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.
Low CPU AU3 synths or drums
Have been lately happily spending most of my time recording and haven’t been too good on keeping up with app news.
For my setup, I try not to stress the iPad at all so I try to keep to synths and drum plugins with a very low CPU hit. Generally use the Icegear, Ruismaker, Virsyn stuff and have all of their apps.
I did a pretty extensive search 6 months ago, but any newer ones I am missing?
Thanks.
Comments
Check out the Elliot Garage drum machines that went AU recently.
I think Poison-202 is reasonable considering how good it sounds.
Slightly #off-topic, but I wish more hosts would implement track freeze.
It's the main reason I stick with Cubasis...
+1
Yes, great tool for many people. My iPad usage is more a composition and live tool so I dont generally want to lock things down.
I took a look at that but, will that give me much that Ruismaker doesnt? Thats what I wondered after a couple demos.
If you had any interest in the original units they are fun. Did you pick up Noir? Only other thing I can think of is SynthDrum Kick.
Viking synth is my go to low CPU workhorse.
but only if you switch filter from "nonlinear" to "linear" mode
MV08 is pretty light.
KQ Dixie is almost invisible in term of traces
Sunrizer used to be an example of efficient implementation
@Multicellular
may i ask which DAW do you use ?
Because if you're on hunt for efficient synth, there is build in synth in Nanostudio 2 with tons of modulation capabilities and synthesis typec (va, fm, pd, wavetable, sample based) which runs 20+ instances even on old iPad Air 1
Of course it's not AU, but at least very soon AB support will be added somthere will be way to record it into other DAW
Obsidian?
Is it really that efficient?
@blakkaz yeah it is :-) tons of instances of synth and built in fx... as i said, on iPad Air 1 20+ instances AND lot of build in FXs (compressors, EQs, delays, reverbs, choruses, phasers) .. very efficient build in stuff, not just obsidian but also fxs...
20+ instances isn't helpful, that is like saying "My computer runs at 20%" which means nothing, 20+ instances with what settings or what polyphony or what effects and what buffer size, Obsidian doesn't just use max resources for each instance, it scales.
Plenty of built in synths are extremely efficient, Obsidian is not outstanding in that sense.
Mini 2
1024 Buffer
24/48
48 note polyphony (48 instances)
192 effects
Beatmaker 3
A Mini 2 is much slower than an air 2, so Beatmaker 3 must be much more efficient than Obsidian, but it isn't because it also scales, so saying "x number of instances on Air 2" with no other information is as I said, not helpful.
@OP there has been little in the last six months that will get even close to Ruismaker and Icegear in terms of CPU, possibly D1 could be uaeful if they ever manage to get the AUv3 port made.
mini does have same cpu like air 1 (A7)... Air 2 has A8x cpu... Because DAW on iOS is using just single core, just single core performance is important... In single core performance Air2 is just about 20% faster than mini2/air1
btw i do have Air 1, not 2, so same as mini 2. I have also mini 2, and performance is really same 1:1 like Air 1
That's true. Ok then, i don't have at the moment my iPad here, so did quick test with iPhone 6S, which has A9 cpu (geekbench simgle core score about 2500 compared to mini2/air1 A7 single core score about 1400)
edit: Ok same project 16 instances on Air 1. After changing from supersaw oscillators to single saw and just one filter, number of instances on Air with 82-83% load is 24
So you are still not providing any real usable information.
Your first list shows
iPhone (Which iPhone, again, not helpful)
Latency high (Unsure what that means though, possibly 512)
The rest is unimportant because of the failings in the two above pieces of information
Your edit shows
Air 1
Latency not stated (This is a global setting, so is it the same, you only stated same project, which could use any latency, the Air 1 may be set to low)
So you have already negated your own test again, and even then, 24 instances, with 48 filters and 24 overdrives vs the Mini 2 results for Beatmaker 3, there is very little to warrant claims of Obsidian being more efficient than any other built in synth in various DAWs, it is marketing speak, Modstep built ins = Efficient, Cubasis built ins = efficient, so on and so on, and non of those are AUv3 either, which is what the OP asked for.
Using Modstep. I dont really need a DAW on ipad, more a pattern based midi and audio player, more an Ableton.
All the rest of this is interesting though.
same latency on both of course, i thought it’s obvious
Definitely it’s 11 ms (buffer size 512)
Any other technical questions related to my tests ?
24 instances was with one filter not two. (on Air) You need read properly
You need learn a lot about synthesis and dsp coding , i see lack of some elementar knowledge there :-) Let me explain one obvious missunderstanding on your side:
If you have polyphonic synth each voice is runing with own filter instance internaly. So if synth is playing 16 voices, it means it is also playing 16 instances of filter. So 24 instances of Obsidian one filter activated means 24x16 = 384 instances of filters with overdrive (which is btw more cpu hungry than classic non overdrived filter)
So, if i used, two filters in test, it means every filter is with own overdrive, which means at 16 voices polyphony it is 16 voices x 16 instances x 2 filters = 512 filters with ovedrive internally processed by DSP code.
On iPad Air 1, 512 (11ms) buffer and 82% of CPU.
I think description of my test is very good and very informative, i wrote +/- same test to many people before and they were always thankfull)
On other side your “test” doesn’t say anything.
What effects ? What was sampler playing - one layer ? Two layers ? How long samples, single cycle waveforms, or few sec long loop ? Plus not sure if you understand difference between just playing samples and between VA oscillator (and especially supersaw oscillator). Also not sure if you understand difference between filter with overdrive (where drive is part of filter model and affects character of resonance) and between just simple saturator -> digital (not overdrived) filter (which needs lot less cpu, BM3 uses this architecture)
Anyway, i’m playing your game cause i like such tests. But to avoid spamming here, and because od this;)
in created new thread
hope it will. e informative for somebody...
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/31581/engine-efficiency-cpu-demands-ns2-vs-bm3/p1?new=1
Ya, good points abut the polyphony, etc. I definitely consider some of that. A nice thing on the Icegear synths, you can set a limit on polyphony in the settings. And many synths you can switch to mono so that can seriously boost efficiency. Even those, with enough effects, you can of course get them to use a good chunk of cpu.
Still overall, some are coded more efficiently for what they do (which I know gets into subjective territory termed that way) but Im happy to get leads about ones people find efficient and do my own testing in my usual use cases.
Noir is beautiful and efficient!
Hrmm. Ill have to do more testing on that, I found it moderate, but I didnt test much because I thought I had similar bases covered already.
Oh, one I missed.
KQ Dixie brings back memories, I had a DX7.
Ehh, i seemed to have missed their wavetable synth....I knew I should make this thread.
Viging is really great synth, it's basically very much inspired by Model D (at least by architecture) plus it's adding some more details (like dual filter - cool stuff). I personally like Viking more than Model D :-) And for that ridiculous price it's steal
+1.... only wish it had a polyphonic mode, and the volume out but needs to be raised.
I hadn’t realized you were looking for synths too. He also updated EGSY01.
I’d also suggest checking out DRC which went AU recently. A bit heavier on CPU.
Anything new in the last month?
Good way to see recent releases:
http://synthyfrog.com/sort-released-desc/
Hey thanks.
Did some other searching and testing and Tardigrain is showing pretty low CPU. Nice since it can get some pretty complex sounding patches.
Here's what I found using the Air 1 and Mini 2:
LO-CPU AUv3 Synths: All Bram Bos, all iceWorks, elsa, tardigrain, KQ Dixie, KQ MiniSynth, SquareSynth2, Primer, Viking (Filter @ Linear).
LO-CPU AUv3 Effects: All Bram Bos, all Amazing Noises, all apeSoft, all Blamsoft, most Audio Damage, frekvens.