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FM4 Glitching out when played quickly, and I'm bummed - Ipad 4, iOS 8.3
Hi everyone, just want to try to understand what the heck is going on/see if anyone else has been having these problems. When I first purchased FM4 it worked flawlessly, never encountered a glitch, and I was so blown away by it that I LITERALLY SOLD MY YAMAHA TX81z a week after getting it. Well, now I'm starting to wonder if I made an incredibly dumb decision in doing that; basically, whenever I play a sequence of notes remotely quickly in FM4, horrific/noisy glitching and digital noise explode everywhere and sound starts cutting out. This happens when I play it standalone, when I play it in audiobus, in and out of airplane mode, with polyphony reduced to 4 or at 16, with other apps running or all by it's lonesome.
I stayed on iOS 7.12 for a really long time, and finally today went 'OK, fine; maybe the problem is with iOS 7' and updated (with no small amount of fear) to iOS 8.3. Nope, problem remains. I'm honestly gutted - the program worked fine when I got it, and is honestly irreplaceable (DXi doesn't even come close in terms of emulating the grungy amazingness of actual 4op FM hardware synths); I was using it to do what my TX81z used to, and now it's useless. Is anyone else having this problem? Is there something else I'm doing wrong? Was I an idiot for irreversibly updating to iOS 8.3? (well OK, maybe that question is for another thread). But seriously, any help would be tremendously appreciated. Thanks.
Comments
Have you tried asking the developer?
Have no idea WHY it worked this time, but I just deleted and reinstalled it again (tried it yesterday and the problem persisted, but it was on iOS 7), and it seems to be working now. Looks like I was freaking out for nothing - I guess, as someone who's used to hardware, I just got a brief taste of the occasional downside of software instruments. Looks like in this case, the problem was resolved. Oh well - feel silly for finally posting on here about it after like a week of worrying and then solving the problem within 30 minutes of posting, but hey, at least the problem seems to be resolved... :P
congrats for solving it!
your suddenly solving it may not at all be unrelated to posting it here
Glad it works again. Software is, indeed, SCARY!
Not sure if you'd just updated to 8.3, but for me it took ages for my apps to pick up on the 8.3 goodness and lose the glitches. Seems like they had to be loaded up and the pad rebooted a few times before it took hold. Which doesn't really make any sense but IT'S WHAT HAPPENED.
I used to work for a software house in Manhattan (this was in the mid-nineties) and as I've probably mentioned before the genius/programmer/oddball owner who knew more about the ins and out of code than anyone would sometimes stare at a bug and just wander off down the corridor muttering in his soft Gallic accent ze mystery of computers.....
Man, there's no way I'm updating to 8.3 now. I'm right in the middle of making a FM4 only track...
FWIW, it IS working just fine now. but still, just a scary reminder that an ill advised update on either iOS or your app can have negative consequences.
General rule of thumb with apps that aren't working (not to sound too "IT Guy" here) is to reboot your iPad, and retry. If that doesn't work, delete the app and reinstall (back up your custom presets first, or they're deleted as well).
Usually works well.
Yep, and don't worry about sounding 'IT guy' - the reality is that more often than not that fixes most problems. I was just bugging out because I'd tried it once and it didn't do anything; however, once I'd updated to 8.3 and did it again, presto, it worked!
Sounds like 8.3 has got some random quirky bug, others reporting strange behaviour in Laplace, Audiobus not working, but also strangeness outside of Audiobus, I was going to update but ermmm, think I'll wait a little longer.
Hey, update - I was wrong to think I'd fixed the problem. Its there no matter how many times I reinstall it - any rapid playing or arpeggiation reduces the sound into a wall of glitchy/atonal digital noise. Weirdly enough, when I tried to record an audio example of the problem into audioshare, even though it still sounded like shit when i played it live, when i played the file back in audioshare, it stuttered the first time through, then played normal sounding notes. Totally baffling, and it's rendered the app unusable. I wrote the developer, but no reply sadly. Am i the only one with this problem? (iOS 8.3, most recent version of FM4, ipad 4)
I have mini 2 iOS 8.3
I have just tested it playing quickly on the screen,don't appear to have the problem. Do you play with external keyboard or does it still have the problem from touch screen?
touch screen, MIDI keyboard - same issue turns up regardless. I'm totally baffled. Seems like it could be a CPU problem, but the app ran perfectly when i first downloaded it; i recorded a bunch of songs using it controlled by my MPC, integrated into the rest of my hardware setup. Anyone else with an ipad 4 encountering this issue with FM4? Feel like I'm going nuts, but I've tried everything I can think of - using it in audiobus, standalone, reinstalling the app, etc etc.
No problem here. iPad Air 1 and 8.3
iPad4 same issue, but it goes away if I put it in Audiobus with 512 frames latency control setting. I also tried IAA in Tabletop and it worked fine. Seems like I can always recreate the glitching when I open FM4 by itself and play the ARP RUNNING MAN.
ARP RUNNING MAN did the same with me on iPad 4, I never figured out those workarounds that you have @firejan. The glitches stopped when I got Air 2...
yeah, seems like 64 bits can handle it
OK, heard back from dev, and have tested extensively. Basically, if you're using an iPad 4 and iOS 8.3, you're screwed as far as FM4 goes. Even in audiobus with the latency set to 1024 and at 4 polyphony, playing any sequence of notes in any patch where the release rings out for a while will eventually turn your audio into a pile of digital mush. Dev was gracious, and I really don't think it's his fault, but I'm incredibly pissed off right now - not at him, but really at Apple (for forcing updates I don't need on me, for rendering older devices unusable, for not giving us the freedom to install previous versions of iOS or have any control over the files on our devices, etc), and at myself for being stupid enough to sell my TX81z with the idea that it had been rendered obsolete.
Honestly, this is just a HUGE reminder of why - until I got my iPad - I never used software synths, and used hardware exclusively. I always imagine my iPad as a hyper flexible hardware synth module itself, and generally use it that way integrated into a larger setup (no interest in extensively multitracking on it or doing precise wav editing - though audioshare is great for what it is), and I thought that meant I was safe from this sort of stuff happening to me. But as it is, while I will never stop loving many of my iOS apps (samplr, idensity/pulsaret, Tera synth, sector, mitosynth, etc etc), I honestly feel anxious about the future of my device, and feel stupid for getting rid of a hardware synth which worked perfectly well for almost 30 years to use an app which lasted me about 6 months before becoming unusable.
Again, just to be crystal clear - I DONT blame primal audio for this, as I understand that they're limited to working with the iOS they're given, and want to optimize their app with that in mind. But it just sucks. I bought my iPad TWO YEARS AGO, at which point it was still the best iPad available. I'm already starting to be unable to use relatively simple synth apps such as FM4. That's fucking ridiculous. Even more galling is the fact that as recently as a few months ago, the app worked perfectly for me, enough that I tracked an entire song using it alongside my HW synths providing a bassline with it.
I mean, yeah, i can just never update my OS again and hopefully will be safe, but its just RIDICULOUS to me that I can't simply try updating to a new OS, realize it doesn't run well, and revert to my old one without having to resort to absurd workarounds; beyond that, I don't even understand what the supposed benefits of iOS 8 have been for me; my ipad is functionally the same, with a slightly different set of graphics, a few things I could give a shit about (document picker, waaaooow), and some under the hood improvements that I don't benefit from because my CPU is now being overtaxed. Ugh.
I sympathize with both you and the developer.
We struggled mightily to get Diode running in iOS 8 on the lowest spec Mini and the iPad 2. Even had to switch some of the views to OpenGL rendering.
You've certainly run into one of the downsides of relying on software rather than hardware.
But FM4 is very cool, and maybe it will come back for you on iOS 9. The press is speculating that iOS 9 will be focused on stability and optimization.
Crossing my fingers that it can work again - it was one of my absolute favorite synth apps, which is part of the reason I'm so upset. And just to make it clear again - the dev was nothing but helpful on this, and I don't blame them. Just frustrated at how quickly obsolescence seems to be approaching my (I thought) relatively new, powerful, iPad...
Well that sucks but I'm on an iPad 4 iOS 8.3 and it definitely works. Any specific patch that I could try to recreate it with?
Alright, well I guess if I really push it...
EDIT: deleted the video as it's no longer a fair representation
still usable imo
So confused. Mine responds much, much worse than that. honestly, if the glitching was like that, i could honestly work with it bc it's somewhat musical. Just as an example, playing the same patch (running man) with no other apps open, in airplane mode, it glitches to the point of crunchy noise within 3 seconds and total silence within 5 seconds if I just hold down middle C, and press no other keys. I'm going to try reinstalling it for like the 10th time, but I'm at my wit's end right now.
are you using FM4 v1.1?
Well, after reinstall, it performs just about exactly as your version did in the video; only glitches if I REALLY try to glitch it. of course, that fix worked for me before, and then stopped working after a day or two and i was back to digital mush town, a process that I've gone through repeatedly. but i suppose that if the price i have to pay for keeping the app working is reinstalling it from scratch every couple of days, so be it. Still pissed off at goddamn iOS 8 though.
I see. I'm not using it that often to know if that happens. I just tried the same experiment in AudioShare with some weird results, I wanted to share that too but when I tried to QuickTime record it, it wouldn't let me put the FM4 in the AudioShare IAA node. And yes, version 1.1.
Bummed in Atlanta!
Some stuff is 8.3 some stuff is hardware. This glitch, and glitches with other hungry synths like Z3ta, Nave and Tf7, and also anticipating the incoming Auria, convinced me to get out of 4 and into air 2. This by the way at marital peril. Other stuff, crashy stuff, bums me out about 8.3. But, music making-wise we live like kings, pissy kings sometimes in my case but
Just got an email from Primal Audio:
"Dear FM4 iPad users.
We have discovered a bug in the latest version of FM4 (v1.2) where some users experience crackling audio. We are trying to come up with a fix, but we fear that it's a bug in the runtime that ships with the latest version of Apple's Xcode. In the mean time we have a temporary fix for the users who experience the crackling noise:
1: Open the tuning settings in the setup section
2: Double tap the Tune knob."