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iGrand not so grand afterall.
So I have been having major problems with iGrand, and I have the full paid version.
Here is my conversation with tech support at IK Multimedia.
Anyone else having this problem?
In my original email I said Sampletank was doing the same thing, but after backing the volume off a little the problem went away in Sampletank, but not in iGrand.
.........................................................................
Thu, Jun 13 2013 11:00am
Hello,
I am a musician trying to use my ipad mini for making music.
I have purchased the full versions of iGrand and SampleTank for ipad.
I have purchased many other music apps as well from other manufacturers.
And I have noticed when playing iGrand or Sampletank a distortion (like audio clipping which happens when overdriving a signal) when I play these two apps, and I have not noticed it when playing any other apps.
I have the headphone jack on the ipad plugged into a channel on my Mackie ProFX16 mixer, which then outputs to two JBL EON G2 active speakers.
Turning down the ipad volume doesn't help, it still sounds distorted, just quieter.
Turning down the volume in the apps, does help once I get down below 50% or so, but then I have to turn the mixer up really high to compensate, and get a usable volume level. And even then the distortion doesn't go away completely, it just gets better. It's as if the two apps have such a loud output signal it is overdriving the ipad's DA converters.
Has anyone else reported this?
I mentioned it in some forums, and several others said they experienced the same thing with IK apps.
Is this something that can be fixed in an update?
Will it be anytime soon?
I absolutely love the piano sounds in iGrand and the other sounds in SampleTank, and I would love to use these apps with my midi keyboard in a live setting, but until the distortion issue is resolved I won't be able to. Unless I just use some different apps, but I'd rather not because the sound are really good in both of my IK apps.
I recorded an example of what I'm talking about.
I used Audiobus to patch iGrand into Garageband on this recording.
When I start hitting the keys hard, you can really hear the distortion. Not so much in the softer parts.
Also, as a sidenote, I know this complaint has been made many times before, but I'd like to make it again. Please remove the advertisements in the full version of your apps. Advertisements make sense in a free version, and I completely get that. Even if an ad popped up every 5 minutes in the free version, no one in their right mind would complain. But in the paid version (especially when an app is $20, which is not a cheap app at all) to still get ads in the paid version is really not acceptable. Many times in the app world, the sole reason people upgrade to a full version is to get rid of the annoying ads.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Support Area: IK Multimedia USA
Product: iGrand Piano for iPad
Device: iPad mini
OS: iOS 6.1.3
.........................................................................
Thu, Jun 13 2013 11:44am - Daniel Llosa
Hello Wayne,
Thanks for your email.
Let's go ahead and close down all the apps currently running on your iPad mini. Now open up only iGrand Piano.
First make sure the volume knob in any piano in iGrand Piano is not set to the maximum level. Also check your keyboard to make sure it is not set to max volume.
Play from here and let me know if it is still distorting.
Now go to Menu then Settings. At the top of the screen there is an output level setting with a meter. Make sure you adjust the output volume to a nominal level, using the meter to make sure your levels are not going over.
I am forwarding your requests about the in-app advertisements to our development team as a user request. Thanks for your feedback.
If you need additional help, please reply to this email.
Thanks,
Daniel Llosa
Technical Support
IK Multimedia. Musicians First.
.........................................................................
Thu, Jun 13 2013 11:56am
I will try this when I get home.
Im at work right now, and all I have is some computer speakers to try
this on.Best I can tell its not distorting, but its not very loud
either.
I have the volume knob on the piano set right in the middle (50%),
and then the level bar in the settings menu is set at "-10"
The bad thing is some other apps dont have an app volume like this
one, so if I have iGrand turned way down like this, and I combine it
with another app in Audiobus, the other app will be way louder than
iGrand.
But in spite of all of that, if I try this at home this evening and I
dont get distortion, I will be a happy customer.
If I could ask one more question about Sampletank.
When I have several parts layered in Sampletank, I can select one
part, and then adjust the volume for that part, and then select the
next and adjust the volume, etc.And I can get the individual parts
layered nicely this way, where everything is at the appropriate
level. And then when I assign my midi controller slider to CC#7, I
can adjust the volume from my controller which is very nice. But when
I do, it adjusts the level for all the different parts together, and
they all jump to the position of my slider, and thus my mix goes out
the window and all parts are instantly the same level.
Is there a way around this where I can adjust the overall volume of
Sampletank with my controller, without changing the mix of the parts?
.........................................................................
On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 11:44 AM, wrote:
Thu, Jun 13 2013 12:04pm - Daniel Llosa
Hello,
Thanks for your reply.
The way you are adjust the volume will affect all parts and set them all to the same level. You can try adjusting the output level from SampleTank the same way you did with iGrand Piano.
Also, setting the iPad levels will affect all parts as well.
If you need additional help, please reply to this email.
Thanks,
Daniel Llosa
Technical Support
IK Multimedia. Musicians First.
.........................................................................
Fri, Jun 14 2013 1:26pm
I tried turning the piano volume to 50%, and the master app volume (in
the menu) to "-20", and the the ipad volume to 75%, and still I could
barely hear the distortion. And the output volume was so low it was
unusable for my purposes. When combined with other apps in Audiobus,
the other apps are just 10 times louder and dont distort at all.
I am going to keep iGrand on my ipad in the hopes that IK will fix
this problem eventually.Another problem when I try to record iGrand
into Garageband via AudioBus, it studders every once in a while, and
ruins the recording. I start over and play a few bars, and it does it
again. Other apps (including Sampletank) work just fine in this
configuration and dont studder at all.
Maybe if I turn all the volumes down to 25% I can get rid of the
distortion, but should I really have to do that?
Comments
I too have been aware of iGrand's habit of distorting audio.
I also hear audible squeaks (what IK suggested may be a heavy hammer action) within the samples of a certain octave in a couple of the models.
But it is generally a beautiful sounding app.
Fingers crossed the distortion issue gets remedied.
Can't see them changing the few tainted samples though.
I wonder if most people just listen on ear buds so they can't really hear the distortion.
I'll bet it's a universal problem, even if most people have not noticed it or reported it.
Maybe it's the ear buds but I have not heard the distortion. I will try it thru my mixer and my monitors this weekend and see if I get the same issue!
It's most obvious when the piano volume, master app volume, and ipad volume are all above 75% or so.
I really wish they would fix this, because it sounds so good except for that.
Interesting. Before I even noticed this thread, earlier I was playing with ST and noticed it and did the same thing by turning ST volume down and it went away. I had never noticed it before so not sure if it came in the last update or what but I had nothing else running in the background, I was using earbuds, iPad volume was around 50%
I learned the volume trick from using ifretless
Is it just me or should we not have to deal with that?
I mean if (-15) is the max app volume before distortion kicks in, then (-15) should be the max volume period. It would've been easy enough to do for the developers to just make that the max.
I mean dealing with hardware preamps and mixers and whatnot, I expect to have to make sure I get my gain stage set up properly, but in an app? I really don't think it should be capable of overdriving anything.
My problems too, is that if I turn down the levels low enough to not distort, then they are just too low in general.
Apps like Alchemy have no audible distortion even maxed out on volume. So clearly it's possible to do. And that's just one example.
This is another reason a mixer (controllable by CC preferably) within AudioBus would be ideal. Because even if distortion wasn't an issue, there is still the issue that each app has a different overall max volume level. Sure you could swap around between apps and adjust them individually that way, assuming all the apps have an app volume adjuster.
But wouldn't it be easier to have all of that in once place?
@keeverw I don't have igrand but it seems like an acoustic piano app is going to want to give users the maximum dynamic range seeing as pianos are so dynamic. If -15 is your top point, maybe you're just a big bad stride piano rocker and the folks playing soft tingly light touch new age piano need extra boost.
That said, sticking a transparent w1 style brick wall limiter on the end of the signal chain doesn't seem like it would be hard from a company that makes desktop mastering tools!
Lol
I think I'm probably an average player.
But there are ways to get plenty of dynamic range and not distort.
The grand piano that comes with BS-16i for example.
@ IK Multimedia,
I know you have representatives who monitor this forum.
Any word about this from the developer?
We have the same problem in iFretless. There are a lot of compromises you have to make when making an app that responds to midi velocity with a range of output volumes.
In our own app, we design with the following principles:
@Blue_Mangoo I ran into all the same issues on guitarism and did all the same things you did
But I do agree with @keeverw that users should never have clipping and should not need to think about this stuff. It's part of the 'deal' people have with apps in general.
I think there should be some kind of brick wall limiter as @syrupcore suggests. I'm not an expert on mastering but when I ran into this issue I did some online research on limiter algorithms and coded a lightweight one into guitarism that seems to work well enough, though it's pretty rudimentary. Apple provides a peak limiter AU in iOS 5+ though I haven't tried it - any verdict on that from other devs?
I think there's a confusion that I wasn't thinking of when i posted the previous post. Here's a quick explanation:
There are two ways to turn down the volume of an iPad app.
1) IPAD VOLUME - Set the iOS device main sound output to a lower level. This is usually done with the controls on the side of the device but apps can control it with a slider, usually labeled simply "volume".
2) APP VOLUME - Reduce the range of numerical values that the app is sending to the iOS audio output. This can also be controlled by a slider in the app, usually labeled simply "volume".
There are two types of volume controls; totally different in function; both called simply "volume" and there is usually no obvious message to tell the user which of the two types the app's volume control adjusts.
ABOUT APP VOLUME
Apps generate audio digitally, which means that the sound they generate comes in the form of numbers. To convert these numbers into sound, the app relies on the iOS software and hardware. This happens in two steps:
1) The digital sound stream, in the form of numbers, is converted by a digital-to-analog converter into an electrical wave, where the sound waves are represented as waves of varying positive and negative voltages.
2) The electrical sound signal is strengthened by a small amplifier and sent to the speaker or headphones.
In step 1), the digital-to-analog converter expects a certain range of numbers in the input. iOS supports various standards but let's say, for example, that it's expecting the numbers to be decimals in the range between -1 and +1. The app must not ever send a number larger than 1 or smaller than -1 because if it sends a number that the d-to-a converter was not designed to recognise, the output will not be as expected. For example, if the d-to-a converter has a maximum input of 1 and it receives the number 1.22 as input, a typical thing to do would be to cut off the extra .22 and treat the input as 1 instead. This will distort the sound.
Apps that don't have a lot of dynamics can just set the "app volume" to a fixed setting and it will be fine. But if you're dealing with dynamics, you really need to adjust both the app volume and the iPad volume seperately. Otherwise you can get situations where the iPad volume is all the way up and the sound is still too soft or the ipad volume is low and the sound is still distorting in the digital part of the signal path.
These things have always been happening with digital instruments but in the past, people bought dedicated hardware to make music. On an electronic keyboard, the preamplifier and A-to-D converter are designed to give you plenty of volume in the headphones or speakers even when the digital signal is small. But the iPad hardware was originally designed to play mp3's and digital music, not to be a musical instrument. Apple apparently didn't want to design a device that was capable of destroying our eardrums with it's output power. So the max volume of the device is just enough to comfortably listen to mp3's. But it's not enough to boost a pianissimo note from iGrand into the comfortably audible range. For that, you need an external amplifier, or else you need to turn up the app volume beyond the safe operating range.
@Rhism, we always have to think about this but with iFretless guitar it was possible to set reasonable volume defaults so that the users wouldn't have to think about it, just as you said with guitarism. With iFretless bass, it was not so easy. The low frequencies are a lot harder to hear and you really need to get the volume up to get them through small speakers. I suspect iGrand has the same difficulty because the piano has notes down in that range.
@Blue_Mangoo Nobody would claim it's not tricky, but you managed it, others have managed it, IK have been doing VSTs for years, which must have the same issues, why can't they manage it?
@ Blue_Mangoo "People don't turn their car stereos up to 10 and expect to not hear anything rattle and buzz."
You said a lot, and I agree with most of it, just wanted to comment on this.
You are right I don't expect to be able to turn it up 100% without some distortion, but I do expect to be able to turn it up to 75% without distortion.
To me the solution is to have a settings option, to select how you are connected.
Or if there was a way it could automatically detect it, that would be fine too.
Another thing I guess that troubles me is that while iGrand may not be the only app with this issue, there do seem to be a large number of apps that don't have this problem.
And another thing, I have sent iGrand to GarageBand via audiobus, and recorded it.
Then exported the file to soundcloud and listened in my car, and on my computer speakers, and even listening to that recording at low volume levels I hear a lot of distortion, because the distortion was recorded.
The DA converters in the ipad were not even part of that process. iGrand generated digital audio, and that digital audio was recorded in Garage band, and then exported as a file. Then the DA converters in my phone (which are probably not great) converted it to analog. Or in the case of I listened on my computer, it was the DA converters in my Tascam US122L that converted it to analog. Because of that, to me it seems like the problem is in the app itself.
I think I figured out the distortion problem.
When I used my Mackie mixer as my USB interface, as opposed to just taking the headphone output from the iPad into the mixer, there was no distortion.
So to fix the distortion problem, apparently I just need a good audio interface.
But there is another problem.
When I open iGrand by itself, it does ok, but when I open up any other app with it in Audiobus, it gets all glitchy, like I'm running out of ram, or processor power or something. So it's still not a viable option for live use for me, unless I am playing piano only, which I usually don't.
Hi I noticed on one of your answers in regards to the distortion issues on the Igrand, could you tell me exactly how you used your macki board as your usb interface. I don't quite understand. I have a qu 16 digital mixer and would love to use this app in a live application. Right now I am taking the audio right from my ipad directly into a speaker as my qu hasn't arrived yet, I just sold my mackie, any way could u show me pics or tell me exactly how u used the mackie as a usb interface.
Thanks your the first person that seem to solve this issue from what I can read, but I need more details, like what wire goes where, I have a yamaha cp300 and my ipad is going directly to the usb on the back of my keyboard. I really hope you can help me.
Many Thanks,
Denis
So, there's me reading this thread thinking... "Hmmm - I thought they fixed some of these issues ... and others seem potentially hardware related - Oh... it's a thread from 2013"
No they didn't fix the igrand distortion issue just tried it today!
Oh - I was thinking of the ads issue @denis the menace - and reading back, seemed like the distortion issue was jack vs. USB but perhaps there's another ongoing issue unsolved too.
I have it and it sounds awesome!! I put it on my monitors, headphones and he no distortion at all, no clipping. By the way, I'm using the UCA 222 from Berifhnher. IOS8.2 Air 1.
Mine pops and crackles due to overpower i guess. The free version anyway, too bad cause it was dope sounding