Ipad for music making

[Lyonart]

Hi
I've read on this forum many people referring to using an ipad with their Nord equipment (including such programs as Setlist maker and Touch OSC to name but a few).

Whilst I seriously need to upgrade my PC, I was also considering the possibility of using an Ipad for music making purposes (in addition to a pc). I would not only like to use midi program organising software but also explore some of the CORE midi apps for sequencing etc and also the synth apps (Korg IMS-20 and Ipolysix have caught my eye). I have also seen options such as Alesis io dock which generally widens connectivity of the Ipad with existing audio equipment.

It seems that more and more companies are turning to the Ipad to make apps (including Nord, Korg, Roland and Yamaha) but is anyone using the Ipad for serious music making purposes and should I really take it seriously as an additonal music making tool enough to want to spend money on one soley for this purpose?

Geoff

[mjbrands]

I wonder how serious companies like Korg and Yamaha take the iPad as a platform. Sure, they can make some money with it, but will they really stick with the platform for the long term. I'd think that if users started to migrate to Android tablets in large numbers, they might just stop releasing new iPad apps and/or limit/stop support for them. I'm sure Apple is pretty pleased with the large number of iPad users who use it for making music, but I'm also convinced that they won't hesitate long making changes to the iPad (or more specifically its operating system, iOS) that turn it into a platform unsuitable for making music, if there is enough of a financial gain to do so. With each new OS release, they're turning my beloved 27" iMac more and more into a 27" iPad without a touchscreen - I'm sure I'll just install Windows 7 or even Linux on it if they keep going on like this.

At least up to a few months ago (don't know what the current state is, I haven't kept myself up-to-date) there were serious technical issues with music applications on Android (latency) and Google wasn't going to fix this (doing so would cause other issues). While not all Android hardware was equally impacted by this (and it may be that newer Android versions made big improvements), I think the iPad is still more suitable (for music applications) because it has much lower latency.

Personally I probably wouldn't buy an iPad just for use as a music-making tool, simply because I don't really see the firm commitment from vendors (both Apple as well as application vendors) for long-term support. That said, I like my iPad and use it quite a bit. Since I already had it, I bought quite a few music apps (such as Korg iElectribe, Yamaha TNR-i (Tenori-On for iPad), Sunrizer and Moog Animoog).

Anyway, this is all just my speculation and opinion.

[anotherscott]

While not all Android hardware was equally impacted by this (and it may be that newer Android versions made big improvements), I think the iPad is still more suitable (for music applications) because it has much lower latency.

When iOS first came out, it was not suitable for MIDI, same as Android today. But in one of the OS upgrades (3-something or 4-something) they added CoreMIDI (low level MIDI OS support as in OS X), and then the barn doors were open. Android has no low level MIDI support. AFAIK, this affects all Android hardware. If it's not done at the OS level, there's not much a developer can do, because he can't get enough control over I/O timing. Certain kinds of apps might be okay, if they are not time-dependent (say, an editor/librarian or patch selector), but anything that depends on real-time I/O with external MIDI gear is basically unworkable. Since Apple's iOS is derived from OS X which had MIDI support, the infrastructure was already there for them to draw on. For Android it would have to be created from scratch, and like you, I've seen no indication that Google is intending to create it.

[mjbrands]

It's not the presence of (decent) MIDI support that is (was?) the issue, but the way some of the internals of Android work. It's optimized for (multimedia) performance, not necessarily low and somewhat predictable latency. If you start a movie or an MP3 and it takes 150 millisec, you will not notice. If you hit a key on your MIDI keyboard and it takes that same 150 ms for your multi-sampled piano to make a sound, you will definitely notice.

There are several MIDI sequencers for Android and as far as I know, those don't have the latency issues a softsynth would have. And who knows, maybe Google (and the manufacturers of the devices themselves did drastically improve audio latency).

[anotherscott]

It's not the presence of (decent) MIDI support that is (was?) the issue, but the way some of the internals of Android work.

It's the same thing. The internals of Android do not support real time MIDI I/O (there's no equivalent there to Apple's CoreMIDI infrastructure). That's why the apps aren't there. Developers are not given the tools to have sufficient control over the timing of the MIDI data stream. It's not even a matter of "latency" per se, its worse. It's not like each note would come out 25 ms late., but rather one note may come out 5 ms late and the next note may come out 50 ms late. (Numbers for illustrative purposes only.) At least this is my understanding.Basically, an app could tell the Android OS to send out a MIDI command, but it can't tell it exactly when... and then the OS will send the data whenever it gets around to it, amid all the other background processes that it is doing all the time. Normally, a user doesn't care if something happens "now" or 50 ms from now, so it's not an issue that the OS doesn't give apps such fine control over time... but with MIDI, it's essential. So you need to have that support at the OS level for real-time MIDI apps to work.

[mjbrands]

Ah, okay. Sounds like the situation on Android is even worse than I thought.

[Lyonart]

Went to buy an iPad today but discovered that the latest 4th Gen iPad has the new 'lightning' connector rather than the 30-pin connector of older generation iPads. Why is this important you might think? Well, I was also going to buy hardware to work with the iPad (an Alesis io dock) so that I can easily connect my audio equipment. As far as I am aware the new lightining connector is not compatible with most existing 3rd party iPad hardware unless you have an adapter and, in many cases (including the Alesis io dock) I am not convinced that an adapter would work for hardware where the iPad is designed to fit within it.

The impact of Apple's decision is very significant and could put a lot of small/medium sized companies specialising in third-party compatible hardware at risk as, in many, cases they will have to re-design their products for use with the new Ipad in order to carry on selling those products.

Whilst I am sure that Apple have their reasons for making the change, I am not sure they have appreciated or grasped the short to medium term consequences of their actions and could require existing owners to have to upgrade third party hardware when they also change their Ipad to 4th gen+.

This of course could well play in to the hands of rival companies such as Windows if they can get their act together and start releasing the sort of quality music apps that we have seen on the iPad and can get third parties to supply hardware. I do start to wonder whether Apple is a company on the verge of slipping into decline since the death of Steve Jobs.

Geoff

[soratach]

I guess Apple wants to make the Thunderbolt as its universal connections for all of its devices.
And yeah, if only Steve Jobs is still around...

[anotherscott]

Back to Android... audio latency is an issue as well, and that is apparently something they have made some attempt to address, but it is still problematic, as described in an interview with a developer at

http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2012/ ... ic-making/

Google has made some steps in the right direction with a lower latency audio implementation in Android 4.1, but the only devices supporting that in a decent way have almost no market-share. When we’re talking about iOS and music we’re mainly talking about the iPad – a tablet – and Android tablets make up less than 3% of all Android devices.

Until that changes and Google finds a way to stop fragmentation on Android in a way that gives developers a quasi-standard device specification to develop for, without having to test on 40+ Android devices, the music app market on Android won’t be able to compete with the music app market on iOS.

[Lyonart]

I received the following response from Alesis UK Support yesterday regarding the io dock

'Unfortunately at this time the Alesis iO Dock is not compatible with the latest generation iPad.

At this time our research and development team are looking in to ways of using the current iO Dock with the latest iPad release, but at this time I have no information as to whether a new version of the unit will be released or whether there will be updated parts to make the latest version of the iPad compatible with the unit unfortunately'.

I wonder across how many other companies this situation is being repeated following the change to the lighning connection and what the financial implications have been? Are changes like this putting off potential investors in ipad related hardware?

It is a shame as I would have bought an Ipad and an io dock had it not been for the compatability issue.