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DRC's background activity was causing "phantom" noise on iPad Pro 10.5
After the audio/latency debacle on the new Pros, most of the hubbub seemed to die down.
But, even after upgrading iOS 11, I was still having one weird audio problem. After my iPad had been turned on for some time, it would make a "swishing" noise. The only solution was turning it of and on, or a soft reset. regardless, the noise would always come back.
The other day, I decided to check my iPad battery usage. I noticed that DRC used 30% of the battery in the last 24 hours. This was especially weird, because I hadn't launched DRC. But, when I checked DRC's settings, it had background activity turned on. (The default?)
Anyway, I turned off DRC's background activity, and I haven't had the problem for about 48 hours now. My suspicion is that DRC also had mic access, and this is some kind of feedback issue. It also makes me wonder if there is still a lurking problem with iOS 11 that has only been patched, but not truly fixed.
Would anyone with a new Pro be willing to turn on DRC's background activity, and see if they can duplicate the problem? I am going to try to duplicate it myself. But I am pretty curious how DRC got the permission (if I didn't absentmindedly turn it on at some point.)
Comments
I still say it's witchcraft!
I had such higher hopes for your reply : )
What is DRC?
I think something similar happened to me a few weeks ago with DRC, pretty sure I was on my Air 2 so might not be pro specific.
I just booted DRC, and the noise returned. Changing presets fixed it. I’m convinced this was an app issue, and not a system issue.
Unfortunately, that is a mistake often made by many, John!
One of the best-sounding synths on the ipad/iphone. Not AU.... yet.
Maybe the devs could help? I see a chat window on their website.
https://www.imaginando.pt/
I’ve always found the devs for this to be pretty helpful, so I second getting in touch with them
I believe the dev is @sinosoidal on this forum
I had what seems like a related issue. I didn’t get noise, but I actually had two days where the battery on my iPad Pro (12.9” 2017 Edition) was draining super fast and when I looked at what was using the power, it turned out to be DRC; it was responsible for over 70% of my battery usage!!! And it was so bad it was on the list of apps using up the battery for 4 days, even after I deleted it. I have no current intention of reinstalling it. I don’t particularly like background activity and certainly not from a synth app that’s not connected to anything. I’ll just content myself with other great sounding synths on iOS. I’m hard pressed to see a scenario where I’m willing to give what seems to me to be really sloppy development another chance.
'what seems to me to be really sloppy development' that's not very fair, really
what's sloppy is the way people close down their sessions!? i've DRC and haven't had this problem. the app behaves no differently from any other standalone as far as my experience goes. i got in to the habit of checking the available midi with the last iaa to see if anything was still chugging along in background but don't really need to do it now. close the host then the standalones and all's good. DRC's quality
What are you talking about?! If you’d read my post, I never opened DRC and started a session. I hadn’t used it for weeks.
No other app behaves this way.
ok. i stand corrected. now we have apps that open themselves. lol. how convenient. next is... apps that play themselves
I can't imagine that it opened itself. Im sort of baffled. This has been going on for months, with plenty of restarts, and not launching DRC, so it is weird.
I had the same issue here. Noticed by battery was used 80% by DRC, while I don't remember launching it. Rebooted, closed everything, but in the following days it popped up again in battery usage. I had to uninstall it in the end
I have seen apps ‘start themselves’ after being updated. They were suddenly in my active apps list while I was sure I hadn’t opened them in months. That has been going on since at least iOS9 for me (not just audio apps).
Since iOS 11 I’ve seen some bizarre behaviour with IAA apps, but I won’t say anymore as people will get the idea I just have it in for IAA lol
Oh, that's an interesting theory. You're suggesting I may have been opening something that triggerd an IAA launch of DRC without me knowing?
Yes basically
I had the same thing on mini 4. Hadn’t been using DRC in months and after updating to iOS 11.2 I suddenly noticed the battery draining much faster than usual. DRC was showing up as guilty under battery in settings. I also noticed the constant soft hiss when putting my ears to the speakers with nothing running at all. DRC deleted for now. There’s certainly something weird to be fixed here and it’s definitely not related to iPad Pro.
Please have a good look into this @sinosoidal, it’s a mess.
Hey,
When iOS 11 arrived we started to have this weird reports of DRC draining battery. DRC will only suck battery if it is running. To be running there are only two logical ways, the app is in foreground, the app is in background. By default, when the app is in background, when task manager is open, you can see DRC there. @johnfromberkeley can you tell me if that is the case? I have always assumed this was the problem. People not realising that DRC was open in background.
DRC has a background audio option that was requested by users in order to be able to play without being in foreground and not in a inter-app audio session. If DRC is not being explicitly launched, something is triggering it. There aren't many possibilities here. Actually I can only see two: a request for an inter-app audio session or the app is being mysteriously open when a push notification is received. In both cases, I believe the app must be then available in background on the task manager. If that doesn't happen, I have never seen such thing happening.
I have iOS 11 on my phone. I receive push notifications from DRC and they don't open the app. So I'm kinda of secure of this one. I don't do many IAA sessions these days so I can't talk for the other option.
The app that drains more battery on my phone is Mail not even DRC is on the list.
I'm currently beta testing DRC 1.1.7. If there is a problem I would be happy in sorting it out. I surely don't want a bad experience for DRC users and lovers. But please, if you find a pattern, let me know. For us developers, the most efficient way of solving a problem is having a way of replicating it.
Everyone who has suffered from this problem, please do find a way of replicating this so I can sort it out.
I personally don't believe the audio engine could be running without the app being on the task manager listed. @brambos can you confirm this?
Best regards,
Nuno Santos
PS: checkout Imaginando's new website
Obviously I don't know the innards of iOS like their own engineers, but I can't see how a standalone app could be using resources if it isn't in the task manager. I also can't see how an app could launch itself into the task manager if not started by either the user or the operating system.
I'm quite certain that DRC is victim of some unfortunate iOS buggaroo and that Nuno/Imaginando have very little influence over this. What I have observed is that IAA as a system is increasingly naughty, with much more zombies and other oddness sticking around lately.
...
When an app is started by IAA, it will not be visible in the task manager until the app has manually or programatically been moved to foreground at least once. This is the whole reason we have the "IAA zombie" problem.
I don't know about push notifications (never used them) but theoretically I think it would be possible for your app to "wake up" from the push notification and then start its audio engine and thus keep running in the background. I'm pretty sure that the same thing as with IAA happens here regarding the task manager. If the app hasn't been in foreground, it won't show up in task manager.
Hey,
When iOS 11 arrived we started to have this weird reports of DRC draining battery. DRC will only suck battery if it is running. To be running there are only two logical ways, the app is in foreground, the app is in background. By default, when the app is in background, when task manager is open, you can see DRC there. @johnfromberkeley can you tell me if that is the case? I have always assumed this was the problem. People not realising that DRC was open in background.
DRC has a background audio option that was requested by users in order to be able to play without being in foreground and not in a inter-app audio session. If DRC is not being explicitly launched, something is triggering it. There aren't many possibilities here. Actually I can only see two: a request for an inter-app audio session or the app is being mysteriously open when a push notification is received. In both cases, I believe the app must be then available in background on the task manager. If that doesn't happen, I have never seen such thing happening.
I have iOS 11 on my phone. I receive push notifications from DRC and they don't open the app. So I'm kinda of secure of this one. I don't do many IAA sessions these days so I can't talk for the other option.
The app that drains more battery on my phone is Mail not even DRC is on the list.
I'm currently beta testing DRC 1.1.7. If there is a problem I would be happy in sorting it out. I surely don't want a bad experience for DRC users and lovers. But please, if you find a pattern, let me know. For us developers, the most efficient way of solving a problem is having a way of replicating it.
Everyone who has suffered from this problem, please do find a way of replicating this so I can sort it out.
I personally don't believe the audio engine could be running without the app being on the task manager listed. But you
Jonatan, this is incredibly helpful, specially coming from a experienced iOS developer perspective as yourself. Maybe I'm not acting as I should be, detecting if I'm still on a IAA session or not, to keep audio enabled or disabled. Do you think that might be other cases? Thx!
Lolwut? That does explain the zombie-problem indeed. But what sort of bizarro thought-process could have possibly led to that decision? They're knowingly initiating an unstoppable audio rendering process?
I’ve been experiencing some really odd behaviour with IAA since iOS 11. Yes, even more weird than usual lol.
When you click on a link that takes you to the App Store, there is a ‘back button’ (not sure what it’s really called). Well, before I started switching everything I can off in settings, this back button was showing the names of certain IAA apps that had not been opened since a restart! They were usually apps that had been used previously and had become IAA ghosts, but should have shut down after a restart. Now, I am not saying they were still in the background, but for them to appear as back buttons (only for a split second and then they disappeared) is odd.
The above is just one example of weird IAA behaviour I’ve had - hence I rarely use them now. IAA is just not stable enough IMO. It doesn’t matter what app, I just have the experience that if I use IAA, something will go weird eventually!
Maybe the "background audio" option is involved? If the user has enabled this option (and it's saved in user defaults or similar?), then the app wakes up due to a push notification, starts its engine and does not stop it because background audio option is enabled?
I think the best way to find out is to log your activity (starting engine, stopping engine, did launch, did terminate, etc) and send a test notification to see what actually happens. You can view the log later in xcode, or configure your xcode target to wait for executable to launch (so that you can start from a state where the app is not running).
I'm pretty confident that the push notifications don't start the audio engine otherwise I would feel it myself with battery drains from DRC. I will start by investigating this IAA behaviour first. Thanks for your input!
Well, an IAA node app that was started by an IAA host would in normal cases stop its audio engine when disconnected from the host - thus it won't actually be running in the background, only keep a zombie process that makes further IAA activity fail until the user manually launches and terminates the app.
However, there are a couple of cases where it could actually still be running, draining battery or make eerie noises: