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What are REAL BENEFITS of AUDIO UNITS?(vs.apps)
As opposed to apps.
Will apps be obsolete in music making soon?
I will start the bidding with it has the potential to allow companies relaunch apps that have shot their proverbial load "nudging" people to re-buy previous apps that have been abandoned for the shiny new Audio Unit version.
What do you know about Audio Units and how they real world benefit IOS musicians and producers?
Comments
The biggest plus is of course that you can have several instances of the same app which was/is still one of the main thing i miss in iOS!
But one of the good thing is that iOS apps all started as stand alone, that many if them has a build in recorder and/or midi in/out options which are great (like Nave, Animoog f.e.).
I have not tried any AUs yet, but I asked a Q over at iPM the other day about preset saving, and was informed that, yes, AUs also support preset saving which is a big plus over IAA - but not of course over AB
In addition to good points already mentioned, there shouldn't be any sync issues, anything syncable should automatically sync to the host.
You don't have to keep switching apps. It's a hugely improved experience simply because of that.
As I understand there is less cpu overhead to run an instance of an AU than it is to run a separate application?
The question is for me why not use that technology / programming in the actual original app?
I know it sounds naive, but, sometimes simple questions lead to greater details.
I appreciate all your feedback on this issue.
Here is my major issue personally I am mulling over regarding AU.
I ask myself this.
Do upgrades to IOS often lead to issues and problems?
Are there still a number of apps with issues and functionality faults?
Is Apple a pain when it comes to dealing with developers trying to improve apps?
Will Audio Units help simplify or complicate IOS music making?
Will Apple have another leverage option when dealing with music apps? Are they positioning themselves as "gatekeepers" beyond just the app being in the Itunes store?
This is my mindset currently.
I am probably going to hold off for a loooong time on ios9 and AU... No rush at all... Particularly because of the super slow trickle of apps and that none of my daws support it. If modstep supports it one day and there are at least three au apps i really really want then i will then consider it.
Until the lowest common denominator for iOS gets more powerful, there are significant limits placed on how many resources Apple will allow an AU to use. With GB now supporting input AU, hopefully we will see more of them.
I think this whole story of AUs on iOS a little ninja move from Apple trying to reach the same market Win10 does, integrating desktop users to mobile.
I think it is a choice aimed to those who don't already use iOS for music production but have a full fledged digital studio with all kinds of AU they can migrate to iOS.
Like some years ago Macs were considered to be the holy grail for graphic designers I think that at Apple they're trying to get the largest share of the larger and much more influential market of music making. Just think about brand image: Apple had good times taking MacBooks on every movie, tv show or else. It encouraged the average user to desire a Mac but the truth is that a computer on a screen is just a prop. If you migrate this whole system to the music industry, from learning to the very top end of the industry(the musicians), you'll see pocket apples on every concert, at schools, in every studio for mixed purposes, from remote controlling external gear to live tracking to live and offline processing. And all of these because music is life and viceversa since ever: everyone in the world(and I don't think I'm getting wrong when I say the whole humanity) was thought to play music in some form.
I am not an iOS developer so I am making an assumption here that the hardware and OS architecture is much like windows in how it works.
With IAA the processes run in their own memory space and the process used by the instrument or effect are not controlled by anything. This means that you have to implement measures to enable the processes to talk to each other in order that they can stay in sync or load and save presets or start and stop playback. This is the reason that most hosts and IAA's talk to each other using MIDI as it is a communication channel that is available at the OS level
With AU's the process is running in the same memory space as the host, the processes used by the instrument or effect itself is started by and controlled by the host. What this means is that there are a whole bunch of technical issues surrounding memory access and multi-threading and cross process communication that just don't exist.
Exist prior to Audio Unit implementation? Correct?
Yes....with AU, developers no longer need to worry about those issues so they can concentrate on making their excellent synths and effects and hosts have great sound and functionality instead of worrying about how it all behaves itself together
Of course it isn't all rosey, with AU there is a memory limit, which initially is both good and bad, synths and effects need to be efficient for a memory point of view, and it means that stuff that relies on lots of samples will struggle, but they will just become more memory efficient meaning they will perform better
The only thing is the graphical "rules" here. It´s a good idea in general for iOS but then i don´t think we see great synths like Tera, Cube, Poseidon, Nave etc. as AU because i couldn´t imagine how to fit these in a smaller UI. Sunrizer would fit well here. Dagger synth too.
But since i doesn´t use any AU extensions i ask me if it´s always a one screen UI or can i scroll within an AU trough different pages too.
Having an iPad Mini, the normal size and now the Pro size is a big problem here i think.
Perhaps they could run as stand alone/IAA apps in their normal full screen mode for full patch programming but then have a 'tweaking' optimised UI for AU by default that you can expand to the full view and scroll around in if you like.
Maybe... but as great as it all sounds my latest experience while i tryed to make an iPhone only track shows me how unstable iOS still is. It even seems a lot more unstable than a few years ago. I´m a bit scared that things go worse here soon. This was holding me back again from the last klick to my iPad Pro order
I think the best thing for me is waiting for iOS 10 and the second generation of iPad Pro and the iPad Air 3 as well.
Last but not least im very interested what they are cooking about a new Macbook Pro 15".
At the moment they have to much experimental things going on and i don´t see a clear line here.
They must deliver really more now to hold the tablet music buisness.... but then..... do they really care about it?
iSem AU in GB has all the controls you get in the full screen and, on a Pro, still looks completely usable; it big like on a iPhone 6+ More or less.nthey just optimized the navigation between pages.
Can't post a screenshot tho, image too big. Damn resolution
But how does it look on an iPad Mini?
I guess smaller:)
BTW just discover there is an option to run a non graphic interface a la reaper(much better tho since vsts aren't always well labeled on the parameter side) where you can access all the parameter.
(To add those images I had to "resemble" in portrait mode and crop to get their size to fit)
Total recall within a DAW environment (and no,AB state saving is definitely NOT a replacement to me) and using multiple instances are the biggest advantages for me.I just don't want to worry about my work still being there next time i open a project anymore.Or setting up everything manually before i can start working.Sample accurate timing is another step forward (gotta try later if that's really the case with iSEM).Last but not least,Automation and no app switching needed.All good stuff.
Yes, but actually this synch mechanism is exactly equal to the one that already came with Inter-App Audio. It just seems a lot of devs either don't bother to implement it, or do it wrong.
No, there's "host callbacks" that allow the host to send transport state (play/pause/record etc) as well as sample accurate sync signal and tempo. It's exactly the same for both IAA and AU.
For MIDI, there's a direct way to send sample-accurate MIDI events to a hosted IAA app or AU plugin, no need to go through CoreMIDI virtual ports, and certainly no need to use it for clock sync or start/stop.
Actually, on iOS even AU's run in a separate process. But each such process holds multiple instances of the same AU.
Since you are here..... where are the AU versions of your apps! If there are apps needed as AU, then yours!
Does this mean it is relatively easy to convert IAA to AU ?
No it's not, especially for apps that have a certain UI already that doesn't adhere to Garageband's resolution restrictions.
Apart from that it's not worth it for developers to add AU support to existing apps, because AU support cannot be monetized and Apple does nothing to promote AU apps.
For new apps it might be slightly different, but it's still more work for little more payoff. The multi instance thing isn't that great either because only relatively new devices like the Air 2 can really make full use of it - if they're not running into memory issues, which there still seem to be.
Cheers guys, it's nice to get the technical perspective. This helps me a lot when deciding on whether to invest in Hardware or Software.
These are all great points, and the reason I look forward to AU as well!
I must commend myself for another stellar thread testing the knowledge and creative thinking of such very impressive forum members.
IAA has been a crappy standard. It's open to interpretation how to implement parts of it, resulting in the issues we all know and love, especially after upgrades. AU, from what I have heard, is a tighter standard that will reduce the number of such problems. It will become more important as people demand it, and more AU plugins become available. That is the only incentive any dev has to implement it.