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.
Gadget: Crackle / Failing / Glitching
What is your sample rate set at?
How many Gadgets can you use at one time?
I am on Air 2 with latest ios.
I am not happy with this.
There are a handful of apps who are beginning to be more trouble than they are worth.
But, after dumping $30 on IAP I want to be able to use the app without this after 6 channels.
Geez
Thanks for feedback.
Comments
Depends on your song setup, the synth, the preset, the effect chain, etc. On a Mini 2 my max is about 7-12 tracks before everything slows way down. With Romplers like Glasgow and Salzburg I can usually handle only one instance in a track before it goes to sh*t. Limitations spark creativity as they say.
My crackles are mainly when using it in Audiobus- normally with Turnado. I never have more than five running at the same time on my Air2. I don't know what my sample rate is- I have never changed it- so it will probably be 44 kittyhertz- or whatever they are called.
For me I usually stop the playback when adding new instruments so I don't encounter these crackles at all...
Interesting.
You may have nailed it.
You know why?
Because that is what she said.
Thank you
Appreciate it.
Normally I can get around 12 tracks fine on my iphone6s plus. Probably the same on my air 2.
You need to be aware of which gadgets you are using though. Lexington is terrible. Two or 3 and it’s a crackle fest. Module ones you have to be careful with.
The rest are generally fine.
MonoPoly is fantastic in this regard given the richness of its sound.
Also, bear in mind I don’t have them all triggering notes at the same time, they come in and out. Chords versus single notes also probably makes some difference. Normally no more than 6 synths playing at the same exact time. But any more than that and surely it’s a bit over the top anyway.
In gadget you can also freeze tacks to get rid of the crackles when going near the cpu limit. You find the track freeze buttons by pressing the ‚function‘ button in the fader mixer view.
What that does is render a track to audio. You won't be able to arrange your tracks if they're frozen. Resampling is an option however. Track it out to Cubasis, Auria, BM3, Blocswave, Loopy or even just Zurich in Gadget. Lots of options to get past the crackles because audio doesn't have a big CPU footprint.
I checked freezing in Gadget - it works as expected:
When a track is frozen, you can’t change the notes or ifx of that track, but still modify the volume with the fader, pan, change aux send or mute/solo the track. Duplicating whole scenes and rearranging the order of szenes is possible. In the function view, the patterns of the frozen track are not available (no pattern mute or copy)
So one can use track freeze to add new instrument tracks that would have pushed the cpu limit and continue to modify the other tracks, add new scenes as copy if you want a specifiy pattern of the frozen track to be played in the new szene.
If one needs to modify the frozen track, just freeze another cpu intensive track, unfreeze the first one and modify it and freeze it again.
The same workflow as with PC DAWs with cpu intense plugins - a little bit inconvenient but saves from buying a more powerfull maschine
I always found the crackle got worse when you have a gadget open....freeze some tracks while you are editing sounds in others...then unfreeze and keep the gadgets closed while mixing and you can usually get another couple of tracks out of it.
I appreciate your answer.
But honestly I feel like 6 tracks in Gadget with NO other apps open should not glitch.
Word on the street is it is ios.
They are looking into presently. Last update was supposed to have fixed it.
It didn't.
HERE IS THE CURRENT THEORY BEING LOOKED INTO:
iOS is killing apps somehow because the CPU analyzer is not looking at correct data or not running at full speed.
Crack?
Couple rocks crackled when you lit them?
Andy.
Cut it out.
Thanks Matt.
Samu
What are your thoughts on my post?
Sound tangible?
The inquiry is in regard to a different app but applies if true nonetheless.
I appreciate your vast knowledge on such matters.
I currently have no idea on how iOS shares the 'app load' between CPU cores.
There might be some strange priority things that try to keep the UI 'fluid' and thus steal clock cycles from back-ground tasks. Audio as far as I know does NOT run as a real-time process on iOS which it should do if you ask me.
What I've noticed is that some Gadgets need more CPU than others and that's really not surprising at all.
And yes iOS can kill apps in the background to free up resources to the app that is frontmost as that's most likely where the user is 'focused' and a laggy app kills the fluid experience and yes, it can kill back-ground tasks to keep the phase and flush apps out from memory.
Don't know if developers can 'protect' threads so iOS can NOT kill them without politely asking.
Another iOS11 WTF is the 'edge protection' which renders many music apps that have controllers on the edges of the screen 'laggy'(ie. ~0.5s delay before something happens). This can be 'fixed' by the developers but the default behaviour is that iOS in practice 'takes over' certain areas of the screen (Top for notifications, Bottom for the dock/control centre, Right side for the 'slide over apps' and Left side for app-switching on devices with force-touch) and the developers will have to add a function to turn that behaviour off to avoid the lags. (This was discussed in the iOS11 thread).
I seldom run multiple apps at the same time and I try to stick with AUv3's when ever possible.
Here's a few more ideas:
Use while plugged in, and have ample storage available, more than 2 gigs, for whatever reason the device performs better overall in this situation
Lastly I checked out the export Ableton project and it's actually very useful. It renders each track to a loop per scene. Using Zurich and the new improved loop points you can render an 8 or 16 bar track and find the right loop to get your effects looping seamlessly, or turn all effects off and add them into Zurich after.
With these tips, 1-6 especially, you'll get a better result. And I highly recommend saving up for a more powerful device if you can.
Effects are generally the most system taxing apps. Of course model 15 is also very cpu heavy but flux fx and vocalive can singlehandedly bring an iPad to its knees.
With Gadget takes you by stealth as it is way too easy to pile up several effects before you realise you’ve gone too far and things start going south. I think Gadget is a well optimised app but it has grown a lot with all the new gadgets and updates which unavoidably make your device push more weight. I think the addition of channel fx was the biggest step in that direction.