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.
Crackle / cut-out problems - Audiobus overload?
I set up Audiobus with 8 channels, 7 receiving MIDI from Xequence via MF Adapter, the other running Autony, and 7 of the 8 sound-making apps being AUs (plus Galileo). Plus a couple of instances of MF Randomizer and Rozeta Scaler and a couple of audio effects. The whole lot being recorded into Audioshare.
All this on an iPad Air 2 running iOS 12.1.
With similar setups I'd noticed they were quite fragile - often if you move a control (e.g. slider, mute/solo, or try adding or removing a filter while it was running), either the affected channel or everything would just cut off altogether.
I managed to record a couple of takes with no audio issues by not touching anything after pressing the relevant start buttons. Then I added a Perforator effect on a BS-16l guitar track and tried again, and this time the audio just cracked constantly. I'm not suggesting that Perforator is responsible, as I've had similar experiences often when I've tried to use a bunch of apps in Audiobus, and I've had many similar experiences with AUM.
I wonder would a more recent iPad, specifically the last generation before the current one, be able to handle this better, or is it just not possible to run that many apps at the same time smoothly?
I've been thinking about getting a newer iPad for a while, but I don't want to spend loads of money and then find it doesn't solve the problem.
Any advice much appreciated :-)
Comments
You may have to increase the Audio Buffer size, if you haven’t tried that.
But that is a lot of apps running, so more RAM may solve it (newer iPad).
I have an Air2 as well, but I never push it that hard.
Thanks! Would that be "Latency control" in Settings? I have it on 256 frames, whatever that means, but the options for "very high device load" both say "may cause stuttering", which doesn't sound like a solution...
I'll try it though.
The higher the latency the more apps you will be able to run before getting crackling. So raise, don’t lower, the number of frames.
But yes, you ar just running up against the limitations of your device. It’s not an AudioBus specific problem.
Thanks @wim !
I'll try that then...
So would a 2017 iPad make a big difference?
I’ll have to let others comment on that. In theory, yes, but there have been some models that it seems like people have been having issues with.
Regardless, it’s just a reality with iPads that they have limitations you will run into. Mixing tracks down to audio is sometimes the only way forward.
@wim
Do you ever suspect iOS may not efficiently run a whole bunch of apps, no matter what model you use?
I think it wouldn’t make much difference ,especially on this scenario (heavy multicore usage).
Also try the classic performance boost
That is beyond my pay-grade my friend.
I don’t worry about stuff like that either. It’s like tracking the gas mileage in my car. I’m not buying another car, so makes no difference to me. I’m just happy it makes it to the grocery store (for beer, and sometimes even food).
I will say, hearing about issues with some newer iPads has made me appreciate and hold onto my air 2 longer than I would have otherwise.
Yeah, I don’t know anything for sure, just a suspicion I have sometimes when I read about problems the new models unexpectedly have.
I was just curious about your take, opinion, viewpoint, etc. Nothing official.
And I am not trying to start any rumors!
Thanks again for all the input!
I haven't yet reproduced the setup I first described, but what I did do was try changing the latency setting in both directions with different (a bit smaller) app configurations. For the record, when I shifted it down to 128 I got instant breakup, if that's the word, but when I tried in the other direction all was fine. I now have it on 512 frames.
What kind of uses would make that high-frame setting become a problem? Would it be live input, like playing from a keyboard, or would that be exactly the same as sending midi from Xequence? And would adjusting settings while AB3 is running stuff also potentially cause latency issues (e.g. changing the settings on a MIDI filter, or on an audio effect)?
The audio buffer delays what you hear by the number of frames, or samples. The actual amount of real-time delay is also dependent on your sample rate. So 512 frames @44.1k is longer than @ 48k.
It is an extremely small delay, but when playing live, recording live, and the overall responsiveness can feel slightly delayed beyond 512 frames (for me, anyway). I can still manage at 1024, but I can definitely feel the gap in time.
T> @Tim said:
Latency is the length of time between when a note is triggered and when the sound is made. For playback of already recorded midi notes, latency is no problem because all the notes are delayed the same amount. For playing live it can be a problem because there’s a lag between the time you hit a note and when it sounds. People differ in how sensitive they are to this, but everyone would agree that the less latency the better.
When recording live playing, often one needs to at least temporarily cut down on the number of synths and FX in order to be able to set the frames lower and get better response.
Hope that helps. BTW, this challenge is the same on desktop hardware as well, though they are of course more powerful, usually.
IMO, before going on a shopping spree you should first optimise your iPad using tips you can find on this forum, some of which @Korakios has mentioned.
Secondly you need to research and decide what buffer size are you comfortable with and adjust accordingly (seems like you’re doing that already)
Third, you should see iOS as a modular environment. As such you can find different apps doing the same thing with less bugs/cpu or ram load. There’s plenty of chatter on that and search works reasonably well and I guess if you’re stuck you can always ask.
Air 2 is a pretty fast device as things stand now and should be able to run most configurations, especially when using AU but not exclusively of course. Bare in mind that a few instances of Moog’s model 15 will bring any iPad to its knees, so pick your battles intelligently.
If you decide to upgrade buy the best you can afford. I have the air 2 and iPad Pro 10.5 running the same set ups and they’re both fine for what I do except that I can run my pro on a lower buffer for faster playing or the same buffer for extra safety when performing. There is a difference between the two devices but it is not massive in real life, despite what benchmarks might want you to believe.