Loopy Pro: Create music, your way.
What is Loopy Pro? — Loopy Pro is a powerful, flexible, and intuitive live looper, sampler, clip launcher and DAW for iPhone and iPad. At its core, it allows you to record and layer sounds in real-time to create complex musical arrangements. But it doesn’t stop there—Loopy Pro offers advanced tools to customize your workflow, build dynamic performance setups, and create a seamless connection between instruments, effects, and external gear.
Use it for live looping, sequencing, arranging, mixing, and much more. Whether you're a live performer, a producer, or just experimenting with sound, Loopy Pro helps you take control of your creative process.
Download on the App StoreLoopy Pro is your all-in-one musical toolkit. Try it for free today.
2020 iPad Pro vs 2021 iPad Pro… what are the real advantages?
I have a 2020 iPad Pro 12.9 512gb that I got in March of 2020. I have no complaints. It does everything I need. I never had a 2018 iPad or any other iPad to compare it to, besides a really old one years ago that I didn’t use for music production and that topped out at iOS 9.3 or something… so my 2020 gets the job done and I’ve been very happy.
I have a close family member who has two 2021 M1 12.9 iPads, one is a 512gb 8 ram and the other is a 1T 16 ram. He knows I make music with mine, so he literally wants to take mine and give me one of his. As it is, the gesture is insane and I’m grateful, but I don’t actually know that I need it. So for those who know… as far as iOS music production goes, is there any real advantage to going from a 2020 pro to a 2021 M1. Assuming my DAW projects are complex and require plenty of processing power, does the M1 even improve anything over a 2020 (8 ram, 16 ram)? I’ve read that iOS music apps can’t even fully take advantage of the M1, but they may in the long run? So is this a real upgrade and game changer, or just a slightly faster version of the same thing?
And for non music production related tasks, I would assume there are some big advantages..
What’s the consensus? Thanks!
Comments
take it and run!
Haha. Yes, @AudioGus is right.
I have both of them - can’t yet see any differences between them, yet…
But, the day the developers starting to know the M1 CPU better, and optimize the code for some heavy CPU intensive apps, there will be a certain advantage for the new generation M CPUs…
But, for now, I’ve got an iPad Pro M1 that is 1000 bucks more expensive but not better… ☹️☹️☹️
I have a 2020 IPad Pro, I thought about an M1 but to be honest it’s not like my current IPad isn’t more than getting the job done. One of the reasons I decided to sit out on the M1 IPad is that I just don’t really see apps taking advantage of all that horse power right now. The last Apple WWDC just under delivered, I thought Apple at least would release some pro level IPad apps and even though they make an IPad Pro, they just just don’t seem interested in making pro level iPad apps. Don’t get me wrong, if someone offered to trade me one for my 2020 I probably would ( I’m still on OS 13.7 and really don’t want to update though) but I definitely wouldn’t buy one right now.
I have the 1TB and it was like $1600!!! I wasn’t planning on buying another one for years
It’s true that the single core performance is not much different from the A14 but the multi core performance is much higher, really much higher. The problem is that most AU hosts do not utilize multiple cores well or even not at all. Actually this is also not trivial. See how troublesome the multi core rendering of Cubasis 3 is. I need to turn it off with my M1 iPad. But I think it’s just a question of time (and existence of sustainable business models - sigh) that this is utilized properly.
Another part of the story is iPadOS. ATM we are far away from the audio production performance of an 8 GB MacBook Air which hosts the same M1 as my iPad Pro.
Have both. 12.9 pro. No difference at all🤣🤣🤣 or at least I can’t see any difference with my eyes😂
The M1 iPad story goes further than the multi vs single core aspect of their specs. The extra 2Gb of ram goes a long way with audio projects (or 10Gb for those lucky/foolish enough to pick a 512 Gb+ M1 model). But with regards to multicore performance in Cubasis, I’ve found that much of it’s success or failure can come down to the audio interface one chooses. Pro audio interfaces are a far more robust choice than utilising the iPad’s internal audio capabilities. I haven’t had to disable multicore in Cubasis 3 with both a Focusrite Scarlett and M-Audio Air but I only upgraded to Cubasis 3 after getting my M1 iPad Pro so I starting testing multicore after the Steinberg devs had a chance to stabilise things.
Another variable you can add to the mix with regards to multicore performance is your choice of USB-C Hub and the power unit you utilise to provide passthrough charging (especially if your audio interface doesn’t come with a power supply).
The biggest oddity I’ve found with Cubasis 3 is that running at 96 kHz is far more stable than at a lower sampling rate so counterintuitively I’ve found that I get more performance out of higher sample-rate projects than lower.
Having said all that, I agree that the biggest thing holding back the M1 iPad Pro is iPadOS. If you’re primary objective is audio production and you’ve got circa £1200 to spend, you’re far better off spending it on an M1 MacBook Pro. The thing that irks me most is that Adobe have shown that you can derive desktop level performance from iPadOS, and that makes me wish that the bigger pro audio players from the desktop took the platform as seriously as Adobe. And I’m not just talking about DAW manufacturers here. We’re over 10 years into the iOS music production story and we’re still to see a drum/percussion app to rival FXpansions Guru (released in 2005) never mind Geist 2 (released in 2016) or the all conquering NI Maschine.
But I have no regrets purchasing an M1 iPad Pro as I use my tablet devices for far more than audio production (the desktop is still my primary audio production environment). In a lifetime of purchasing computing devices, the 12.9” M1 iPad Pro is by far my favourite.
🤣🤣🤣
You won't notice much difference. I went from a 2018 11" to the 2021 12.9" so that made sense to me but other than an improved screen under certain conditions you won't notice a performance difference day to day. Having said that, you don't want to insult a gift giver so take the 2021 1 TB version!
Doesnt the 2020 iPad Pro only have the A12Z? The M1 looks to be about 50% faster in single core performance.
Yeah, one way to look at it is that the Developer Transition Kit ran the A12Z and it was a barely passable stand-in to get devs working on the move to the M1. The M1 is blistering by comparison on the Mac side.
As far as audio goes on the iPad, the current gen. Air is a harder comparison vs. the new iPad Pro. The cores are the same there and the multicore advantage isn't helping so much yet.
It does depend on your individual use case, but the new iPad Pro does have some significant advantage over the old Pro for audio work in general.
Oh, and the screen on the 12.9" is just plain glorious.
I’ve found myself going through stuff in the Disney+ library I’d already seen just to experience things via that glorious screen!
I don’t know. I’m actually waiting on my M1 device coming to my door today. I’ve been on an 11” for the last few years and it’s been a very good experience for sure but I’ve noticed in the last year or so the performance from not only within CB has become sorta wonky, not as solid as when I first purchased the device but a few other apps also. My reasoning was it was time to upgrade, I’ve gotten a solid 3 years out of my 11” and I’ll continue making music on my iPad so why not, it will develop further into something better, and the purchase keeps me committed to making music with incorporating my iPad into my little studio. Hopefully, eventually we’ll be able to take full advantage of the M1 chip? We’ll see but purchasing this new iPad is my commitment to myself to continue down this iOS music making road that I’ve invested so much into. And of course really have enjoyed this journey. I have in the last year been buying a lot of outboard gear and slowly working it into my workflow but that’s a whole other set of learning experiences too. I like making music on my iPad so I’ll continue to do so until I’m not able to anymore.
Is this because of the RAM per app limit imposed on iOS, multi core ability of an MBP, more powerful software generally available for MBP, or all of the above? I guess my tangential question is… Apple has lifted the ram per app limit recently, so developers can have access to more of it… if this is the case, and developers can make apps that use more ram and gear their designs for multi core, could an iPad Pro M1 with 16gb ram eventually match the performance of a mac book pro 13 inch M1 with 16gb ram, or will the iPad still lag behind for other reason? Is it just a matter of having access to more powerful software on a mac? Will it take the next next generation of iPads to get there??
I also found my 10.5 2017 Pro was and probably still would be all I need. If I still had it I doubt I would be thinking about a new Pro. If the next base model had 256gig storage I would likely just get that with zero remorse as it sounds like it will probably be comparable to the 2017 pros. Apple has a 0% APR thing going on now in Canada though and I bet if I wait to see what the next base model is that deal will probably be gone by then. So... hum, haw, hum haw... /sigh Yah 512 gigs would be nice etc/damn you Apple.
For most audio related things, the RAM limits aren't an issue. They are pretty high on the new iPad Pro anyway.
iOS requires plugins to be sandboxed. So, there is a context switch for every audio buffer into every AU. This isn't a huge time hit, but it does add up for really big projects. This isn't required on macOS and most AU's there will be running in-process.
iOS doesn't allow for drivers and this definitely impacts the I/O part of the chain. It's not going to be a major limiting factor, but it is going to be part of the perception of performance.
One of the biggest differences I see is that nearly everything on iOS assumes stereo tracks. For tracks that are actually mono, that may be the biggest performance hit. In a more professional audio context, much of the processing chain is mono. Doubling the performance hit for every effect on every track is a pretty big impact.
DAW's on macOS seem to be more inherently oriented to parallel processing on busses. Logic/MainStage for example does the thing of running the reverbs on busses. These are then run in parallel threads because it's an easy and known optimization point. Most stuff on iOS is more freeform in its signal path. That has some definite benefits, but it also makes optimization harder or maybe even impossible.
Then there are the big questions that I don't know the answer for. The base level of the two systems are different. There's more control on macOS in the interface to the base CoreAudio system. The DAWs on iOS get a layer of abstraction where lots of processing may be taking place. I have no idea how much of an impact this is and I haven't seen an analysis of the performance hit to the audio processing. iOS is optimized to have a smooth interaction between all the running audio stuff through a single interface. macOS has the ability to run different audio applications/streams through completely different hardware. There are several builtin AU's on both macOS and iOS to do sample rate and audio format matching/conversion. This is complete speculation on my part, but I suspect that these things come into play more often on iOS than macOS.
With all that in mind, I think it's mostly in the DAW's and how they are setup. I would think that a DAW that acted more like a typical DAW on macOS would get pretty close to the same performance running on the new M1 iPad. But, that would kinda run counter to how people seem to want to do audio on the iPad. It would be interesting to do a comparison of a GarageBand project on macOS and iOS. In some of the looking at threading I've done, there are things that make me think the iPad may actually have some advantages in this particular case.
Wow info/thoughts!
I'd probably just be loading tons of Fabs on BM3 pads until the whole thing pukes and I am pining for an M2.
Very well written response to the earlier question.
However on the point regarding folk wanting to use iPads differently, I believe this will change over time as the platform offers greater multicore benefits.
I remember there being a point in the mid naughties where multicore processing began to be the main area of performance growth on desktop systems and it took a while for DAW’s to take advantage of the new multicore paradigm. It took even longer for desktop producers to change their habits so as to take advantage of parallel processing in their day to day workflows. The biggest catalyst to getting artists on board with the advantages of parallel processing was the release of U-he Diva.
With Diva being such an exceptionally hungry virtual analog compared with its VA competitors, the U-he dev team realised they needed to be innovative if they were to deliver the polyphony artists had come to expect. If memory serves right Diva was the first plugin instrument to offer multicore support within the instrumnet itself - one core for each note of polyphony (Kontakt’s version of multicore support fuctioned per instrument). This was a real turning point for multicore on the desktop, and artists demands for multicore support increased from this point forward. I can see a similar catalyst arriving on iOS, but we’re not there yet.
I think the app vs software paradigm / stigma / image is the biggest hurdle holding this all back. Apps started cheap ($ and feature wise) and disposable / self destructible and most still are.
Definitely, and the threading workgroups stuff that Apple is doing now will be a huge help here with getting multi-threaded audio applications working better on the Apple Silicon processors and overcoming issues with power vs. efficiency cores. Part of the new API is aimed specifically at making it easier to use multiple threads in AU's. But, even in Apple's documentation on the threading API's they specifically point out that this isn't going to benefit the majority of AU's. The processing time needed by nearly every AU is really tiny compared to what's happening in a big project. For some really processor intensive AU's, this will be a big deal. For most things, it's going to come down to DAW's enabling this type of big project workflow.
The thing I'm probably most interested in seeing is what happens when FL Studio mobile adds AU support. Depending on how they do it, it could be really big.
I'll be going through the same decision process shortly myself, but with new ipad minis.
Before there was huge jumps in performance between models that actually manifested in real world use cases of audio applications. Now not so much. Its not like i'm hitting any limits on my current mini5's.
As I've stated before, I could care less about the headphone jack, but i'm not sure if the lack of the button is gonna make me hurt people.
This thread has been so helpful, informative, and full of eloquence. Let’s keep the thoughts going!
In the meantime I will say that I decided to stick with my current 2020 iPad Pro 12.9 and have kindly rejected the free gift/upgrade. I have walked into plenty of gifts from this family member so there’s no insult in passing this time.
It seems to me that software development needs to catch up over the next year or two to be able to take advantage of what the M1 iPads have to offer. Otherwise it’s not enough of a performance upgrade to justify going 2020 to 2021, at least not for music production. Obviously it makes sense to upgrade to an M1 from a much older iPad. By the time iOS developers catch up we could be looking at M2 etc… the main factor for me is that my current iPad is loaded and entrenched into my workflow, and I have had no issues with it and have felt no limitations from it. So in some ways it’s not even worth the headache. By 2022, those who bought in early will be sitting pretty and powerful or still waiting for music development to catch up. Of course in other ways the newest is the best, why wouldn’t it be?
Now… to buy or not to buy the 13 inch M1 mac book pro… to wait or not to wait… 🤑
🤣🤣🤣
I bought one in substitution of a 16 inches MacBook Pro 2020 Intel. It is a good machine. The fact that remains cool while producing music is cool, but 13 inches is really way to small if You come from a bigger screen machine.
Other then that it is a beast ot computer and I’m liking it so far.