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.
ReSlice and how the imported samples are managed in the internal memory
ReSlice is a great tool for chopping samples, that has become one of the most fun little toys in my arsenal of apps. Thanks to its really crazy arpeggiator and great options for sound design, altering the pitch or ADSR curves of each fragment of the sample via an intuitive band system. Also, you can be amused with its randomization options, letting these happy errors to occur.
But it has a big flaw, that in a application for manipulating samples, it can become a complete deal breaker.
You can’t manage or delete the imported samples. As absurd as this sounds. So once this bastard has grown various GBs your iPad internal memory, your only option is deleting and reinstalling the app. And with this you will lose all the presets, all these happy errors and chaotic sequences in its arpeggiator will be gone.
So regarding this limitation, I have a dumb question.
When you import a sample, does it save it automatically in the internal memory, or this ONLY HAPPENS if you save a preset using this newly imported sample?
Until now, I have only imported samples into ReSlice when I was 100% sure that they had some potential for madness, via its internal arpeggiator or an external sequencer.
But maybe, if the samples are only stored in the memory once you save a preset, this will increase my margin for experimentation. Trying to open every sound, without fear of running out of space in the long term.
Thanks in advance.
Comments
Perhaps you could test - keeping in mind that iOS reports actual storage usage in an unintuitive way.
When iOS "copies" a file, it doesn't actually make a physical copy, it creates a pointer to the original. The overall physical storage of the device doesn't go up. What is confusing though is iOS reports the storage in each individual app as though these were physical copies, but reports the overall device storage as it really is. So, you could have a 1gb file, then copy it to four apps. If you totaled the storage reported for those apps it would look like 4gb of storage was consumed, when in reality the overall storage didn't go up at all.
So, to test, you'd want to:
If overall storage never goes up then you have nothing to worry about.
Of course the file would need to be big enough to be reflected in the usage statistics, or you'd need to do this with multiple files.
Short of that, I think the developer is the only one who can answer your question.
@wim Yeah, the iOS file system is incredibly confusing for me.
To begin with, I don’t know how to see how much space is taking a folder. This doesn’t appear when you select the Information option in the menu displayed when you touch the icon folder.
Second problem, ReSlice uses a hidden folder not visible in the Files app.
Third problem, I don’t have 1 GB samples, all my samples are recorded from my AUM sessions.
Indeed, I’m taking the information of ReSlice decreasing the internal storage of your iPad from the the discussion of the app in this forum, which has turned me extra cautious when I’m importing samples.
But supposedly, if I import a sample that I have in Audioshare, it will only create a link, not taking extra space. I suppose that the problem is if I later delete the sample in Audioshare. So now, the sample will remain taking space, but this time, the original file will be moved to the hidden folder of ReSlice. So I will lose the possibility of deleting this sample without uninstalling the app.
So same problem, if supposedly this works in this way. I can only import samples that I’m 100% sure that I want to keep in the internal storage of my iPad. And not samples moved temporally to Audioshare, for experimenting with ReSlice. And even using samples that I’m confident that I want to keep in my library, maybe in the future I will want to move them to an external hard disk for saving space. But then, they will still remain in the hidden folder of ReSlice!
Well, I think that my only solution is to live with these limitations, uninstalling the app when I’m running out of space, trying to export my presets.
At least, your information of how iOS manages the copy of archives was super useful! Many thanks.
Settings > General > (Device) Storage
You can see overall device storage and storage for each app.
Not a problem. See above. App storage is reported per app no matter where the files are stored.
1gb was just an example. All you need is enough samples to change the reported size.
True.
Or ... contact the developer to see if you can get them to do something about it.
http://www.virsyn.de/en/E_Support/e_support.html
Many thanks, @wim. After months of using iOS, I didn’t know that you can see the exact size of each app from the Settings menu!
So finally I have an answer, and it’s the worst case scenario. Each sample that you import, even if you don’t save the preset, will remain as a separated copy inside ReSlice.
What a terrible decision for an app centered into the idea of importing audio!
An audio that you can never delete without reinstalling the app.
I think you have misunderstood me. No, it is almost surely not a separated copy. It is reported as though it is a separated copy, but it isn't. It's only a pointer.
Apple's developer documentation, and several tests done by forum members confirm, that although reported individual app storage goes up on an import, overall device storage does not.
That's the way iOS always only worked up until a few versions ago. It wasn't an option to use files stored just anywhere when that app was developed. The majority of iOS music apps are still like this. Reworking them to work differently is not a trivial thing. It's impractical for developers to do this given what most of these apps sell for and that there are no paid upgrades possible on iOS.
On the bright side, the iOS file system is well designed to negate this impact. I know it's hard to get your head around, but the impact isn't as significant as you think it is.
Yes, if you're correct that there's no way to delete imported files, then that is indeed terrible design.
The number that you see for app storage doesn't necessarily tell you how much data it is using. If there are files used by multiple apps -- the full size shows up in each app. So, if you have a 1 gigabyte file in two different apps, they each show that 1 gigabyte which makes it seem like 2 gigabytes is being used when it is only 1 gigabyte.
If one has a lot of apps referencing the same file, the sum of amounts for each app will exceed that actual available space since the individual app storage can't really account for the actual storage used at the moment.
Thanks, @wim and @espiegel123 . I made other test, importing a sample of 40 MBs from Audioshare, without saving the preset in ReSlice. Once I deleted this sample from the iPad internal storage, ReSlice still reports the extra 40 MBs.
So the solution is only importing samples that I’m 100% sure that I want to always keep in the internal storage.
And yeah, I understand the situation with small developers. I only wanted to know how the system works, for adapting my workflow to the limitations of the program. Thanks to your great help, now I have a clear idea not only of how ReSlice manages its storage, but also from the iOS system!
VirSyn is one of my favorite developers. Even with its flaws, I appreciate his hard and creative work.
And for working with sounds, ReSlice is bananas!
Just to clarify, that does not indicate that there were two copies of the file. When you created the file in Audioshare, the data was stored, and a link was created from the Audioshare directory to the data. When you imported the file, a second link was created from the hidden ReSlice storage to the file data. In Unix terms, this is a hard link, a direct connection to the file data, not a soft reference to the other directory. When you deleted the file, the link from the Audioshare directory was removed, but the system knew there was another link from ReSlice, so it did not remove the data.
(In traditional Unix, there is no file delete function, only
unlink. A file is only deleted when all links are removed. And iPadOS is a version of MacOS, which is BSD Unix at its heart.)@Pynchon : it would be worth writing to virsyn and requesting that he had a way to remove imported samples..or at the very least to have reslice delete the associated sample file when a preset is deleted if no presets point to it. Reslice is ancient and pre-dates the Files app. Perhaps, he could add a browser for managing ReSlice's samples like the one AudioLayer has. Or perhaps, he could add a "clean up library command" that deletes unreferenced samples.
@uncledave : in case it isn't clear, the problem is that ReSlice doesn't seem to have a way to delete audio files you have imported.
@espiegel123 : It seems that this is only a problem if you temporally import samples. I record a lot of loops in AUM using SKIIID, the really good ones will always be in my AudioShare folder. As @uncledave has pointed, in this case is not a problem, because iOS will simply create a link inside ReSlice that will not take extra space.
Of course, the problem is that if in the future you delete this sample from its original location, or move it to an external hard disk to save space, it will remain in ReSlice hidden folder, taking the space that before was using in AudioShare. Without an option to wipe the sample.
I suppose that VirSyn is aware of this problem, but probably, due to the low sales of the app, old code, the fierce competition with similar apps like EG sEGments… it’s not worth for him to invest all this time, because he will probably not see a return in money.
Giving that I paid something like 9 euros for this when it was on sale, for this price, I can’t see myself complaining to a developer. When in the desktop world, a plugin in sale will cost you 60 dollars in a best case scenario.
@Pynchon - it could also be that the need for this feature just never really occurred to the developer. It is worth requesting, which would take all of about five minutes, if you haven’t already done so. I linked their support contact page above.
Often developers don’t use their apps as much or in the ways we do. They probably appreciate practical feedback, and sometimes put smaller fixes in the plan for future maintenance releases.
I agree.
It isn't safe to assume that it is on the dev's radar. When I was a dev, I was occasionally surprised by some issue that we had overlooked and which wasn't reported to us for years.
because people assumed we knew about it.