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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.

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Gen 3 iPad pro users: Have you noticed significant CPU spikes?

I've been experiencing pretty poor performance after just a few tracks in both BM3 and Cubasis on my 11" pro. It's incredibly frustrating and I'm wondering if I'm alone in this.

Cheers.

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Comments

  • I don't use BM3 or Cubasis these days, but not seeing any sort of CPU issues in other apps. I've been pushing KEW pretty hard and it's not flinched at all.

  • @XanderJames you're not alone!!!

    Yes I certainly have with my 3rd gen 12.9...
    My gen 1 9.7 pro has a lower and far more stable cpu usage with the same test session in BM3.

  • I really hope this is an issue that can be addressed effectively in an iOS update. I so much want this beast of an iPad to realize it's full potential. I mean shouldn't it be on par performance wise to a few years old MBP? (understanding direct comparisons can't necessarily be made, but isn't that what they are claiming?)

  • I'd like to ask anyone who's upgraded their iPads to try running their older sessions in whichever software and try and take note of differences in CPU load, etc.

  • I’ve noticed a boost in performance. Not having any CPU spike issues. Be mindful that using the internal speakers or USB C to 3.5mm adapter will cause all of your sessions to run at 48khz instead of 44.1 which may cause some issues. But so far no CPU spike issues using BM3 on my iPad Pro 12.9 gen 3

  • I will perform the exact same "benchmark" test on BM3 using my dragonfly red dac/amp that I did using the iPad speakers - I'll report back on my findings...

  • What latency are you setting ? 128 or below ? Try increasing, should work...

  • What else are you using on the ipad? Are the wifi, face ID and bluetooth activated as well? Try to eliminate some thread consuming features until Apple fixes it in the future. Didn't notice any performance issue on my 12.9 though.

  • Right. I do use a Roli seaboard block, so that may be putting significant stress on the device? I dunno. My settings in both DAWs are: 512 sample rate/16-bit/48kHz. I'll try out your recommendations and report back this evening.

  • Should work like crazy...roli as a midi controller shouldn’t interfeer at all...
    Very weird...
    Try to cancel fading effects and transparency...
    Also cancel link notifications into each app...
    Then try to reduce apps, or midi controllers one by one, then test and test again...that’s all I can think off now...

  • @gosnote said:
    I will perform the exact same "benchmark" test on BM3 using my dragonfly red dac/amp that I did using the iPad speakers - I'll report back on my findings...

    Just did the BM3 benchmark test comparing a 9.7 Pro Gen 1 and a 12.9 Pro Gen 3 using a DragonFly Red USB dac. The results are practically the same as with the built in speakers: the CPU usage is high and all over the place (spikes) with the 12.9 and low and stable with the 9.7. This behavior is across all buffer settings.

    I clear the RAM before each session and have airplane mode on and don't have any other apps in the background.

    I'll try to do a test using cubasis as well, eg using the demo project.

  • Just realized it in AUM my standard Pads set. I have a mp3 file and some fx and Sunrizer and the powerhouse went up to 75%?!? WTF?!

  • Yeah I'm convinced it's a widespread issue at this point.

  • edited November 2018

    @XanderJames said:
    Yeah I'm convinced it's a widespread issue at this point.

    Fingers crossed this will be sorted out soon.
    Right now it’s not the advertised powerhouse it should be... won’t take too long hopefully

  • Reminds of when I bought the 2nd gen pro 10.5 at launch and there was issues for a while in the beginning. From now on I’m sticking with one model behind the current.
    Maybe upgrade to a new pro end of next year. Let Apple get all the BS fixed.
    It sucks Consumers are the beta testers these days

  • I have gen 3 pro 12.9 model and I can confirm I am getting the same CPU spikes

  • edited November 2018

    I mean, comments are going way overboard with this issue. The gen 3 ipads are beasts. They are not the problem. Might have to do with ios12 more likely. Look at what this thing can do:

  • This thingy is my mobile office. Hands down. I am in wonderland. Love it so much!

    Except the Apple one the cases are all crap at the moment but i got one from JETech which was too large. They ship a new one in a few weeks and I got to keep the one I have.

    The only challenge I have now is how to get my electric into Positive Grids BIAS without lightning (used my iRIG HD 2 for that before the USB C)

  • @Norbert said:
    I mean, comments are going way overboard with this issue. The gen 3 ipads are beasts. They are not the problem. Might have to do with ios12 more likely. Look at what this thing can do:

    I completely agree that it's not hardware based, but there is definitely something wrong. I'm hoping the issues will be addressed in iOS 12.2

  • Posting Video editing and comments about mobile offices is not relevant here, the spikes are caused by audio apps in use, which is sort of right on topic for this forum.

  • Ok, i just did a simple test comparing the gen3 12.9 Pro and gen1 9.7 using cubasis, with built in speakers and external dragonfly usb dac/amp.

    The test 48 khz / 24 bit project was a simple octave played using the known to be stable poison 202 auv3 with default patch loaded, ten instances/tracks.

    With the gen3 12.9 Pro the cubasis CPU meter was hovering around 50% and with the gen1 9.7 Pro it was around 25%. The result was the same with and without external usb dac.

    Apple, can I have an explanation please? 😆

  • @XanderJames said:

    @Norbert said:
    I mean, comments are going way overboard with this issue. The gen 3 ipads are beasts. They are not the problem. Might have to do with ios12 more likely. Look at what this thing can do:

    I completely agree that it's not hardware based, but there is definitely something wrong. I'm hoping the issues will be addressed in iOS 12.2

    I think as well it relates to the fact most applications are outdated compared to the new A12 bionic chip and what it can do. We can expect greatly improved performances once devs update their apps or make new ones taking advantages of multithreading with the 8 cores. And indeed as well, when apple fixes the recurrent leak problems on iOS.

  • Except the hardware changes should be abstracted away through APIs, especially in Apple's sandboxed environment. Code changes might be needed to take advantage of new features (and support new resolutions, of course) but performance shouldn't decrease. Multithreading isn't new, even if core counts have gone up, and single thread performance has also improved. If I had to hazard a guess it's likely speed stepping or throttling, or perhaps hand-off between the high performance and high efficiency cores. Perhaps apps need to implement some sort of priority flagging to affect core affinity?

  • edited November 2018

    @Norbert said:

    @XanderJames said:

    @Norbert said:
    I mean, comments are going way overboard with this issue. The gen 3 ipads are beasts. They are not the problem. Might have to do with ios12 more likely. Look at what this thing can do:

    I completely agree that it's not hardware based, but there is definitely something wrong. I'm hoping the issues will be addressed in iOS 12.2

    I think as well it relates to the fact most applications are outdated compared to the new A12 bionic chip and what it can do. We can expect greatly improved performances once devs update their apps or make new ones taking advantages of multithreading with the 8 cores. And indeed as well, when apple fixes the recurrent leak problems on iOS.

    That doesn't really make sense though, because the single threaded performance of the 3rd gen iPad Pro should be significantly better than the 1st gen anyway. There must be something else going on, either hardware or software.

    It might be thermal throttling, or the Pro Motion refresh rate. I'd be curious to see how the 2nd gen Pro performs in comparison (that might help to establish whether it's a Pro Motion issue).

  • edited November 2018

    @richardyot said:

    @Norbert said:

    @XanderJames said:

    @Norbert said:
    I mean, comments are going way overboard with this issue. The gen 3 ipads are beasts. They are not the problem. Might have to do with ios12 more likely. Look at what this thing can do:

    I completely agree that it's not hardware based, but there is definitely something wrong. I'm hoping the issues will be addressed in iOS 12.2

    I think as well it relates to the fact most applications are outdated compared to the new A12 bionic chip and what it can do. We can expect greatly improved performances once devs update their apps or make new ones taking advantages of multithreading with the 8 cores. And indeed as well, when apple fixes the recurrent leak problems on iOS.

    That doesn't really make sense though, because the single threaded performance of the 3rd gen iPad Pro should be significantly better than the 1st gen anyway. There must be something else going on, either hardware or software.

    It might be thermal throttling, or the Pro Motion refresh rate. I'd be curious to see how the 2nd gen Pro performs in comparison (that might help to establish whether it's a Pro Motion issue).

    Or it might be that for some instances, it's the wrong that is used. The chip has two different kind of cores, 4 very powerful ones but energy hungry and 4 slower ones but energy efficient. Might be that for some apps, ios12 doesn't allocate the right one for the task at hand.

  • It’s what you have in front
    When I close the plugin and let it run in background the peak is going down. As soon as I pull it up front I am at limit :)
    Cubasis with a few plugins, effects boom 90+%

    Apple, bring it...

  • @Norbert said:
    Or it might be that for some instances, it's the wrong that is used. The chip has two different kind of cores, 4 very powerful ones but energy hungry and 4 slower ones but energy efficient. Might be that for some apps, ios12 doesn't allocate the right one for the task at hand.

    Yeah that makes sense: it's possible that audio is considered to be a "low power" task (playing music for example) and so farmed out to the low-power cores. Fine for listening to tunes, not so fine for making tunes.

    The problem is Apple never acknowledge these kinds of issues in public, so it's a case of hoping they find out about it, and then hoping they actually fix the bug.

  • Seems familiar to last year, amazed Apple aren't getting this right still.
    I'm on 2nd gen 12.9 and have an issue with iOS 12.1 and my iconnectivity power supply, which disconnects when the display goes to sleep which is a bug. But as usual iOS is never at it's best until .3 or .4 of the release cycle.

    Does it perform better with display at 60hz?

  • @richardyot said:
    The problem is Apple never acknowledge these kinds of issues in public, so it's a case of hoping they find out about it, and then hoping they actually fix the bug.

    You can report bugs to Apple.

  • @Carnbot said:
    Seems familiar to last year, amazed Apple aren't getting this right still.
    I'm on 2nd gen 12.9 and have an issue with iOS 12.1 and my iconnectivity power supply, which disconnects when the display goes to sleep which is a bug. But as usual iOS is never at it's best until .3 or .4 of the release cycle.

    Does it perform better with display at 60hz?

    Check your settings under Touch ID and passcode. There should be an option at the bottom for USB accessories to work when locked. It’s orobbaly off by default. See if that helps

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