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Which iPad for working with multilayered samples and tracks in AudioLayer+GarageBand?
Long question title, I know. Kind of hard to phrase it.
I’m doing some random round robin sampling of my analog synths and it sounds awesome. I’m using AutoSampler in MainStage and AudioLayer on my iPhone 7 Plus. However, I’m noticing that it easily gets too heavy for it and I’m looking to get a used iPad or if that’s not enough I’ll just have to get a new one. The 12,9 form factor is too large for me so the normal sized iPad or mini is preferred.
Would I get by with a used iPad for multi tracking multi-sampled instruments connected to GarageBand or what do you think?
Comments
As always get the best one that you can afford.
The minimum is an iPad Air 2 obviously.
I have an iPad Pro 9.7" first generation and an iPhone SE in parallel.
Both with separate audio interfaces which enables me to route
any of my sound sources back into itself.
Because of the way I push my iOS devices I'm going to get
another iPad, most probably latest Gen 12.9" to use solely as a DAW.
Use one as a multitimbral sound source and
as you're using your iPhone 7+ for your
sampling needs so far don't change it.
Once you get an iPad you can use that for GarageBand
or another DAW and that way the load is spread more evenly.
I wouldn't recommend a mini at this point for you.
I've heard good things about the iPad Air 3.
Man, what are you doing?
I've never managed to overload an iPhone 6s with a 2.2GB huge multi-layer sample set in AudioLayer. If your 7 Plus can't handle it, maybe your patch could use some redesign?
Thanks for the suggestions on units that would work! Why specifically Air 2 as a minimum?
The other thing is that you and I seem to use iOS for music creation quite differently. I’m not mainly on iOS. I use it for sketching out ideas. Also I don’t want to use my iOS devices as instruments and/or routed together or something like that. I’m looking to use one iPad for this that I’m asking for above. No external audio interface connected to it or anything else. I usually sketch out my ideas while travelling and what I see as lovely about iOS is the simplicity and limitations that a computer lacks. Later when an idea has grown big enough I start working on the real thing on MBP or iMac.
Tell me more how you set up your sample instruments and I can compare/contrast it to my process.
One example:
16 velocity layers, one of them crossfaded by Wheel-up, 88 samples each, 12 layers spread over exclusive velocity zones, 4 layers full-range. Lots of sample-level volume and filter adjustments.
After loading the instrument, I have to give it some time to pre-load all samples due to disk streaming but otherwise it works great.
I would say iPad gen 6 or later. The sixth generation iPad has a FAR more capable CPU than the Air 2. The iPad 6th gen is quite close in ability to the first generation iPad Pro and the price of a used or refurbished one is quite low.
Adding to this, it supports the Apple Pencil which makes it easy to manipulate samples in GarageBand.
Ok! What kHz and bit rate do you work with and how long are the samples each in this instrument? And also: how many other tracks of sample instruments can you easily work with on your 6s?
I might surely be setting my instruments up the wrong way. I’m doing sampling my old analog synths for this. When it’s a vco based synth I try and make more layers than for dco’s. I don’t do looping that much outside of EXS24 since I can’t figure out how AudioLayer would import with looping (that’s a question for another thread). That is: I use pretty long samples in stead. The instruments are also 48 kHz and I’m constantly trying to work with different amounts of RR layers with true randomisation. I use a minimum of three layers for dco based synths and five layers for vco’s. The instruments vary somewhere between 0,5-2GB and I sometimes sample pure waveforms to edit in subtractive with AL. I’m not sure why that doesn’t work for several tracks at once but I often get stuck with crackles and pops sometimes with just one of these running AL through GB. I just figured the phone wasn’t cut out for this.
I should also add that I don’t use my phone only for music creation. It’s my regular phone that handles everything else people use their phones for nowadays. Would I get an iPad I could focus more on using it for music, but I’d hope I could have it for some more stuff that just that though. I have about 20 GB free space on my iPhone regularly. It’s the 128 kind.
Cool! And also very smart about the pencil. I agree that that would be very helpful with AL since it’s so fiddly. Would I need to buy the pencil separately?
I must also say: I have a hard time wrapping my head around all the iPad choices of today between the Mini, iPad, Air and the two Pro’s. How much they differ just within the same approximate year of release.
The iPad 6 is hardly any faster than the iPhone 7 plus. And it has less RAM so it may struggle with large AudioLayer instruments even earlier, but the large screen is good of course.
Another not too expensive option is an iPad Mini 5 (64GB), smaller but more powerful.
The pencil is another $100. 😢
Edit: Here's a chart with single-core and multi-core performance of different iDevices. Note that audio apps usually only use one single core for handling audio. Unlike a web browser which can easily distribute different parts of a web page to different CPU cores.
If I was to buy a new one for music, I'd ignore the orange bars and choose by the blue ones.
I just found out that you’re right (!) and it’s even weaker because of the lack of RAM:
(I marked the OS version because I wasn’t paying attention to the iPadOS/iOS difference 🙂)
Other than that the CPU and GPU specs are identical so I won’t be getting that iPad now just for the larger screen, that’s for sure.
I’ll have to check that one out! I do prefer the form factor of the Mini unless it’s the Air since it’s so light.
Thanks for pointing that out!
CPU specs, IOS version and benchmarks are hardly related to pro audio processing.
(which is what you're after... it's a very particular sub-domain)
The main feature to get a(ny) new iPad versus a used one is simply cash.
Apple reduced the entry price for about one third in recent years from 500 to 350.
(iDevices are the most expensive units in 2nd hand market)
A dedicated iPad will benefit from all those phone tasks not running in background, probably more than from CPU cycles or core count. You can't deliberately claim cores for audio anyway.
Tried rereading your post a couple of times but I can’t really see what you mean by “CPU specs ... are hardly related to pro audio processing”? English is not my native tongue so I don’t understand it all. You also point out that fewer tasks running in the background is more beneficial for good performance? But I don’t get how I on my Macs can run loads of other processes in the background with a i7 CPU and so have my daw work fine because it. That’s what I understand is happening at least. An older Mac with i5 wouldn’t be able to handle the audio processing. Are you specifically focusing on RAM here? Because then the more RAM the better.
I tried to leave out as much technical details as possible, but those hints apply to any system with pro audio application focus.
It's not just about number of tasks, but about their priority and access to components which are important to the audio system, too. Those crackles originate from such 'conflicts'.
If you compare an 'old' i5 to a later i7, you may also compare a different data path architecture, different cache sizes and handling (both CPU and main memory), etc.
(you probably don't want to know (let alone mess with) all those details.
More (RAM) memory is always prefarable in IOS because it's a sparse resouce usually.
Ok. Well it’s easier when you pinpoint exactly what you refer to in between the lines. I might get some of it. 🙂 I know at least how to switch to an ssd in a Mac Mini 😀.
Jokes aside: what do suggest I do? As you might have read above my one iOS device right now is an iPhone 7 Plus. It does not handle AL sample instruments that well I think. Crackles and pops as you commented on. Resetting the RAM only helps to a certain extent before I’m back to square one. If this is a matter of too little memory or not strong enough CPU, or just bad programming and integration I have no idea, but I can only affect the former so that’s why I’m looking for a solution in a better iOS device, preferably an iPad bc of the bigger screen. But perhaps this issue can’t be solved that way?
How many AudioLayer and other tracks are you running at once?
@rs2000 : thanks for the correction re relative specs of iPhone 7 and iPad gen 6.
@joachim_s
iPad Air 2 is the minimum requirement to run most of music apps.
Have a look on the App Store and you will see this for yourself.
I was merely explaining how using two idevices combined
with audio interfaces increases your audio flexibility.
With my routing setup I can run BM3 on one machine and
QuantiLoop, multiple synths and amp simulators
on the other iDevice without loss of quality for instance.
My purposes are not yours for sure.
Whatever you decided it has to be suitable for you.
@rs2000
Seems like the iPad 11" is the one from that list.
Thanks for that, I now know what
to aim for with my next upgrade.
In the interim I'm getting the minimum to run
BM3 only which is an Air 2 with 128Gb.
@espiegel123, @Gravitas You're welcome
I'm surprised how well they've equipped the iPad Mini 5.
I don't have AudioLayer myself, but it's based on a streming engine which makes memory a significantly lower concern.
But what @espiegel123 mentioned: how many instances (and the complexity of sample processing in AL) may matter.
So I have digged in to this to find out how I’ve set it up. I have made an example of a track where I’ve used both AL instruments and patches/drums etc that comes along with GB. I have a screenshot video of this but I don’t know how to attach videos here.
In this song I have four instances of sample instruments where the first two each contain:
126 samples
6 RR layers set to random
21 notes stretched every third or so note spanning from C1-C6
There are no velocity changes going on in the two first instruments since these are Juno-106 samples. These two are short bass sounds, no subtractive or other editing going in AL since I sampled finished patches on my 106.
The third AL instrument is a pad I made on the Oberheim Xpander, hence way longer samples. It’s the same AL instance twice with minor eq stuff going on in GB:
252 samples
3 RR layers set to random
Every note sampled from C1-A#5 with three velocity layers.
Since this is a ready patch I have on my Xpander there is no other processing done in AL like with the former two instruments. However, I do use some ShimmerFX and other minor eq etc on tracks in this project. I guess I’ll have to get an iPad Pro since it exclusively brings most ram to the game. I have 3 GB RAM on my iPhone 7 Plus so I guess 4-6 might help?
Any suggestions or thoughts on my reply?
I have a large acoustic grand piano plus vibraphone, total size is 2.6 Gigabytes, on my iPhone 5 SE running inside the standalone version of AudioLayer and it works fine without issues except that I have to give it a few seconds after loading the instrument(s) in order to pre-load the samples. Maybe try the standalone version first?
You’re right about waiting. I realised a while ago that I’d have to give it a second. I think maybe the random round robin I have set up for several instruments at once, while other processes are calculated as well in GarageBand, might be the reason why it’s a different situation to yours.
A hosted AUv3 version naturally has less memory and less cpu power available than the standalone app. I don't know how AudioLayer manages available memory but with a high number of samples to pre-load for disk streaming, I can imagine that the pre-load buffer must at some point be much shorter than in the standalone app, and that may cause short audio dropouts.
A good test is to play a few different monster chords and see what happens (in that case, AL would have to stream and process multiple files from disk simultaneously).
Yeah. I believe you’re right.
What has happened now even more often is that the instrument just stops being audible, and I have to restart the project, GB and often even reset the ram. I surely can’t have anything else going on in the background of GB.
Is there a reproducible sequence of actions that you could list?