Sample libraries. Strategies with storage?. iCloud, which sampler apps, storage...

tahiche · February 2021

Hi,
I just purchased all Sample From Mars library. It’s 50GB, right now sitting on a thumb drive.
I have a 128GB iPad and can’t, for obvious reasons, just have it all, so I’d like to hear tips or how you nice people handle this.

Starting point is that iPad storage is a bad mess. Sandboxed storage is a mess. To use a sample in an app you must import it, so it looks duplicated but they’re actually pointing to the same file @wim has talked about this before and i also reached the conclusion that that’s the case. But this is something that you have to trust because the numbers are unclear. For example, my iPad shows its using 84gb underneath that it show Drambo is taking up 10GB. I erase Drambo 8morted samples and Drambo is now 2GB but storage is still at 84GB. So we’re assuming those Drambo samples weren’t taking up space, they were pointers to the samples in the iPad drive, but the storage settings screen is telling you the opposite... a mess.
To finish off the storage madness, you can’t use sample files stored in an external hard drive, you have to import them first. So samples in an external storage makes sense if you’re not gonna use them, which doesn’t make sense..

Which brings me to iCloud and iDrive, I just upgraded to 200GB so I can handle sample libraries. But this department is also unclear. To use these files in regular apps like Drambo or AudioShare you have to import them, so they end up in the hard drive taking up space.
AudioLayer does seem to be able to work from iDrive... Does anyone know how this works?. When using local storage AudioLayer uses a private storage, much like Drambo, not accessible from files. But if you use iCloud... It obviously needs to bring the samples from the cloud to play them. Does it do it on demand?. Is it fast?. Is that temp cache handled efficiently or do you end up with GB of “stuck” space?. This would make sense to have a big sample library on iCloud that’s not taking up space on the iPad, it’s not like you use those samples everyday... but I really don’t know how it works.

The other option I’m thinking of is “minifying the samples”. Samples From Mars has very detailed instruments, with a sample for every note. That’s not a problem on desktop with external drives but it’s too much for the iPad. I don’t need 200 sample files for a synth patch, 40 would do just fine and it’d take up 1/5 of the space. I’m thinking of a Shortcuts app script to do this. Or is there a desktop solution for this?. This would sort of invalidate using AudioLayer, the main advantage of AudioLayer is that I can import EXS files that come with Sample from Mars, but it doesn’t handle missing files well. Ideally it would just fill in the gaps, but it doesn’t.

Anyway I hope to get some ideas and maybe someone has good tips as to storage/apps combinations, a good workflow to work with big sample libs in iPad.

Cheers!.

wim · February 2021

I don't know if you're up for it, but if you can get SFZ files or convert EXS to SFZ, it's possible to "minify" them. SFZ files are just text files. If you can figure out the lines to change and delete, you can roll your own smaller versions. Not for the faint of hear though.

tahiche · February 2021

@wim said:
I don't know if you're up for it, but if you can get SFZ files or convert EXS to SFZ, it's possible to "minify" them. SFZ files are just text files. If you can figure out the lines to change and delete, you can roll your own smaller versions. Not for the faint of hear though.

I’m definitely faint of heart!.
If I can work out a Shortcut script that loops a dir, keeps 1 sample and deletes the next 3, I’ll ditch the EXS importing and do the auto map files by name in Drambo. The Samples from Mars files are named right so the mapping seems to work.
Obviously using AudioLayer with the samples in iCloud I wouldn’t need to do that, since it supposedly doesn’t take much space ...

espiegel123 · February 2021

@tahiche said:

@wim said:
I don't know if you're up for it, but if you can get SFZ files or convert EXS to SFZ, it's possible to "minify" them. SFZ files are just text files. If you can figure out the lines to change and delete, you can roll your own smaller versions. Not for the faint of hear though.

I’m definitely faint of heart!.
If I can work out a Shortcut script that loops a dir, keeps 1 sample and deletes the next 3, I’ll ditch the EXS importing and do the auto map files by name in Drambo. The Samples from Mars files are named right so the mapping seems to work.
Obviously using AudioLayer with the samples in iCloud I wouldn’t need to do that, since it supposedly doesn’t take much space ...

Using iCloud downloads the samples to your local storage and deletes local copy if the OS thinks you need the space and aren't currently using the files. For large instruments, downloading can take a while. And you never know from session to session whether the OS will need to redownload.

You will need to have enough space on your device to accommodate the samples you will be using in a session.

How long it takes to download samples depends on your internet connection speed.

You mentioned that AudioLayer can use fIled on iDrive, are you sure?

tahiche · February 2021

@espiegel123 said:

You mentioned that AudioLayer can use fIled on iDrive, are you sure?

Yeah, that’s what is says on the manual and there’s a setting for that. It creates a folder in iDrive

Actually if you turn on iCloud setting you loose all the local instruments, so it’s one or the other (but you do have a setting to make a local copy).
As I said I have my doubts about this.

Wouldn’t mind waiting a bit for a download from iCloud to use an instrument, but that would be in the case I knew exactly which one I wanted!. It’s not like these samples are “violin” or ”piccolo flute” it’s patches named like “Rtype”, “LazyJones”, “BardsTale”, weird sounds, blips and glitchy that you need to preview. If AudioLayer had a “preview” thing where it saved one sample locally for you to listen... but it seems like it needs to download the 200 or whatever before you can hear anything.
The process you’re describing makes perfect sense, how the OS handles these files and deletes them when it sees you need the space. Like the “offloading” apps feature. Right?. I have some reservations, seeing how the storage numbers are basically misleading when it comes to duplicated files, or how there’s no way to force a cache clear. In short, I don’t trust the OS too much in this aspect in that you end up with a ton of space taken up by who knows what wasn’t properly cleared.

It really pisses me off that you can’t make proper use of external drives. It makes no sense other than they wanted me to spend 300€ extra to get a bigger iPad.
I know that if I make a bad choice now in not too long I’ll be stuck and waste a lot of time and space. But these Samples From Mars are so good!. If I don’t find a solution I’m comfortable with I’ll probably just cherry pick, reduce the number of samples per instrument, etc. Not fun or as nice as having the whole thing at your disposal, which is how it should be.

Cheers!

espiegel123 · February 2021

@tahiche said:

@espiegel123 said:

You mentioned that AudioLayer can use fIled on iDrive, are you sure?

Yeah, that’s what is says on the manual and there’s a setting for that. It creates a folder in iDrive

Actually if you turn on iCloud setting you loose all the local instruments, so it’s one or the other (but you do have a setting to make a local copy).
As I said I have my doubts about this.

Wouldn’t mind waiting a bit for a download from iCloud to use an instrument, but that would be in the case I knew exactly which one I wanted!. It’s not like these samples are “violin” or ”piccolo flute” it’s patches named like “Rtype”, “LazyJones”, “BardsTale”, weird sounds, blips and glitchy that you need to preview. If AudioLayer had a “preview” thing where it saved one sample locally for you to listen... but it seems like it needs to download the 200 or whatever before you can hear anything.

The process you’re describing makes perfect sense, how the OS handles these files and deletes them when it sees you need the space. Like the “offloading” apps feature. Right?. I have some reservations, seeing how the storage numbers are basically misleading when it comes to duplicated files, or how there’s no way to force a cache clear. In short, I don’t trust the OS too much in this aspect in that you end up with a ton of space taken up by who knows what wasn’t properly cleared.

It really pisses me off that you can’t make proper use of external drives. It makes no sense other than they wanted me to spend 300€ extra to get a bigger iPad.
I know that if I make a bad choice now in not too long I’ll be stuck and waste a lot of time and space. But these Samples From Mars are so good!. If I don’t find a solution I’m comfortable with I’ll probably just cherry pick, reduce the number of samples per instrument, etc. Not fun or as nice as having the whole thing at your disposal, which is how it should be.

Cheers!

When you say iDrive do you mean iiCloud Drive?

McD · February 2021

RE: AudioLayer and iCloud. It seems like a good idea until an instrument migrates up to the cloud and you want to load it. Maybe your away from Wi-Fi/Internet and just expected it to be there... it's not.

I started making AudioLayer instruments so large and importing excellent instruments that measure in GB's. Just installing some took 30-45 minutes due to cloud transfer issue.

I ended up using Local Storage for AudioLayer and stopped building big instruments in it.
I buy the big sampled instruments like Ravenscroft which loads in a few seconds. And I find
a few interesting samples can make a great AudioLayer instrument. A recording of a kitchen pan can bring a whole new sound to your iPad. Layering several kitchen instruments into a velocity sensitive instrument is more fun that waiting minutes for an instrument to load.

Someone may have better internet and tell you it works for them... I gave up.

espiegel123 · February 2021

@McD said:
RE: AudioLayer and iCloud. It seems like a good idea until an instrument migrates up to the cloud and you want to load it. Maybe your away from Wi-Fi/Internet and just expected it to be there... it's not.

I started making AudioLayer instruments so large and importing excellent instruments that measure in GB's. Just installing some took 30-45 minutes due to cloud transfer issue.

I ended up using Local Storage for AudioLayer and stopped building big instruments in it.
I buy the big sampled instruments like Ravenscroft which loads in a few seconds. And I find
a few interesting samples can make a great AudioLayer instrument. A recording of a kitchen pan can bring a whole new sound to your iPad. Layering several kitchen instruments into a velocity sensitive instrument is more fun that waiting minutes for an instrument to load.

Someone may have better internet and tell you it works for them... I gave up.

Do you find that Ravenscroft loads faster than a similar instrument in AudioLayer with local storage? I find AudioLayer to be reasonably quick to load big instruments when they are local.

Fingolfinzz · February 2021

If you got the whole bundle, the essential synths and essential drums folders are significantly smaller and only contain kits and just the c notes of the selected synths synths. I think both folders all together are only about a gigabyte. It saved me a bit of time when I was putting all the samples in the Drambo sampler

McD · February 2021

@espiegel123 said:
Do you find that Ravenscroft loads faster than a similar instrument in AudioLayer with local storage? I find AudioLayer to be reasonably quick to load big instruments when they are local.

That's good to know... I haven't tried any large instruments in AudioLayer lately except for maybe the JM Felt Piano and it does load fast. It's local storage that makes the difference
but then you hit the storage wall. I hit it about $500 ago. If I had spent that $500 on storage
I'd be happier now and have a lot of great apps to buy.

tahiche · February 2021

@Fingolfinzz said:
If you got the whole bundle, the essential synths and essential drums folders are significantly smaller and only contain kits and just the c notes of the selected synths synths. I think both folders all together are only about a gigabyte. It saved me a bit of time when I was putting all the samples in the Drambo sampler

I did think about this. So I don’t feel like an idiot having bought and downloaded the whole thing... This 1GB essential pack is only available when you buy the whole thing. Right?.
Actually it’s a good idea, you work with the little one and if there’s something that you absolutely love and require more detail you can make a pro version out of the big pack. I’m guessing besides having few samples, as you point out, not all patches are available in this Essential version. Right?. It’s like a “best of”?

tahiche · February 2021

@McD said:
RE: AudioLayer and iCloud. It seems like a good idea until an instrument migrates up to the cloud and you want to load it. Maybe your away from Wi-Fi/Internet and just expected it to be there... it's not.

I started making AudioLayer instruments so large and importing excellent instruments that measure in GB's. Just installing some took 30-45 minutes due to cloud transfer issue.

I ended up using Local Storage for AudioLayer and stopped building big instruments in it.
I buy the big sampled instruments like Ravenscroft which loads in a few seconds. And I find
a few interesting samples can make a great AudioLayer instrument. A recording of a kitchen pan can bring a whole new sound to your iPad. Layering several kitchen instruments into a velocity sensitive instrument is more fun that waiting minutes for an instrument to load.

Someone may have better internet and tell you it works for them... I gave up.

True and I insist...

Wouldn’t mind waiting a bit for a download from iCloud to use an instrument, but that would be in the case I knew exactly which one I wanted!. It’s not like these samples are “violin” or ”piccolo flute” it’s patches named like “Rtype”, “LazyJones”, “BardsTale”, weird sounds, blips and glitchy that you need to preview. If AudioLayer had a “preview” thing where it saved one sample locally for you to listen... but it seems like it needs to download the 200 or whatever before you can hear anything.

If you can’t browse your sounds in some sort of “teal time”. What the point?.

Regarding AudioLayer, it’s surprisingly fast loading instruments with loads of samples from local storage.

tahiche · February 2021

@Fingolfinzz said:
If you got the whole bundle, the essential synths and essential drums folders are significantly smaller and only contain kits and just the c notes of the selected synths synths. I think both folders all together are only about a gigabyte. It saved me a bit of time when I was putting all the samples in the Drambo sampler

So I checked the Essential folder. It contains a selection of instruments with just a few “C” notes. The problem it’s missing a lot of instruments. Take the following synth instruments from the “SID” pack. To the left is the Essential SID folder to the right the whole pack...

The Essential has 5 out of the 35 instruments. You only get one bass, and so on.

So I set out to “clean out” the samples but keep all instruments. Drastically reduce the samples per patch as in the Essential pack (just keep the C1, C2,C3... samples) but have all instruments.

I made a Shortcuts script (which I’m happy to share if you like), but Shorcuts is limited by sandbox (hate the stupid sandbox it’s always pin the way). That means you have to copy the samples there, run the script, copy back... Instead I’m gonna run a shell script in my desktop so I can put these “minified” versions on a thumb drive and only transfer those to the iPad.

tahiche · February 2021

This is the script i made. You run it with the path to the WAV folder containing the samples. The top level is fine as it will recurse through all the dirs. It will delete all non "C" note samples....

  #!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail
# call with path to WAV folder, like:
# ./delete-non-c-notes.sh CHIPS_SID_RARE/Sid_From_Mars/WAV
STARTDIR="$1"
sampleext="wav"
#set this to true to test what would be deleted, but not actually delete
TESTRUN=false
# try get path from param
STARTDIR=""
if [ -d "$1" ]; then
    STARTDIR=$1;
    echo "$STARTDIR exists"
else
    test !  "$1" &&  echo "need to pass dir as arg"
    echo "$STARTDIR is not a directory"
    exit 1;
fi

function checkDIR {
         #for file in $1/*
        SAVEIFS=$IFS
        IFS=$(echo -en "\n\b")
        #for file in $quoted_directory/*
        for file in $1/*
        do
          if [ -d "$file" ]
            then
                    echo "*********************** CheckDir - $file"
                    checkDIR "$file"
            else
                   EXTENSION="${file#*.}"
                   if [ ! "$EXTENSION" = "$sampleext" ]; then
                    echo "skip non $sampleext -> $file"
                   else
                    fileNamePattern="_[C][0-9]\.wav"
                    if [[ $file =~ $fileNamePattern ]]; then
                      #echo $file match  $fileNamePattern
                      echo "keep $file"
                      else
                        sampleSynthPattern="_[A-G]#?-?[0-9](_[0-9]*)?\.wav"
                        if [[ $file =~ $sampleSynthPattern ]]; then
                          if [[ "$TESTRUN" = true ]]; then
                             echo "TESTRUN delete: $file"
                          else
                             echo "DEL: $file"
                             rm $file
                          fi
                        else
                          echo "File $file is not a synth note sample?"
                        fi
                      fi
                   fi
          fi
        done
        IFS=$SAVEIFS
}

echo "base path: $STARTDIR"
checkDIR "$STARTDIR"

Save it as "delete-non-c-notes.sh" or rename as you wish. Execute like: "./delete-non-c-notes.sh CHIPS_SID_RARE/SK1_From_Mars/WAV" where path can be realive to the script or absolute if starting with "/"
It keeps all files ending in "*_C1.wav, _C3.wav..." and deletes all the other "xxx_A1.wav, xxx_C#1.wav, xxxx_C1_0001.wav". BUT does not delete non-note wavs such as the ones in drum samples or loops (4BeatFill SK1.wav).
So (in theory) it only deletes Note sample files that are not root "C" notes.
Leaving this:

It has a "TESTRUN" variable that if set to true won´t actually delete but do a dry run.

Some screenshots of it working:

It´s actually really fast, I´m happy with it, saves me a ton of time. Hope it helps someone.
Cheers!

lukesleepwalker · February 2021

I'm an AudioLayer power user (or was, more on that in a minute) and it's simply unparalleled on iOS for playing back sample libraries. I use (or used) the app daily and it has been rock solid--even when I pile in up to 8 different instances of the AUv3 into AUM. The load time is snappy and the audio playback is very efficient from a DSP perspective. The on-board FX are even quite good so I don't have to load in FX apps into AUM.

As @McD says, the iCloud storage is great in theory but a pain in reality. It works as described but I can't tell you how many times I'd be on a plane (pre-pandemic) and the NO-GO in flight wifi wasn't working and one of my favorite libraries had been transferred to the cloud, making it impossible to use. So, I went with Local Storage on an iPad with a bigger storage capacity and all has been right with the world for many months until...

I don't know what on God's green earth @VirSyn did with the latest update but it is a disaster. I've never seen a mature app fall apart in so many ways in one update (makes me wonder if something went wrong with the build or something). I've reported the missing UI feature for recording/importing new zones (ie, tap on the football field) in another thread here, which is annoying but easily worked around using other UI options. But the performance instability is a deal breaker and makes the app unusable. When loading AL as AUv3 in AUM (my usual presets with up to 8 instances), everything loads OK but upon finishing the loading of the preset, the DSP meter in AUM goes through the roof and stays there for up to a minute. I've deleted the app and reinstalled, updated iOS to the latest version, backed up my samples and reloaded them, everything I can think of. Nada. The problem is with the latest version of AL. To make things worse, the Random playback of layers no longer works. It only plays back the last layer in the list of multiple layers now. The word Layer is IN THE NAME OF THE APP and it no longer works as it did in the last version.

Anyway, AL is great when it's working. I'd be very careful about purchasing now until Virsyn gets things back on the rails.

uncledave · February 2021

@lukesleepwalker Remember, the DSP meter just shows the amount of CPU time that is not available for additional processing; it does not just show signal processing. I suspect your problems are all UI related. Now, I've just noticed a lot of UIKit-runloop logs for unrelated apps, created in the last week. These are not correlated with app or iPad updates (iPadOS 14.4 on Jan.26), but they seem to indicate some UI malfunctions. You might check your logs for any of these related to AudioLayer or AUM.

espiegel123 · February 2021

@lukesleepwalker said:
I'm an AudioLayer power user (or was, more on that in a minute) and it's simply unparalleled on iOS for playing back sample libraries. I use (or used) the app daily and it has been rock solid--even when I pile in up to 8 different instances of the AUv3 into AUM. The load time is snappy and the audio playback is very efficient from a DSP perspective. The on-board FX are even quite good so I don't have to load in FX apps into AUM.

As @McD says, the iCloud storage is great in theory but a pain in reality. It works as described but I can't tell you how many times I'd be on a plane (pre-pandemic) and the NO-GO in flight wifi wasn't working and one of my favorite libraries had been transferred to the cloud, making it impossible to use. So, I went with Local Storage on an iPad with a bigger storage capacity and all has been right with the world for many months until...

I don't know what on God's green earth @VirSyn did with the latest update but it is a disaster. I've never seen a mature app fall apart in so many ways in one update (makes me wonder if something went wrong with the build or something). I've reported the missing UI feature for recording/importing new zones (ie, tap on the football field) in another thread here, which is annoying but easily worked around using other UI options. But the performance instability is a deal breaker and makes the app unusable. When loading AL as AUv3 in AUM (my usual presets with up to 8 instances), everything loads OK but upon finishing the loading of the preset, the DSP meter in AUM goes through the roof and stays there for up to a minute. I've deleted the app and reinstalled, updated iOS to the latest version, backed up my samples and reloaded them, everything I can think of. Nada. The problem is with the latest version of AL. To make things worse, the Random playback of layers no longer works. It only plays back the last layer in the list of multiple layers now. The word Layer is IN THE NAME OF THE APP and it no longer works as it did in the last version.

Anyway, AL is great when it's working. I'd be very careful about purchasing now until Virsyn gets things back on the rails.

Have you reported the performance instability and random layers issues to @Virsyn? Posting a screen recording and sending him a link might be helpful. I haven’t noticed any performance difference, but I am on 13.7 and only use a few (though large) instruments at a time.

[Deleted User] · February 2021

The user and all related content has been deleted.

lukesleepwalker · February 2021

@uncledave said:
@lukesleepwalker Remember, the DSP meter just shows the amount of CPU time that is not available for additional processing; it does not just show signal processing. I suspect your problems are all UI related. Now, I've just noticed a lot of UIKit-runloop logs for unrelated apps, created in the last week. These are not correlated with app or iPad updates (iPadOS 14.4 on Jan.26), but they seem to indicate some UI malfunctions. You might check your logs for any of these related to AudioLayer or AUM.

Yep, I have constructed a test file that is composed of 8 instances of AudioLayer and nothing else (and no UI interactions). I load it into AUM and get 45-60 seconds of nothing because the DSP rockets into the several hundreds. Not touching the screen, no GUI open, nothing. Where can I find the logs that you reference here?

lukesleepwalker · February 2021

@espiegel123 said:

@lukesleepwalker said:
I'm an AudioLayer power user (or was, more on that in a minute) and it's simply unparalleled on iOS for playing back sample libraries. I use (or used) the app daily and it has been rock solid--even when I pile in up to 8 different instances of the AUv3 into AUM. The load time is snappy and the audio playback is very efficient from a DSP perspective. The on-board FX are even quite good so I don't have to load in FX apps into AUM.

As @McD says, the iCloud storage is great in theory but a pain in reality. It works as described but I can't tell you how many times I'd be on a plane (pre-pandemic) and the NO-GO in flight wifi wasn't working and one of my favorite libraries had been transferred to the cloud, making it impossible to use. So, I went with Local Storage on an iPad with a bigger storage capacity and all has been right with the world for many months until...

I don't know what on God's green earth @VirSyn did with the latest update but it is a disaster. I've never seen a mature app fall apart in so many ways in one update (makes me wonder if something went wrong with the build or something). I've reported the missing UI feature for recording/importing new zones (ie, tap on the football field) in another thread here, which is annoying but easily worked around using other UI options. But the performance instability is a deal breaker and makes the app unusable. When loading AL as AUv3 in AUM (my usual presets with up to 8 instances), everything loads OK but upon finishing the loading of the preset, the DSP meter in AUM goes through the roof and stays there for up to a minute. I've deleted the app and reinstalled, updated iOS to the latest version, backed up my samples and reloaded them, everything I can think of. Nada. The problem is with the latest version of AL. To make things worse, the Random playback of layers no longer works. It only plays back the last layer in the list of multiple layers now. The word Layer is IN THE NAME OF THE APP and it no longer works as it did in the last version.

Anyway, AL is great when it's working. I'd be very careful about purchasing now until Virsyn gets things back on the rails.

Have you reported the performance instability and random layers issues to @Virsyn? Posting a screen recording and sending him a link might be helpful. I haven’t noticed any performance difference, but I am on 13.7 and only use a few (though large) instruments at a time.

I think so? I mean, how do you know if you have contacted Virsyn? That web form doesn't work to send a copy to yourself and it gives no indication that your message has been received. Virsyn has not responded in any way, etc. I tagged him on Twitter, too. Nada.

espiegel123 · February 2021

@lukesleepwalker said:

@espiegel123 said:

@lukesleepwalker said:
I'm an AudioLayer power user (or was, more on that in a minute) and it's simply unparalleled on iOS for playing back sample libraries. I use (or used) the app daily and it has been rock solid--even when I pile in up to 8 different instances of the AUv3 into AUM. The load time is snappy and the audio playback is very efficient from a DSP perspective. The on-board FX are even quite good so I don't have to load in FX apps into AUM.

As @McD says, the iCloud storage is great in theory but a pain in reality. It works as described but I can't tell you how many times I'd be on a plane (pre-pandemic) and the NO-GO in flight wifi wasn't working and one of my favorite libraries had been transferred to the cloud, making it impossible to use. So, I went with Local Storage on an iPad with a bigger storage capacity and all has been right with the world for many months until...

I don't know what on God's green earth @VirSyn did with the latest update but it is a disaster. I've never seen a mature app fall apart in so many ways in one update (makes me wonder if something went wrong with the build or something). I've reported the missing UI feature for recording/importing new zones (ie, tap on the football field) in another thread here, which is annoying but easily worked around using other UI options. But the performance instability is a deal breaker and makes the app unusable. When loading AL as AUv3 in AUM (my usual presets with up to 8 instances), everything loads OK but upon finishing the loading of the preset, the DSP meter in AUM goes through the roof and stays there for up to a minute. I've deleted the app and reinstalled, updated iOS to the latest version, backed up my samples and reloaded them, everything I can think of. Nada. The problem is with the latest version of AL. To make things worse, the Random playback of layers no longer works. It only plays back the last layer in the list of multiple layers now. The word Layer is IN THE NAME OF THE APP and it no longer works as it did in the last version.

Anyway, AL is great when it's working. I'd be very careful about purchasing now until Virsyn gets things back on the rails.

Have you reported the performance instability and random layers issues to @Virsyn? Posting a screen recording and sending him a link might be helpful. I haven’t noticed any performance difference, but I am on 13.7 and only use a few (though large) instruments at a time.

I think so? I mean, how do you know if you have contacted Virsyn? That web form doesn't work to send a copy to yourself and it gives no indication that your message has been received. Virsyn has not responded in any way, etc. I tagged him on Twitter, too. Nada.

I write to him via the email address on the web site. While he rarely responds to email, he clearly reads the messages.

uncledave · February 2021

@lukesleepwalker said:

@uncledave said:
@lukesleepwalker Remember, the DSP meter just shows the amount of CPU time that is not available for additional processing; it does not just show signal processing. I suspect your problems are all UI related. Now, I've just noticed a lot of UIKit-runloop logs for unrelated apps, created in the last week. These are not correlated with app or iPad updates (iPadOS 14.4 on Jan.26), but they seem to indicate some UI malfunctions. You might check your logs for any of these related to AudioLayer or AUM.

Yep, I have constructed a test file that is composed of 8 instances of AudioLayer and nothing else (and no UI interactions). I load it into AUM and get 45-60 seconds of nothing because the DSP rockets into the several hundreds. Not touching the screen, no GUI open, nothing. Where can I find the logs that you reference here?

Settings–>Privacy–>Analytics & Improvements–>Analytics Data

This is where iOS records anything it feels is important to record. Sometimes this info can point to a problem. Names are slightly different on iPhone and on earlier iOS versions. If you do see anything suspect, you should certainly make sure the dev sees it. You can open any of the logs and share them with other apps in the usual way. The key thing will be if the log timestamp is correlated with the time of the incident; most of them have the date/time in the filename. It also appears in the first few lines of the log.

lukesleepwalker · February 2021

@espiegel123 said:

@lukesleepwalker said:

@espiegel123 said:

@lukesleepwalker said:
I'm an AudioLayer power user (or was, more on that in a minute) and it's simply unparalleled on iOS for playing back sample libraries. I use (or used) the app daily and it has been rock solid--even when I pile in up to 8 different instances of the AUv3 into AUM. The load time is snappy and the audio playback is very efficient from a DSP perspective. The on-board FX are even quite good so I don't have to load in FX apps into AUM.

As @McD says, the iCloud storage is great in theory but a pain in reality. It works as described but I can't tell you how many times I'd be on a plane (pre-pandemic) and the NO-GO in flight wifi wasn't working and one of my favorite libraries had been transferred to the cloud, making it impossible to use. So, I went with Local Storage on an iPad with a bigger storage capacity and all has been right with the world for many months until...

I don't know what on God's green earth @VirSyn did with the latest update but it is a disaster. I've never seen a mature app fall apart in so many ways in one update (makes me wonder if something went wrong with the build or something). I've reported the missing UI feature for recording/importing new zones (ie, tap on the football field) in another thread here, which is annoying but easily worked around using other UI options. But the performance instability is a deal breaker and makes the app unusable. When loading AL as AUv3 in AUM (my usual presets with up to 8 instances), everything loads OK but upon finishing the loading of the preset, the DSP meter in AUM goes through the roof and stays there for up to a minute. I've deleted the app and reinstalled, updated iOS to the latest version, backed up my samples and reloaded them, everything I can think of. Nada. The problem is with the latest version of AL. To make things worse, the Random playback of layers no longer works. It only plays back the last layer in the list of multiple layers now. The word Layer is IN THE NAME OF THE APP and it no longer works as it did in the last version.

Anyway, AL is great when it's working. I'd be very careful about purchasing now until Virsyn gets things back on the rails.

Have you reported the performance instability and random layers issues to @Virsyn? Posting a screen recording and sending him a link might be helpful. I haven’t noticed any performance difference, but I am on 13.7 and only use a few (though large) instruments at a time.

I think so? I mean, how do you know if you have contacted Virsyn? That web form doesn't work to send a copy to yourself and it gives no indication that your message has been received. Virsyn has not responded in any way, etc. I tagged him on Twitter, too. Nada.

I write to him via the email address on the web site. While he rarely responds to email, he clearly reads the messages.

Which email address? [email protected]?

espiegel123 · February 2021

@lukesleepwalker said:

@espiegel123 said:

@lukesleepwalker said:

@espiegel123 said:

@lukesleepwalker said:
I'm an AudioLayer power user (or was, more on that in a minute) and it's simply unparalleled on iOS for playing back sample libraries. I use (or used) the app daily and it has been rock solid--even when I pile in up to 8 different instances of the AUv3 into AUM. The load time is snappy and the audio playback is very efficient from a DSP perspective. The on-board FX are even quite good so I don't have to load in FX apps into AUM.

As @McD says, the iCloud storage is great in theory but a pain in reality. It works as described but I can't tell you how many times I'd be on a plane (pre-pandemic) and the NO-GO in flight wifi wasn't working and one of my favorite libraries had been transferred to the cloud, making it impossible to use. So, I went with Local Storage on an iPad with a bigger storage capacity and all has been right with the world for many months until...

I don't know what on God's green earth @VirSyn did with the latest update but it is a disaster. I've never seen a mature app fall apart in so many ways in one update (makes me wonder if something went wrong with the build or something). I've reported the missing UI feature for recording/importing new zones (ie, tap on the football field) in another thread here, which is annoying but easily worked around using other UI options. But the performance instability is a deal breaker and makes the app unusable. When loading AL as AUv3 in AUM (my usual presets with up to 8 instances), everything loads OK but upon finishing the loading of the preset, the DSP meter in AUM goes through the roof and stays there for up to a minute. I've deleted the app and reinstalled, updated iOS to the latest version, backed up my samples and reloaded them, everything I can think of. Nada. The problem is with the latest version of AL. To make things worse, the Random playback of layers no longer works. It only plays back the last layer in the list of multiple layers now. The word Layer is IN THE NAME OF THE APP and it no longer works as it did in the last version.

Anyway, AL is great when it's working. I'd be very careful about purchasing now until Virsyn gets things back on the rails.

Have you reported the performance instability and random layers issues to @Virsyn? Posting a screen recording and sending him a link might be helpful. I haven’t noticed any performance difference, but I am on 13.7 and only use a few (though large) instruments at a time.

I think so? I mean, how do you know if you have contacted Virsyn? That web form doesn't work to send a copy to yourself and it gives no indication that your message has been received. Virsyn has not responded in any way, etc. I tagged him on Twitter, too. Nada.

I write to him via the email address on the web site. While he rarely responds to email, he clearly reads the messages.

Which email address? [email protected]?

I send to the two email addresses on their company page:
http://www.virsyn.de/de/Company/company.html

info and webmaster

lukesleepwalker · February 2021

@espiegel123 Ah, yep, got it now. Thanks for the tip!

espiegel123 · February 2021

@lukesleepwalker said:
@espiegel123 Ah, yep, got it now. Thanks for the tip!

I hope he'll solve those issues. FIngers-crossed

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