Multi-core iOS DAWs besides Cubasis 3?

Grandbear

@LFS said:
Grandbear is right about multicore performance being dependent on the signal path. Only things that are independent of each other can be rendered in parallel. This is why you won’t see any difference in DSP performance with just 1 track, even if it has 8 insert effects (which cannot be parallelized). Multicore starts with 2 tracks. Send effects are also rendered in parallel, in contrast to inserts. There are also special cases where tracks cannot be rendered in parallel, for example if one track is the source for another track’s side-chaining effect, or if tracks point to an AU instrument with multiple outputs. Cubasis analyzes your project’s signal path and tries to make the most of it in terms of parallelization. Then it renders away, trusting iOS to assign each render thread to a free performance core, if possible.

Thanks for the thorough explanation!

Grandbear

@seonnthaproducer said:
Because my guess is this. If Steinberg fully goes in the way of trying to reach the elitist devices, they will lose a huge portion of their audience. Which are the new users of Cubasis, who can't afford to spend $2000 on a "pro level device" to use 1 app. Cubasis does not generate significant revenue from adding performance improvements

I'm confused, the OP is asking about DAWs other than Cubasis precisely because they've already implemented these performance improvements

DanSebPage

@Grandbear said:

@seonnthaproducer said:
Because my guess is this. If Steinberg fully goes in the way of trying to reach the elitist devices, they will lose a huge portion of their audience. Which are the new users of Cubasis, who can't afford to spend $2000 on a "pro level device" to use 1 app. Cubasis does not generate significant revenue from adding performance improvements

I'm confused, the OP is asking about DAWs other than Cubasis precisely because they've already implemented these performance improvements

Exactly. Steinberg are one of the very few DAW developers who have taken advantage of multi-core processing!

My main gripe is that a modern iPad Pro has all this processing power available, yet most of the available DAWs only use a fraction of this available power. It's a bit like buying a four-storey house, then finding out you're only allowed to use the ground floor!!

krassmann

@seonnthaproducer supporting multi-core is not only beneficial for high-end devices. Nowadays most performance gains are made by adding more cores. For years we don’t have a significant increase in clock speeds because we physically hit a limit. 3 GHz processors are around for many years and there is no 4 or 5 GHz processor for consumer devices and I bet there won’t be any. Mostly reducing chip structure sizes (nano meters) increased the performance of a single core and the physical limit for this is nearing, too. Current 3 nm chip structures are only a few molecules wide. Perspectively multi-core is the only way we can significantly increase performance. Also low-end devices.

Zerozerozero

Has anyone heard if on the roadmap for AUM?
Searched around but not found anything..

NoiseHorse

…so here’s something that happened with me this week. After reading this thread I went to a project I was finishing on n-Track studio with about 10 tracks of Audio and MIDI, effects and whatnot. I tried using Fabfilter(Q3, Pro-C, Pro-MB, and Pro-L2) to finalize everything and n-Track stuttered and froze. I went into settings and changes “processing threads” from 1 to 3 and everything went fine.

MisplacedDevelopment

@NoiseHorse said:
…so here’s something that happened with me this week. After reading this thread I went to a project I was finishing on n-Track studio with about 10 tracks of Audio and MIDI, effects and whatnot. I tried using Fabfilter(Q3, Pro-C, Pro-MB, and Pro-L2) to finalize everything and n-Track stuttered and froze. I went into settings and changes “processing threads” from 1 to 3 and everything went fine.

Interesting to hear you were using it for what sounds like a decent sized project. How have you found the stability in general? They have been making a lot of (presumably) bug fix updates the last few weeks so I wondered what the current state of play is.

NoiseHorse

@MisplacedDevelopment n-Track iOS does update frequently for sure. My experience is that every once in a while one of the updates will cause a hiccup but they realize it and fix it quickly. In general it’s stable same as CB3 or AEM.

MisplacedDevelopment

@NoiseHorse said:
@MisplacedDevelopment n-Track iOS does update frequently for sure. My experience is that every once in a while one of the updates will cause a hiccup but they realize it and fix it quickly. In general it’s stable same as CB3 or AEM.

Thanks for the info, that sounds promising. I will try and find some time to have another play with it as I do like the features it offers.

seonnthaproducer

@krassmann said:
@seonnthaproducer supporting multi-core is not only beneficial for high-end devices. Nowadays most performance gains are made by adding more cores. For years we don’t have a significant increase in clock speeds because we physically hit a limit. 3 GHz processors are around for many years and there is no 4 or 5 GHz processor for consumer devices and I bet there won’t be any. Mostly reducing chip structure sizes (nano meters) increased the performance of a single core and the physical limit for this is nearing, too. Current 3 nm chip structures are only a few molecules wide. Perspectively multi-core is the only way we can significantly increase performance. Also low-end devices.

I agree with the benefits of multi core. I’m debating whether it’s a good financial move to dedicate resources into it, as opposed adding features that can gain actual revenue to fund further advancements.

I call it the “Korg Gadget 2 Problem”. Excellent application on iOS, yet it’s not AUv3. Sure, they could dig legacy iOS code and have to update it to meet specs, or they could spend time on things that generate revenue like Sound Packs.

In an ideal world, with unlimited resources, they can do both. But, and I’m going back to Cubasis, they need to also invest in activities that will be profitable for Steinberg in the long run for Cubasis to still be a thing.

We lost Reason…maybe they’ll be back. But I’m hoping Steinberg sticks it out in the IOS marketplace a bit more.

DanSebPage

@NoiseHorse said:
…so here’s something that happened with me this week. After reading this thread I went to a project I was finishing on n-Track studio with about 10 tracks of Audio and MIDI, effects and whatnot. I tried using Fabfilter(Q3, Pro-C, Pro-MB, and Pro-L2) to finalize everything and n-Track stuttered and froze. I went into settings and changes “processing threads” from 1 to 3 and everything went fine.

Sounds like n-track's latest multi-core update has arrived at the perfect time for you - it just goes to show how beneficial being able to share the workload over multiple cores can be for a project!

I frequently hit a bit of stuttering towards the end-stages of a track (this is already using Cubasis with it's multi-core support). I tend to increase the latency a 'notch' each time it begins to happen. For this reason, I don't see any reason for me personally to try any of the 'single core' DAWs as I'd likely run out of CPU headroom far sooner.

krassmann

@seonnthaproducer said:

@krassmann said:
@seonnthaproducer supporting multi-core is not only beneficial for high-end devices. Nowadays most performance gains are made by adding more cores. For years we don’t have a significant increase in clock speeds because we physically hit a limit. 3 GHz processors are around for many years and there is no 4 or 5 GHz processor for consumer devices and I bet there won’t be any. Mostly reducing chip structure sizes (nano meters) increased the performance of a single core and the physical limit for this is nearing, too. Current 3 nm chip structures are only a few molecules wide. Perspectively multi-core is the only way we can significantly increase performance. Also low-end devices.

I agree with the benefits of multi core. I’m debating whether it’s a good financial move to dedicate resources into it, as opposed adding features that can gain actual revenue to fund further advancements.

I call it the “Korg Gadget 2 Problem”. Excellent application on iOS, yet it’s AUv3. Sure, they could dig legacy iOS code and have to update it to meet specs, or they could spend time on things that generate revenue like Sound Packs.

In an ideal world, with unlimited resources, they can do both. But, and I’m going back to Cubasis, they need to also invest in activities that will be profitable for Steinberg in the long run for Cubasis to still be a thing.

We lost Reason…maybe they’ll be back. But I’m hoping Steinberg sticks it out in the IOS marketplace a bit more.

Cubasis is, as we learned in this thread, one of three iOS apps supporting multi-core. IMHO this is a very good selling point. And I really think Steinberg had the know-how to do multi-core right from their desktop products. It was probably not really a low-hanging fruit but I'm sure that made it much easier and faster to implement it.

seonnthaproducer

@krassmann said:

@seonnthaproducer said:

@krassmann said:
@seonnthaproducer supporting multi-core is not only beneficial for high-end devices. Nowadays most performance gains are made by adding more cores. For years we don’t have a significant increase in clock speeds because we physically hit a limit. 3 GHz processors are around for many years and there is no 4 or 5 GHz processor for consumer devices and I bet there won’t be any. Mostly reducing chip structure sizes (nano meters) increased the performance of a single core and the physical limit for this is nearing, too. Current 3 nm chip structures are only a few molecules wide. Perspectively multi-core is the only way we can significantly increase performance. Also low-end devices.

I agree with the benefits of multi core. I’m debating whether it’s a good financial move to dedicate resources into it, as opposed adding features that can gain actual revenue to fund further advancements.

I call it the “Korg Gadget 2 Problem”. Excellent application on iOS, yet it’s AUv3. Sure, they could dig legacy iOS code and have to update it to meet specs, or they could spend time on things that generate revenue like Sound Packs.

In an ideal world, with unlimited resources, they can do both. But, and I’m going back to Cubasis, they need to also invest in activities that will be profitable for Steinberg in the long run for Cubasis to still be a thing.

We lost Reason…maybe they’ll be back. But I’m hoping Steinberg sticks it out in the IOS marketplace a bit more.

Cubasis is, as we learned in this thread, one of three iOS apps supporting multi-core. IMHO this is a very good selling point. And I really think Steinberg had the know-how to do multi-core right from their desktop products. It was probably not really a low-hanging fruit but I'm sure that made it much easier and faster to implement it.

Yeah, but that’s the thing…that’s sale for a specific group of people. And Cubasis is positioning itself as a powerful DAW accessible on Android and iOS which can be sent to desktop/Macs.

Multicore is a very specific feature. Only available to those with super expensive iPads.

Let’s say, for example, they add a suite of features not found on many DAWs. Like Deezer split stems, or Scaler 2/TONALY levels of chord progression, or an AI that generates chords. They’ll get new revenue from purchase of those features because it integrates natively in Cubasis.

They’d even make more if they follow the Korg Gadget model of creating an AUv3 plugin stand-alone but unlocks something on the main app itself.

Zerozerozero

Multicore is a very specific feature. Only available to those with super expensive iPads.

Sorry for ignorant question….is there a minimum processor required to enable multicore? Is it M1 or something? It wouldn’t ever work on a phone for exampl? Thanks!

krassmann

@seonnthaproducer said:

@krassmann said:

@seonnthaproducer said:

@krassmann said:
@seonnthaproducer supporting multi-core is not only beneficial for high-end devices. Nowadays most performance gains are made by adding more cores. For years we don’t have a significant increase in clock speeds because we physically hit a limit. 3 GHz processors are around for many years and there is no 4 or 5 GHz processor for consumer devices and I bet there won’t be any. Mostly reducing chip structure sizes (nano meters) increased the performance of a single core and the physical limit for this is nearing, too. Current 3 nm chip structures are only a few molecules wide. Perspectively multi-core is the only way we can significantly increase performance. Also low-end devices.

I agree with the benefits of multi core. I’m debating whether it’s a good financial move to dedicate resources into it, as opposed adding features that can gain actual revenue to fund further advancements.

I call it the “Korg Gadget 2 Problem”. Excellent application on iOS, yet it’s AUv3. Sure, they could dig legacy iOS code and have to update it to meet specs, or they could spend time on things that generate revenue like Sound Packs.

In an ideal world, with unlimited resources, they can do both. But, and I’m going back to Cubasis, they need to also invest in activities that will be profitable for Steinberg in the long run for Cubasis to still be a thing.

We lost Reason…maybe they’ll be back. But I’m hoping Steinberg sticks it out in the IOS marketplace a bit more.

Cubasis is, as we learned in this thread, one of three iOS apps supporting multi-core. IMHO this is a very good selling point. And I really think Steinberg had the know-how to do multi-core right from their desktop products. It was probably not really a low-hanging fruit but I'm sure that made it much easier and faster to implement it.

Yeah, but that’s the thing…that’s sale for a specific group of people. And Cubasis is positioning itself as a powerful DAW accessible on Android and iOS which can be sent to desktop/Macs.

Multicore is a very specific feature. Only available to those with super expensive iPads.

Let’s say, for example, they add a suite of features not found on many DAWs. Like Deezer split stems, or Scaler 2/TONALY levels of chord progression, or an AI that generates chords. They’ll get new revenue from purchase of those features because it integrates natively in Cubasis.

They’d even make more if they follow the Korg Gadget model of creating an AUv3 plugin stand-alone but unlocks something on the main app itself.

I still can’t follow your arguments. Performance does matter. If Cubasis wouldn’t aim at being a professional iOS DAW, I wouldn’t have paid the high price for it. There are enough alternatives that are cheaper and don’t have this ambition. I’m sure in the next years more non Pro iPad models will have CPUs with more than 2 performance cores. The iPad Air is just the beginning. When a standard iPad will have that, the Pro models will have more than 4 performance cores. I think multi-core is a must for every ambitious plugin host. And I really hope AUM will be multi-core, too.

seonnthaproducer

@krassmann said:

@seonnthaproducer said:

@krassmann said:

@seonnthaproducer said:

@krassmann said:
@seonnthaproducer supporting multi-core is not only beneficial for high-end devices. Nowadays most performance gains are made by adding more cores. For years we don’t have a significant increase in clock speeds because we physically hit a limit. 3 GHz processors are around for many years and there is no 4 or 5 GHz processor for consumer devices and I bet there won’t be any. Mostly reducing chip structure sizes (nano meters) increased the performance of a single core and the physical limit for this is nearing, too. Current 3 nm chip structures are only a few molecules wide. Perspectively multi-core is the only way we can significantly increase performance. Also low-end devices.

I agree with the benefits of multi core. I’m debating whether it’s a good financial move to dedicate resources into it, as opposed adding features that can gain actual revenue to fund further advancements.

I call it the “Korg Gadget 2 Problem”. Excellent application on iOS, yet it’s AUv3. Sure, they could dig legacy iOS code and have to update it to meet specs, or they could spend time on things that generate revenue like Sound Packs.

In an ideal world, with unlimited resources, they can do both. But, and I’m going back to Cubasis, they need to also invest in activities that will be profitable for Steinberg in the long run for Cubasis to still be a thing.

We lost Reason…maybe they’ll be back. But I’m hoping Steinberg sticks it out in the IOS marketplace a bit more.

Cubasis is, as we learned in this thread, one of three iOS apps supporting multi-core. IMHO this is a very good selling point. And I really think Steinberg had the know-how to do multi-core right from their desktop products. It was probably not really a low-hanging fruit but I'm sure that made it much easier and faster to implement it.

Yeah, but that’s the thing…that’s sale for a specific group of people. And Cubasis is positioning itself as a powerful DAW accessible on Android and iOS which can be sent to desktop/Macs.

Multicore is a very specific feature. Only available to those with super expensive iPads.

Let’s say, for example, they add a suite of features not found on many DAWs. Like Deezer split stems, or Scaler 2/TONALY levels of chord progression, or an AI that generates chords. They’ll get new revenue from purchase of those features because it integrates natively in Cubasis.

They’d even make more if they follow the Korg Gadget model of creating an AUv3 plugin stand-alone but unlocks something on the main app itself.

I still can’t follow your arguments. Performance does matter. If Cubasis wouldn’t aim at being a professional iOS DAW, I wouldn’t have paid the high price for it. There are enough alternatives that are cheaper and don’t have this ambition. I’m sure in the next years more non Pro iPad models will have CPUs with more than 2 performance cores. The iPad Air is just the beginning. When a standard iPad will have that, the Pro models will have more than 4 performance cores. I think multi-core is a must for every ambitious plugin host. And I really hope AUM will be multi-core, too.

Quod scripsi, scripsi (Latin for "What I have written, I have written")

seonnthaproducer

@Zerozerozero said:

Multicore is a very specific feature. Only available to those with super expensive iPads.

Sorry for ignorant question….is there a minimum processor required to enable multicore? Is it M1 or something? It wouldn’t ever work on a phone for exampl? Thanks!

In theory, iOS devices from the iPhone 5 or 4S (I forget which...) should support it. But the practical approach would be to base it on devices that are 5 years older or newer. Because it's very difficult to make a feature work for all devices because they have different architecture.

Jamie_Mallender

I’m kind of a Cubasis 3 power user. Music is my job and Cubasis 3 gets used every day. The more efficient my music gear works, the better equipped I am to do my job. Before I upgraded to the M1 I had a 6th gen. I completed massive projects on it, often in Cubasis 2 and 3. The limitations of the device or some of the software didn’t stop me making music. I would find clever work arounds and dodge about between apps - sending audio from one app to another - grabbing sounds from my desktop too and sending them back to iOS via Dropbox. I have zero interest in the technicalities of how things work or in complaining in forums that an app lacks an “essential” feature. Being a little naive about the technology, I expected purchasing the 1TB 11” M1 Pro to be life changing. It was but, only with regards to Cubasis 3 and LumaFusion. There is little difference with regards to other apps. But I can tell you this - in Cubasis, in 10 Months of using the app every day I’ve suffered less than 10 crashes/frozen screen type situations. I’ve completed enormous projects without glitching, crashing or any other problems. Problems I do encounter seem more attributable to some issue with an AUV3. I have more or less stopped using other DAWs and use AUM a lot less. AUM was great for hosting lots of apps at once that Cubasis 3 couldn’t cope with but since Steinberg introduced Multicore Processing the same week I got my M1, it’s the other way around. Honestly, if it weren’t for Cubasis 3 I would have regretted getting the M1 quite seriously.

espiegel123

@DanSebPage said:

@Agatha_aga said:
GarageBand supports multicore I assume. I can run a project with more instances of Model D there.

Also, what if use 2 DAWs/hosts alongside, will iOS handle that setup in ‘multicore’ mode…

I'm struggling to find any evidence to support this... but I could be wrong!

FWIW, yeas ago I read a post by one of the iOS GarageBand programmers who said that GB had multicore support before it was available to other apps. I don’t know if it is still true, but it might be multi-core.

MisplacedDevelopment

Looks like we can add MTS to the list as well. I guess this thread may have caused people to reach out to Giel for confirmation!

https://www.multitrackstudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&p=11419&sid=c4b3cce697e4d36a0e93b6991455c67b#p11419

DanSebPage

@MisplacedDevelopment said:
Looks like we can add MTS to the list as well. I guess this thread may have caused people to reach out to Giel for confirmation!

https://www.multitrackstudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&p=11419&sid=c4b3cce697e4d36a0e93b6991455c67b#p11419

Great to know, thanks for sharing!

hes

@MisplacedDevelopment said:
Looks like we can add MTS to the list as well. I guess this thread may have caused people to reach out to Giel for confirmation!

https://www.multitrackstudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&p=11419&sid=c4b3cce697e4d36a0e93b6991455c67b#p11419

Is he really talking about the same kind of multicore support as is in Cubasis? He says it's been supported "since version 1.0", but that would predate by years Apple's publishing the API supporting multicore iOS apps in 2020.

MisplacedDevelopment

@hes said:

@MisplacedDevelopment said:
Looks like we can add MTS to the list as well. I guess this thread may have caused people to reach out to Giel for confirmation!

https://www.multitrackstudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&p=11419&sid=c4b3cce697e4d36a0e93b6991455c67b#p11419

Is he really talking about the same kind of multicore support as is in Cubasis? He says it's been supported "since version 1.0", but that would predate by years Apple's publishing the API supporting multicore iOS apps in 2020.

I have not done any iOS development but I believe the ability to write multi-threaded applications using some abstraction of POSIX threads has been there on iOS for some time.

I did a very quick Google search and it looks like the stuff added in 2020 was to help applications optimise which of the Apple Silicon cores (performance vs efficiency) work would run on. Before this, I would have expected apps written to use multiple threads to still have been able to exploit any extra cores that were available in the hardware, subject to whatever rules the iOS scheduler uses. It is probably only relatively recently that iOS devices have had a decent number of cores, which might explain why the subject became more relevant.

I am pretty sure that the MTS code base is shared with the desktop version of the DAW and so it is likely to have been written with multi-threaded support from the ground up.

For performance it is not always so much about whether an application is written to use multiple cores/threads, but whether it does it in such a way which speeds up overall execution of the task at hand.

Kewe_Esse

Time to add AEMS to this list.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

TimRussell

@Zerozerozero said:

Multicore is a very specific feature. Only available to those with super expensive iPads.

Sorry for ignorant question….is there a minimum processor required to enable multicore? Is it M1 or something? It wouldn’t ever work on a phone for exampl? Thanks!

My 2nd Gen iPad Pro from 2017 supports multicore in Cubasis

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

ecou

@LFS said:
Happy an healthy new year wishes, to all of you!

Please let me share the feedback from our engineering below.

Stay safe
& warm greetings,
Lars

Yes, Cubasis requests the CPU’s performance cores for rendering, and it creates one render thread per core, except for one that it leaves for other tasks (UI, touch detection, iOS background tasks…)
However, Cubasis can only indicate its CPU core related wishes to iOS / iPadOS. Ultimately, the system decides which thread of which app gets executed on which core. If multiple apps run multiple threads in parallel (for example 2 DAWs rendering audio in the background, another app shows its UI in the foreground, and iOS is checking for emails at the same time), iOS will distribute each app’s workload optimally over the CPU cores. In other words, multiple apps doing multicore rendering in parallel don’t fight over cores, but get assigned only as much CPU time by iOS as there is available. Let iOS worry about slicing the CPU cake

Grandbear is right about multicore performance being dependent on the signal path. Only things that are independent of each other can be rendered in parallel. This is why you won’t see any difference in DSP performance with just 1 track, even if it has 8 insert effects (which cannot be parallelized). Multicore starts with 2 tracks. Send effects are also rendered in parallel, in contrast to inserts. There are also special cases where tracks cannot be rendered in parallel, for example if one track is the source for another track’s side-chaining effect, or if tracks point to an AU instrument with multiple outputs. Cubasis analyzes your project’s signal path and tries to make the most of it in terms of parallelization. Then it renders away, trusting iOS to assign each render thread to a free performance core, if possible.

• • //

If I understand well, send effects are costlier in processing load than inline?

[Deleted User]

Does this also mean m1 multi core iOS divides the CPU workload even if the DAW isn’t optimized? It sounds like multi core efficiency is optimized by the dev, but then there are also things iOS is doing. Assuming you are only running a DAW, and no other processes and internet is disabled, shouldn’t all the load go to the iOS and DAW?

If that’s the case, and you are only running one instance of one dAW, does it make a difference which processor you are using really based on the op? Like can an iPad Air 2 and iPad Air m1 basically have the same performance on DAW that are still running on single core (BM3)?

Or does the M1 chip distribute cpu workload on its own when it’s running one app? And how do you know when your maxing put aside from crackling if the meters aren’t really accurate ?

Mountain_Hamlet

@ecou Everything happening on one channel will mean one core being used. The same things being placed on different channels will mean there is a potential for these signals to be processed on multiple processor cores. This is where the performance difference will be seen. eg if you place a reverb as an insert on a channel the reverb will be processed on the same processor core as that channel. If you take the same reverb remove it from the insert position and place it on a send channel instead then the reverb and the original signal can be processed separately on different processor cores. Same cost, but potentially less load for a single core to manage. Like widening a pipeline.