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.
Iphone XR disappointing for music?
Recently I bought an Iphone XR with the hope that its new and powerful processor and battery would allow me to use my musical applications in a much more effective way.
But I find a result much worse than expected:
First of all the Iphone XR can not power my Sonic Port and Sonic Port VX, which I can feed without problems with my Ipohne plus 6s and my Ipad Pro 10.5 (2017). When I connect it to the XR the audio comes and goes constantly (on and off) and it is impossible to use it. It is only possible to use it when I connect it with a powered USB hub.
Can someone confirm that this is normal? other users of the XR with the same problem?Its underpowered or what?
2º When I use my musical applications (especially MidiGuitar + various effects and synthesizers) the performance is similar to my Iphone 6s plus when it is supposed to be 4 or 5 times more powerful!
So what about the new Iphone and its bionic A12? Are they a worse option than previous models?
Can someone confirm it to me or maybe my XR is defective?
Comments
I think you may need to get more specific with some of the issues you are having re: apps. How are you measuring performance? If you are in something like AUM, it is not entirely accurate to look at the CPU usage number.
With regard to the Sonic Port, I remember that there was something about software updates with iOS where Apple was going to enforce some sort of security when plugging something into the lightning port. I know I am being vague, I don't recall exactly the issue, but it was something to the effect that to prevent someone hacking your phone with physical media, there would be some sort of software implementation that disabled the lightning port after a specific amount of time.
Hello and thanks for your answer.
My doubts about performance are not purely scientific, it is more of an impression and especially when I start hearing clicks that imply that the system is at the limit of its processing capacity. I do not use AUM, I use Audiobus mostly, but lately I use MidiGuitar that acts as a host that allows me to load effects and synthesizers in AU format. In any case I expected to have much more reserve power since the XR cpu is the most advanced of the moment, than with my Iphone 6s plus.
What form of performance measurement would you advise me?
Regarding the power of Sonicport I know that IOS 12 has introduced changes but my Iphone 6s and my Ipad pro 10.5 are also updated and I do not have that problem.
I hope someone can advise me about it.
I would say the clicks and pops are definitely a good indication. I’m not familiar with MIDI guitar. I know it has the auHost capability, but I haven’t heard a lot of great things regarding standalone apps as hosts (that aren’t Audiobus, AUM, ApeMatrix). Maybe @McD can shed some light on his MIDI guitar use?
Try Airplane mode, check battery health status, use XR when fully charged and post back!
A possible scenario is the battery may not handle the cpu load and the XR is throttling .
There could be an issue with sample rate, try both 48 and 44.1
Tried all that, my battery health is good, no matter what I do the XR is unable to power my Sonic port (i own both models) and the performance is dissapointing. Im alone with this deception? Could be my unit that is defective?
After all this time even I tried disabling everything, and I mean really everything and the results are in the end dissapointing.
Recently I updated to IOS 13.4 and to my surprise I could be playing for an hour at the same time with Midi Guitar, Mobile Pod and drum genius without a single glitch, testing various synthesizers (layr, synthmaster one an others) without problem, using my Sonic Port, so my hopes returned.
After eating with my family I was excited to continue exploring my "new" musical tool and to my sad surprise after playing for a couple of minutes suddenly shutterings, lockups and the usual paraphernalia began, no matter disabling a lot of things.
This is absurdly disappointing and incomprehensible. My advice is NO purchase this phone for this pourpose.
My Ipad pro 10.5 works infinitely better, with hardly disable anything. But I would like my Iphone to be used to perform musical activities, is there an iphone capable of moving musical applications without being a nightmare? Or no one is using their Iphone to do that ocassional music playing?
Did you try rebooting?
I’m curious about all of this too. I just ordered an iPhone Xr 256 Gb to replace my iPhone 7 Plus. I hope the problems get figured out! 🙁
Of course, tried everything, really, disabled so many things that the phone was not longer a phone (notifications, location, background refresh, avion mode, dont disturb, etc) then I launch midi guitar and it works wonderfull a minute or two and then some interruptions occur, after that it star to work for another couple of minutes and then the audio cuts start again.
Im using 2 Sonic Port audio cards which work perfectly with my Ipad pro 10,5 and even my Iphone 6s (go figure).
That audio cuts happen even playing music with the apple player or spotify, its horrible.
It does not happen playing music with the speakers or bluetooth in the car.
So in my experience the XR is a bad device for music.
I do find crackles and performance issues with some apps on XR, in the case of Zenbeats raising the latency helped.
I have the Xs max, and my girlfriend has the XR, i tried a session on her phone today, and there was CONSIDERABLE difference, with the XR i would get crackles pretty quickly, and in aum, cpu would spike quite a bit. On my Xs max, literally zero crackles and I’m running way more plugins as well. So a pretty big difference imo. I also tested the new iPhone 11 Pro as well, and the difference between that and the Xs. Max is very minimal, though there is difference, you can definitely have bit of a heavier cpu session with the 11 pro, but not by a lot.
That’s interesting. The XR and the XS Max both have the A12 yeah? XR has 1gb less ram though so maybe that’s something to do with it.
This night tried something different with AUM and some synths and effects (I usually only use MidiGuitar2 with AU synths and effects inside). Well the thing worked almost without glitches for 2 or 3 hours, so maybe the problem is in MG2? or the sample rate? I dont know but Im tired of this to be honest.
Although the XR showed a limited performance compared to my Ipad Pro 10.5 which easily doubles the amount of synths and effects I can run (and that shows clearly in the AUM and synths/effects own cpu meter) despite the XR being more powerful!
Something extrange is happening with this phone.
If I had to guess, the phone is probably heavily throttling CPU speed all the time to extend battery life. This results in jumpy cpu loads - audible as clicks and pops.
Audio apps don’t like that. On the other hand, most phone users do like long battery life. It’s just one more reason why iPads are better for music than iPhones.
Yea super weird,because on paper, they should be very similar, if not pretty much the same, according to apple. I was also thinking maybe because the Xs max has a bigger body, maybe it can keep cooler, just guessing tho lol.
Interesting, I wonder if my usual methods to try to prevent throttling (like keeping an instance of RE1 open) would work in this case. I’ll report back tomorrow.
In such a case the phone would have to be hot when this happens, dont you think? but it is not at all. I use CPU dasher and it does not show throotling at all.
Yes when i use tasks that overflow the cpu capacity then clicks and pops happen.
Anyway the main problem in my case is not about clicks and pops, but abrupt cuts in sound that can last seconds while the cpu meters of the applications do not show an over consumption.
Edit: Tried another time using it with synths and a bluetooth keyboard and this time, no matter what I do there were audio interruptions. I only can think about a word about this Iphone for audio tasks: UNRELIABLE, well two words, also Underpowered despite having one of the most advanced and fast cpus.
Please if you are using a modern Iphone for audio tasks and its working really well and reliable, please share which one and your details.
For the sake of truth and for my experience to serve other users, I want to correct my latest comments to some extent, since after trying to use my sonicport vx while loading the XR and giving the same problems I thought that the whole problem with the XR was of another nature.
But I have been able to test with other audio cards powered by a USB hub and powering the VX and not the Iphone (there was my confusion, it can be connected in both ways and I had forgotten because I have not used it for almost 1 year since it does not work with IOS 13 until 13.4 came out) and I have been able to verify that the XR has worked admirably, even being able to simultaneously move several synthesizers (layr, Noise and Sampletank) and Mobile pod in AUM + MG2 with a buffer of 256 (playable for me ) and in AUM the cpu consumption was 50%, quite impressive. Curiously at rest AUM marked 65% and when playing then it dropped to 50%, interesting question.
So the problem is still that the XR is still unable to feed a simple sound card like SonicPort (normal and VX) and perhaps how it manages the use of cores and their speed according to demand.
I do not know if in the case of the XS / Max it is the same, or the case of the Iphone 11 or 11 pro, but it would be very interesting to know.
Therefore, the variable of which sound card is used and whether it is intended to be powered directly by the Iphone is a variable to be taken into account for the reasons stated.