft and a way to record it’s audio. There is nothing that i could remove to save CPU, beside reducing the number of notes, which is hardly acceptable.
And there are signs, that this got worse with iOS 11, which gives hope that it can be fixed.
BeatHawk, from the same developer behaves much better in the same setup!
That's not a bug... that's a feature. Good luck. More notes means more processing. There are the usual tactics:
maximize the buffers allocated
stop any none essential CPU activity
In my experience RC275 holds up well against the other high quality Pianos. Colossus is so awful as a AU that I have to record it on my Mac to get anything done.
The best hope I have for a Piano AU that's useful is a custom made version of Salamander in the Virsyn AudioLayer product.
The current headache there is the fact that I choose iCloud to store my files and that Piano takes up to 45 minutes to load.
The workaround is to store samples locally but my 128GB iPad is full so I'm wrestling with what Apps to delete to test it. My Colossus Piano with all the models I bought probably consumes 20GB so I could delete it for testing but downloading Colossus from iTunes takes 4-8 hours per IAP. My first product to go was Neo Soul Keys Studio but I really need to step up... maybe SampleTank, Auria Pro. Can you feel the pain a horder feels loosing access to the "good stuff"? Time for a new iPad with 256 or better yet 512GB.
Anyway, crackles are not proof of bugs. They might find some optimizations that provide more headroom for extra notes but that's just making a product more robust. Bugs are programming errors that cause unintended crashes or incorrect behaviors.
IOS Crackling is a given with the right set up. Laptops also can be driven to crackling with enough effort.
@bedhedproducer just put up a Cubasis Project with 26 tracks.
Of course, he plays real instruments and not AU simulations that work right up to the limit of an iPad that can run IOS 11.
I feel your pain... believe me. I want everything to just work. But I can break almost anything by pushing too many notes or too much FX processing or multiple instances.
For sure it’s a bug: absolutely stable audio if used with Dubstation 2 (GUI opened) in various hosts, or in GarageBand (without even need Dubstation 2). There are graphics priority thread issues in iOS11, some apps have audio crackles issues some other don’t. RS275 is very glitchy in that regard and almost unusable in some situations. But I must say it runs with very good polyphony amount in GarageBand or with AUM/ApeM/DS2, absolutely crackle free. So it’s not a CPU issue, more of a 50/50 iOS/RS275 issue IMO, and it sounds so good, it’s my best iOS buggy piano!!
Yes, @McDtracy exactly what @Janosax says.
The high CPU usage is the bug!
It is unexpected high and without being needed.
Also, what happens to the AU when it hits 100% is buggy.
It behaves irregular, esp. on iOS 11 and there are some ways to workaround it, just see GarageBand or adding Dub Station 2.
Something is done wrong in Ravenscroft - maybe something similar as what was wrong with Audulus but could then be fixed! There it was a problem with OpenGL. What exactly was done wrong in Ravenscroft can only be determined by UVI.
Let’s hope they are as good in finding and fixing things as the author of Audulus.
@tja and @janosax, if you recall we hugged them a lot about the pedal noise. Eventually a rep appeared and it was corrected. I am not really having the problem using 10.3 (if 11 is part of the cause) but one of you could get in touch with the guy, if it is important to you, and put in your difficulties. It was the last Ravenscroft thread when it was on sale in June, I think.
Regarding the R275 issues (sorry for such a long first time post but ill get my issues out in one shot):
I have been discussing this bug with UVI support for several weeks now, they have referred the matter to developers. The support has been respectful and I have tried my best to describe my observations objectively. This is difficult because the fault is so elusive. Remember these guys need to be able to reproduce the fault to begin trouble shooting.
Note I have also referenced this discussion thread in my reports.
What I have observed is the glitch occurs most frequently (but not always) on pedal release, I observe a peak in CPU usage (observable using the CPU load indicator in Cubasis when running as an AU in Cubasis). I was able to capture the Audio during a glitch to send to UVI. UVI requested a video but I have not been successful in doing that.
Occasionally a glitch will also involve a loss of midi key presses as well.
I notice the glitches when I am playing the keyboard as a piano, as a pianist might. I have found it impossible to reproduce the glitch by just randomly pressing keys and pressing the pedal.
If using the Ravenscroft Audio Unit plugin with Cubasis I Record a midi passage from the keyboard and replay that passage, the glitches I observe do not occur in the same part of the passage.
Since I am now using the Ravenscroft as an AU plugin with Cubasis I have also observed what an earlier poster mentioned the AU quit while Cubasis continues to function - but restarting Cubasis was the only way to recover. Again this is an elusive bug that I have not yet been able to video for evidence.
Not so objective an observation but some days I have no problems at all, yet other days the glitches and/or AU stoppages are intolerable.
I like the Ravenscroft piano sound so I am willing to try to help them get a fix sorted - I see only three reviews on the Apstore - I’d like to give them 5 but i simply can not give them any score without this bug being fixed.
If you can carefully describe or best of all video an event for UVI support, or at least confirm observations this would be the most help.
Doug
Note I use an iPad Pro and ensure all other apps are shut down before running either Ravenscroft ap or Cubasis with the Ravenscroft Audio Unit. Either option behaves the same with respect to the glitches but the Audio Unit sometimes just ups and quits. Note I have had almost zero success with Ravenscroft in Cubasis with an inter-ap audio connection.
Damn. I knew I should have spent more and got the iPad Pro 10.5" for the storage and for the IOS 12 update:
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/23242/water-will-flow-my-thoughts-on-au#latest
I will need to upgrade eventually 'cause I love the Crudebytes products but not the crashing in DAW's with IOS 11 and iPad 2018 due to 360 RAM limits that will be relaxed but only on the Pro's. Pro iPad will be for those aspiring to the finest tools... tools that work well.
Many thanks, @Doug_
I also mentioned this topic to UVI and they seem to monitor it.
I was asked to provide a video, which i will try to produce today.
Also, they asked that happend when the iPad is currently charged. That´s not normally the case, i would say.
I will write to them today, after making some tries to reproduce.
So far, i did this in AUM and with Xequence, both in AudioBus.
But i can also retry with Cubasis instead.
Also, with those tests, i am going into Flight modus and have background activation disabled anyway.
The best way to show the problems for me, is to just send lots of notes to RC.
Originally, i did this with the Xequence keyboard, with Legato enabled and 2 or 3 Octaves visible.
To remove the CPU usage of Xequence from the equation, i instead now recorded the MIDI and send it to RC.
Also, i repeated this for the Standalone, and both IAA and AU versions in both AUM and Cubasis.
It would be interesting to know, which buffer settings are required for playing live without feeling the latency.
Anyone?
Going to make the tests now
To reduce any other disturbances, i hit "Reset" in the Global settings of RC, which set Tuning to 440 Hz and Polyphony to 20 - that was different before!
Sample rate 44.1 kHz
Buffer size 256
I also disabled MIDI input from Network Sessions
I set Xequence to 1/32 notes in Grid and Quantization.
To remove most other things from the equation, i recorded some MIDI with Xequence, just 4 fingers fast on the keyboard, then adding a 5th and a 6th.
I originally wanted to test with the Standalone, the IAA and the AU version in both AUM and Cubasis - and i wanted to play the MIDI file, to also remove any CPU usage for the Xequence keyboard.
I used a buffer of 256, which is already high for playing live!
But that was not needed, with the Ravenscroft Standalone, in Flight Modus, all settings resetted (Polyphony 20) measly 4 finger where enough to get things crackling.
The crackling already started in about bar 4, when still only 4 fingers are playing.
I also used Omnistat and the CPU usage did barely 60%
But i think this is already too high!
I then repeated with the Acoustic Grand from BeatHawk Standalone and it did NOT crackle at all!
For this, i change the buffer size of BeatHawk also to 256 frames.
The MIDI file:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/aukoqkq61ubzhmz/rctest.mid?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/aukoqkq61ubzhmz/rctest.mid?dl=1
I sent this to UVI ....
Not a regular test, but it was the most easy way to reproduce crackling.
Have you tried with Dubstation2? I’ve very little hope that this RS275 bug or some BH2 bugs will be fixed... I’ve sent them a mail with YT illustration videos about those issue including RS275 in July, they said they will work on all of these issues but I really don’t know if they will fix them. They shouldn’t need a video from you as I already sent them mine almost two months ago...
I think, i can track the problems down to even showing some GUI !!!
I repeated the test with the standalone and Xequence, which only played the MIDI file.
I then started and watched Dubstation 2 Delay filter, and the crackling got a bit less.
I then killed Dubstation 2 and my screen showed NOTHING but a folder of Apps - and there was NO crackling at ALL!
This really reminds me of the problems that Audulus had, some time ago.
I can only remember that this as related to OpenGL and that the developer switched to Metal and this way gone.
Maybe you can get some hint from the Audulus developer?
In this forum, he is @Audulus_Mark
And the topic about this in the Audulus forum is here:
https://forum.audulus.com/t/revisiting-the-crackling-noise/549/8
Please UVI, do something!
I noticed something else:
When i start Ravenscroft freshly, Polyphony is at 60 (bar in the middle) and Sustain Pedal Noise Volume at zero (no bar)!
When i then hit reset, Polyphone changes to 20 (no bar shown) and the Volume to 1 cm to the right, so increasing the volume.
This is wrong - the Reset button should reset to the sane defaults.
But the App does not start with these sane defaults!
So, either the Reset button does something wrong or the default settings are wrong.
Please fix this too, UVI!
And, most important:
Without ANY musical GUI visible (no Xequence, no Ravenscroft, no Dubstation, just a folder or some screen) the CPU usage is MUCH lower:
This was while playing the MIDI file without any crackling, but with Omnistat visible.
That’s crazy. Please UVI, fix it!!!
I'm a bit unclear on how Xequence works, but I took a crack at it and seem to be able to send MIDI to Ravenscroft without issue. Can you give me a walkthrough to create the problem you're having, or whatever, @tja? Save me some time trying to parse this thread ;-)