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.

Is my iPad mini 2 too slow?

Hi everybody,

I need some feedback from iPad mini 2 (or comparable) users here. Lately, I've tried to get into using that thing for music making. Since I'm a guitar player and a singer, I'm mainly using it in that context.

A typical use case would be: Guitar -> GuitarJack USB interface -> Audiobus -> Jamup Pro -> Loopy HD. I also have a SoftStep foot pedal connected.

With a 128 sample buffer I don't get a stable audio stream at all. Setting it to 256 (which gives you a latency which is hard to bear) improves this but I still get occasional dropouts every minute or so. Notice, I'm only running an acoustic amp in Jamup, no big fx. Also, I have enough free disk space, bluetooth and wlan disabled etc.

Another example: Running just EchoPad as soon as I record a little loop and engage the movement capture thingy, the frame rate drops to about 1/s and the interface becomes unusable.

My questions:

Is this normal?

If not (which is my current guess) what should I do? Should I wipe the disk and reinstall everything? What would that do? Is this just voodoo or does it have a reality based background? ;-)

You can talk tech to me, I know computers and I've used my Mac for music making for 15 years :-)

Thanks a lot in advance,
A.

Comments

  • iPad mini 2 owner here as well. The CPU just doesnt take that much live calculations. I use all my apps with a buffre of 1024, with iOS 8 everything less than that gives you occasional hiccups. You can't yet compare the Performance you get from CoreAudio on your mac with that on your iPAD. As for a typical MAC Setup 128 Buffer is mostly going to be just ok for live Input things it is clearly not with this Setup.

  • I use my mini 2 (on 7.1.2) at 512 for synth apps with no noticeable latency in most cases. Some if I'm feeding it also from an external MIDI keyboard. 256 Should be fine with guitar and guitar apps. If I have a moment I'll check with my guitar rig setup.

  • Maybe try a quick reboot or tearing down your chain and rebuilding it one component at a time to isolate the problem. No problems here playing guitar through jamup, with drums (DM1, Seekbeats, etc.) playing at the same time (ipad mini w/ 7).

  • Thanks for your feedback so far and keep it coming. If someone who owns both JamUp and Loopy could rebuild my setup and give back a report that would be fantastic. Is it possible to get a stable setup with no dropouts with a 256 sample buffer? But all other hints are appreciated as well. I'm trying to decide whether I should go further down that road or stick to "real" music equipment for live use.

    @MusicInclusive: Yes, I'd definitely be interested in your report. :-)
    @solador78: I've done all that (see first post). What buffer setting do you use? Have you ever tried Loopy together with JamUp?

  • edited March 2015

    @Axxx

    Sorry, still don't see the part where you said that you rebooted the ipad, or that you tried jampup without loopy and the pedalboard and that you're still having these problems. If you've already done those things, then please disregard.

  • Just tried EchoPad... no glitches when recording.
    Then tried Jam-up into Loopy.. no glitches.
    Running AB at 512.
    Hope this helps.

  • @solador78: oops, sorry, my bad. I had mentioned the reboot stuff in an email I had just sent to someone and had confused both in my mind. I'll edit my first post.

  • Here's an update:

    I did a factory reset, but I'm still having the same issues:

    Jamup into Loopy through Audiobus at 256 samples gives crackles every 30 seconds or so.

    Holderness Echo Pad (alone; no other apps) becomes unusable when I record a short loop with its built in looper and engage the motion capture looper.

    All on an iPad mini 2 with ios 8.2.

    Here's what seemingly was possible in 2012 for others on presumably weaker iPads:
    http://forum.audiob.us/discussion/2/audiobus-demo-with-wavegenerator-jamup-loopy-and-funkbox

  • edited March 2015

    That's one of the annoying iOS 8 bugs. I have these dropouts with nearly all my apps (strange is some seems not to have this problem even if they use a lot of cpu). There is no chance to solve this for me. Whatever buffer i use... no different. Maybe iOS 8.3 or iOS 9.0 will change that. After about 6 months it would be really time. It seems even worse with the newest devices.... if i had bought one i would have not so much patience and trust in apple like others here ;)

  • So, basically, ios 8.2 is still broken for live input processing?! If it has been broken like that for half a year then maybe I should give up on it completely, because that would show that Apple is not dedicated to professional audio.

  • I am still having this issue with only Loopy through Audiobus. It happens at both 256 and 128. Doesnt seem to make a difference either which one I choose!

  • I'm on a mini 2 iOS 8.2. Zoom R8 as AI. For audio recording I stick to MTS because it's given me 0 issues — CPU usage is low and you can record at very low latency. I find it doesn't pay to have too many apps in the chain when recording on an ipad though. Things can get out of control pretty quick. So mostly I record with outboard gear and use the apps for after processing. It works fine with a couple of effect on a slot in MTS though. I has more problems recording direct to Auria ... because of all the processing I was using in my tracks.

  • @optimyst said:
    I am still having this issue with only Loopy through Audiobus. It happens at both 256 and 128. Doesnt seem to make a difference either which one I choose!

    What kind of interface?

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