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.

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Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

Hardware-Sample Rates ...

tjatja
edited October 2019 in General App Discussion

I noticed the following about the default hardware sample rates:

iPad Pro 9.7: 41k, can be changed to 48k
iPad Pro 12.9 2017: 41k, can be changed to 48k
iPhone 8: 48k, cannot be changed to 41k
iPad Air 3: 48k, cannot be changed to 41k

That pretty much forces me to use 48k if i want to be able to use all devices and not want to convert.

I still don't like this.

Why is Apple doing such things?

The most useful default still is 41k and this means that the newer devices are less usable than older devices.

What are the default rates of other devices?

How do you handle this situation?

Comments

  • dendydendy

    Mini 5 / Air 3 - without headphones connected, or with headphones with just 3 rings on jack connector (eg. standard headphones without microphone) it runs at 48khz ... if you connect headphones with 4 rings on jack connector (eg. apple earbuds), it switches to 44khz.

    It's the microphone input, if connected, what switches all iPhone6+ - post devices from 48khz to 44khz. Of course just those with jack input connector.

    Apple obviously uses 48khz D/A comverters, but 44khz A/D converters ...

  • tjatja

    Yes, tested with my Sennheiser headphones , did not change nothing.

    This is frustrating.

    Again, @Apple

  • dendydendy
    edited October 2019

    Actually, current situation isn't Apple's fault. Apple is not forcing devs to prefer device sample rate for processing of audio inside app. It's same like when you connect various soundcards to your computer - does this mean that it changes sample rate of your project in DAW ? No.

    Here is thing:

    On desktop, most modern DAWs can use project sample rate which doesn't need (and usually isn't) to be same like hardware input / output sample rate - they just resample final mixdown stream to match soundcard D/A sample rate if needed. So, you can use project sample rate for example 44khz all the time no matter if you connect soundcard with 44khz, 96khz or even 192khz output... You can for example listen your project on build-in notebook soundcard at 44khz and then do mixdown at 96khz. And vice versa.

    On iOS this is not possible. Or better, if you're host app dev, you are forced to avoid it - but you're forced not by Apple, but by other devs ...

    Because there is lot of plugins which are ignoring host sample rate and are always locked to device sample rate. If host uses different than device sample rate you get crackles from such plugins. Or they crash, they go silent or they play with wrong pitch if sample rate (or buffer size) is changed by host app.

    So, host devs are forced to do various workarounds just to prevent issuea with such plugins. For example NS2 was handling sample rate same way like desktop daws - it was all the time locked to 44 khz (on all iPad models), and then it was resampling just final mixdown stream to match device sample rare - but after lot of complains from users "this plugin doesn't work correctly in NS and works fine in other hosts, so it's NS bug" - this was changed to work same way like other iOS hosts - now it use always sample rate of device for realtime playback. Just to be compatible with plugins which are ignoring host sample rate.

    I hope this will change in future, because existence of those problematic plugins is one of factors which is holding back progress in sample rate handling inside host apps :-( Host devs simply cannot do everything "right way" just because of compatibility.

  • tjatja

    Interesting, @dendy

    I would prefer to be free in selecting the sample rate.

    But from what I read, iOS only allows higher than 48k if an audio interface is connected.

    What you wrote, sounds different :o

  • tjatja
    edited November 2019

    Using an Apple earpod (cable with microphone), i can get my Air 3 to be usable at 44.1 and 48 (or 32) kHz.
    Something that the Pro iPads (9.7 and 2nd gen 12.9) can do without using the headjack.

    But my iPhone 8 does not react at all.
    It stays hooked at 48 kHz, most probably, because it does not have such an jack but only a Lightning adapter.

    This seems to take the iPhone out of the audio topic, beside using MIDI.

  • richardyotrichardyot
    edited November 2019

    Yeah, the only way to get the newer iPhones to change sample rate is by using an interface. I use a Dragonfly Black into the CCK and it allows me to set 44.1khz, 48khz, 88.2khz, or 96khz. It's pretty portable and works beautifully, but obviously it's an additional expense. I originally bought it because no headphone jack on the phone, so the sample rate support was an unexpected bonus.

    The Dragonfly LED changes colour depending on the current sample rate, in this case it's green which means 44.1khz.

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