Will Midi and/or Audiobus in Auria require ipad upgrade?

[kwalker0210]

I have an iPad2 and like everyone else, I was very excited when Audiobus was announced. Then I discovered Auria and I forgot about Audiobus (for awhile). Now Audiobus is with us, and I have a concern: will adding Audiobus and MIDI support to Auria require a hardware upgrade or a sacrifice of the number of tracks that can be recorded? As it stands now, Auria will not run on my iPad2 if I have too many programs running in the background, which means if I use Audiobus and Auria at the same time, I'm looking at a minimum of 3 background apps. I'm hoping for the best, but if MIDI or Audiobus support ramps up the hardware requirements for Auria, I hope these features are options that can be turned on and off.

[Rim]

Midi support, when it becomes available won't cause a significant increase in CPU usage, but Audiobus support definitely will. This is due to the fact that Audiobus requires a very low latency to be used, and Auria's CPU usage goes up significantly when the latency is low. You can test this right now by setting your latency (in Auria's settings) to 256 samples, then record enabling a track. This will give you an idea of how much CPU Audiobus will take when used with Auria. Then, you'll need to consider any other apps you're running in the background with Audiobus. All of these take CPU, making less available for Auria.

Audiobus support can definitely be disabled by simply not running the Audiobus app in the background.

Rim

[acaonweb]

i understand u, Rim, and i'm sure you are really testing Audiobus with Auria.
So what do you can say about Auria, Audiobus and another app (ie NLog MIDI Synth or Sunrizer) with iPad2

Thanx

[Rim]

It's too early to tell, since things are changing here every day with Audiobus.

Rim

[kwalker0210]

Rim, I did something similar: I launched Auria, then launched Audiobus. I activated two Audiobus compatible apps and switched back to Auria. As you stated, the CPU went up significantly and dropouts started to occur. A better alternative for me is to use WIST compatible apps on my iPod Touch and let Auria run solo on my iPad.

[dominicperry]

I can use Magellan and Audiobus and MT DAW on my iPhone 4S, which has a dual-core A5 chip, I believe the same as the early iPad 2.
So I don't think you need to rush out and buy an iPad 4 just yet. Unless you really want to

Dominic

[DavePDX]

So far, in my limited experimentation with Audiobus and MIDI, one of the most useful approaches is to set up the synth tracks using Virtual MIDI, which seems to have pretty low overhead, then use Audiobus to record the track into the DAW. The advantage is that I can set up several simultaneous iOS synths this way, and just record audio tracks one at a time with Audiobus.
The setup time is a little longer, since each synth needs to be set to a unique MIDI channel, but I can get useful results even on an iPhone this way.
I hope Virtual MIDI will be close on the heels of Audiobus integrated into Auria, even if all we could do initially would be to import a MIDI file and play the track to another app via Virtual MIDI.

[kwalker0210]

I appreciate all the positive feedback, but lets not lose focus: the objective here is to find out if Auria and Audiobus can coexist on an iPad 2. The answer is NO. Rim suggested loading Auria, Audiobus and another app. On my iPad 2, I experienced dropouts and clicks and eventually apps crashed. So for me, using Auria as an Audiobus client on an iPad 2 is not likely to work well. No need to send a condolence letter: I'm very happy using my iPod touch as a sound source for Auria. Thanks!

[dominicperry]

I appreciate all the positive feedback, but lets not lose focus: the objective here is to find out if Auria and Audiobus can coexist on an iPad 2. The answer is NO. Rim suggested loading Auria, Audiobus and another app. On my iPad 2, I experienced dropouts and clicks and eventually apps crashed. So for me, using Auria as an Audiobus client on an iPad 2 is not likely to work well. No need to send a condolence letter: I'm very happy using my iPod touch as a sound source for Auria. Thanks!

I don't understand your point. The question about whether Auria and Audiobus can coexist on an iPad 2 - was your own question. The answer - NO - is your own answer. If you already know that, and don't want other opinions, why are you asking?

There are two other answers/opinions in this thread - one from me, stating that a device with a similar or lesser spec that your iPad can and does run Magellan. Audiobus and MT DAW, and a second, from Rim, saying that it's hard to tell, as the specs/implementation for Audiobus are changing rapidly.

What are you trying to find out that you don't already know?

Dominic

[ChrisG]

The creator of nLog synth said he used some undocumented features in the iOS dev kit so nLog could change the buffer size regardless of Audiobus. Something like 1024 for iPad 1, 512 for iPad 2 and so on (scaling depending on devise). So loading Nlog first would over ride audiobus's very low buffer to get rid of stutter (at the cost of slightly higher latency). I dunno why the Audiobus guys are so hesitant to implement a setting screen that lets the user set the buffer size instead of requiring, the quite low, 256 buffer or whatever it's at now.

[kwalker0210]

Dominicperry, in all sincerity and with utmost humility, I ask you to go back through this thread and read each response. The moderator of this forum understood my question and answered it appropriately.

[dominicperry]

Dominicperry, in all sincerity and with utmost humility, I ask you to go back through this thread and read each response. The moderator of this forum understood my question and answered it appropriately.

I did read everything, but I've done so again and I understand. I think. Apologies.

Perhaps the answer is to use MT DAW (which appears to have a much smaller CPU footprint) and then, once you've recorded your raw tracks, move them into Auria for mixing. Bit of a pain, I realise.

I guess the problem is, however much CPU you have, it gets used up. I just fired up FabFilter ProL on my iPad 4, and using the highest settings (4x oversampling) it eats 52% CPU on its own.

Hopefully you'll find a workaround, or the cash to buy a faster machine.

Dominic

[kwalker0210]

Dominicperry, thank you for your help. I think I will eventually have to upgrade to an iPad4. In the meantime, are you aware of any DAW apps that are both WIST and Audiobus compatible?

[dominicperry]

No I don't know of any - I only use MT DAW and Auria. MT DAW doesn't have WIST.

The other ones that come to mind are Cubasis, Meteor and Music Studio. From what I can see, none of them support WIST.

Rebirth does, but I haven't used it and I don't know if it supports Audiobus.

Here's the WIST page with the current apps.

http://www.korguser.net/wist/

Dominic

[kwalker0210]

Your list made me go back and check my options. Turns out the NLog MidiSynth has both Audiobus and WIST compatibility. I am going to see if I can use that app as a signal source for Auria. I will share my results when I have something.