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Do plugins sound identically on iPadOS and macOS?
So I just heard one guy say that he wasted money on TAL U-NO-LX on the iPad because it sounds like shit compared to the computer version.
That sounds like audiophile USB cable level stuff to me. Yes, Core Audio is iPadOS is different from its Mac counterpart, but even on Mac and Windows plugins sound identical despite massive differences under the hood.
I have a strong suspicion something was wrong with that guy's iPad or audio chain.
Has anyone experienced anything like that? Especially with the aforementioned plugin, I'd be curious to listen to an identical chord progression exported with identical settings on Mac/Win/iPad, I'd expect it to sound the same.
Comments
Plugins do not make any sound. It is the ADC and analog signal chain (audio amplification and speakers) that make the sound…so yes, an iPad will sound different than an phone, laptop or a tower…
I find that a well designed preamp after your ADC makes the most significant sound improvement…
It also sounds different on freaking everything. But stems are the same, and the codebase of the synth is the same. At least I haven't heard by now that anyone ever ported the app by coding it from the ground up all over again with different algorithms and everything just to be on the iOS platform.
That guy is dumb.
A lot of people have made claims over the years that iOS audio is low quality but it’s all been debunked.
In 99.9% of cases, the same plug-in on any mainstream platform will use exactly the same code (read: maths) for the digital signal processing / generation, so it will "sound" (read: render) identical everywhere.
Some heavily optimized plug-ins might use platform-specific machine code / CPU-specific vector operations / etc., but even in that case, they should sound identical if they use the same amount of floating-point precision and the developer didn't mess up 😊
Maybe it genuinely sounded worse for one of the reasons already mentioned,
(but also to throw into the hat of possibilities some folks have always been extremely dumb about this stuff. People used to say that certain DAWs sounded better or worse, or that AIFF sounded better than WAV, etc , all entirely null test disprovable nonsense.)
As a user of exactly that plugin on both iPad and on MacOS, I've never felt the need to test any difference and it's amongst my must-have iPad synths despite it being a fairly restricted palette in this era ( and the MPE is simple/hardwired but works perfectly). It most certainly does not "sound like shit compared to the computer version".
As far as I understand it, the exported/rendered digital export file would be identical if using the same software, therefore the same algorithms, regardless of whether it was rendered on desktop or iOS. Of course, the way that digital file is delivered to your ears - the operating system’s audio engine, the DAC and the speakers or headphones used - will affect the sound you hear between different devices but that’s all, the exported file itself would be the same.
Okay, the guy in question just exported stems and compared them. They are identical, so he admits he was wrong. Respect to him for rechecking and admitting instead of sticking to that.