Alternatives to Rebooting iOS device to clear “audio production cache”

lurch_space

Hey there, community.
The first discussion for me here to start.

I bet almost everyone knows what I’m talking about despite the made-up term that I use to describe the phenomenon - “audio-production cache”.

But just in case, describing what I mean by that:
So say you’re working on a song that’s to be released - specifically this case to point out that it will include intensive work in terms of DSP-loads on a digital perspective and nervous-system-loads on biological loool. I mean, if DAW’s suitable for a full production->mixing->mastering workflow - then load would be higher, since it’s most likely be the main and in some cases the only host that has to survive the whole thing.
But as experience shows, the subject also applies if a given human would choose to be a smart-ass producer to divide the production stages and for example to master in a different app-environment with a single track of the mix as a pre-master wave file or at least in the same DAW but in a different project file for mastering solely.

So in the first case the chances to face the brick wall of core audio overload symptoms are very high and will not take too much time to arrive and toshow itself.
In the second - chances to face it are basically identical, but the timeframe is relatively stretched and depends on ongoing complexity of the ongoing production proccessing.

For as long as I use iOS as the main environment for getting everything done (for about last 4 yrs or so) - it is always the same - once the project gets heavy enough - closer to the stage of “almost finished mix” - it’s inevitable to have the device rebooted every 3-4 hours or so for it to be capable of running to its full performance capability. It’s never enough to just kill the production software and launch it back to achieve the system state that’s close to launching the same app/project but straight after reboot.
It seems clearly that audio production software - every single one of it - from GarageBand to AUM, NS2, nTrack, Gadget and every other possible - creates some sort of cache that fills up during system up-time until its amount becomes unbearable for the system to perform at its peak - it shows mostly in symptoms like crackling, popping and other types of audio artifacts, as well as some specific ones - e.g. if TWS bluetooth earbuds are used - one of those may occasionally stop playing back, then just fades back after some time… but not for long - till it stops playing back again in several minutes. In case of GarageBand, for example - you’ll keep seeing it “Optimising Performance” after every single edit you make in the project - and all kinds of glitching of different sorts you can and can not imagine…

Same actually applies to Mac - I was a hardcore Logic Pro user back in my “laptop production days” and several intensive hours of production would lead to overfilling the “cache pool” as well with a reboot being the only way to fix this.

So, excuse me for being that much specific in description, but I just want to define this phenomenon as accurate as possible for everyone to 100% understand what exaclty I’m addressing here.

And the question itself if as simple as hell - has anyone figured out how to bypass this constant device rebooting while working with audio on iOS? Maybe I’m missing something?
I remember that for the Mac I eventually found a combo of 2-3 terminal commands that sort-of helped - meaning that by using them I was able to at least noticeably inclrease the timeframe between those reboots - but still just to this point, as restarting the device was necessary at some point anyway.
But for iOS i can’t even come up with a single workaround for years already. The best I could think was to try to perform an intentional respring, since I remember that this action existed in glorious days of jailbreak, but seems that it continues to exist only in that universe of jailbroken devices, didn’t find anything helpful for non-JB’-en.

Still this issue seems so dumb that I get the feeling that I’m most likely just unaware of some kind of obvious-hiding-on-the-surface solution. I mean, how many years more should humanity suffer from this loool? I’m definitely not the only one who finds it super-disturbing for creative proccess, right?
If anybody is able to give an advice, please do so 🙏🏽

Appreciate your replies, homes & thanks in advance!

NeuM

I've had to hard reboot the ole iPad Pro whenever things get buggy and that usually fixes slowdowns and other weird problems which might come up. Might be just a case of "it is what it is"? Apple doesn't commit a lot of resources to listening to what musicians want, so I have to take a minute, consider the alternatives and remember that they're usually worse.

Gravitas

I know what you’re saying.

I tend to do the heavy lifting during the creative process
and the finesse in a Mastering app to add the final touches
and it’s during the heavy lifting that idevices etc can falter.
Mastering requires much less CPU.

Rebooting the memory seems to do that very well on idevices.

Hold the Power button until the power off screen appears and
then hold press the Home button until the passcode screen appears.
When you’ve entered your passcode the OS clears the memory and removes
all active apps or threads etc which is also good for clearing the cache.
I don’t know if that has changed for the ipads that don’t have
a Home button so someone else could chime in here.

🙏🏾

NeuM

@Gravitas said:
I know what you’re saying.

I tend to do the heavy lifting during the creative process
and the finesse in a Mastering app to add the final touches
and it’s during the heavy lifting that idevices etc can falter.
Mastering requires much less CPU.

Rebooting the memory seems to do that very well on idevices.

Hold the Power button until the power off screen appears and
then hold press the Home button until the passcode screen appears.
When you’ve entered your passcode the OS clears the memory and removes
all active apps or threads etc which is also good for clearing the cache.
I don’t know if that has changed for the ipads that don’t have
a Home button so someone else could chime in here.

🙏🏾

A hard reboot (which is a complete shutdown) clears the memory on all iOS devices, regardless of whether you have a newer or an older model.

Pandan

I have an older iPad, and once I learned of rebooting the memory as explained above by @Gravitas , I rarely ever need to completely reboot. For devices without home buttons, it’s an extra step or two, but still faster than a complete reboot I think:

1. Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Turn on AssistiveTouch.
2. Return to Settings, scroll down to shut down your device.
3. Tap AssistiveTouch icon and long press virtual Home button.

Pandan

@Pandan said:
I have an older iPad, and once I learned of rebooting the memory as explained above by @Gravitas , I rarely ever need to completely reboot. For devices without home buttons, it’s an extra step or two, but still faster than a complete reboot I think:

1. Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Turn on AssistiveTouch.
2. Return to Settings, scroll down to shut down your device.
3. Tap AssistiveTouch icon and long press virtual Home button.

I should add: make sure to save any work you are in the middle of, as once you reboot the memory, all open and background running apps reset as if you did do a hard reboot

lurch_space

Hey, really didn’t expected the replies to appear so soon - a sign of a great community for sure.
Thanks for any time taken to post a feedback for all of you!

back2thesubject
I can see that resetting memory is #1 advise here. I’ve actually tried this trick a while a go but back then it seemed like it didn’t make any much of a difference, but it might have been misinterpretation of some kind on my side or I might have done it wrong to at any point. Anyway since everyone had luck with this one, i will give it another shot for sure.
My device still has the touchid/home button - it’s the new SE, so I should be able to perform it in an old-fashioned manner lol.

@CapnWillieCapnWillie I actually reboot my device with AssistiveTouch rather than using hardware buttons. I’ve set up AT to appear on thenscreen after Home-triple-tap, and AT itself set up to trigger reboot by long-press. Basically it’s the only thing I use it for, so as soon as long-pressed, the phone shows prompt “Are you sure you want to restart your iPhone?” and before hitting “Yes” I triple tap home button again to hide AT away, so once rebooted it doesn’t show up automatically.

Thelast27

@Pandan said:
I have an older iPad, and once I learned of rebooting the memory as explained above by @Gravitas , I rarely ever need to completely reboot. For devices without home buttons, it’s an extra step or two, but still faster than a complete reboot I think:

1. Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Turn on AssistiveTouch.
2. Return to Settings, scroll down to shut down your device.
3. Tap AssistiveTouch icon and long press virtual Home button.

Thanks for this! I wonder if there’s a way to make this into a shortcut via the shortcut app?