DUNE 2 is out now!!

[Richard_Synapse]

The sound quality of some apps are on par with the latest and greatest on desktop.

Well it's all digital CPUs which ultimately do exactly the same thing. Since the iPhone 7 and other smartphones offer amazing performance, they can certainly sound just as fine, no question about it That said there is probably still a substantial difference in overall performance, i.e. when you run large projects with many instruments/fx inside. I'm not aware of any DSP-relevant comparisons between Smartphones and Intel desktop CPUs (which must include the SSE/AVX vector features since everyone uses them) but my guess is that desktops will offer at least 2-5 more performance for DSP than Smartphones do.

Richard

[Synthman2000]

Sure, these days are good if you want a cheap entree in music creation.
People can do professional productions on smartphones and tablets these days with some awesome apps which seems to be the next step for even less money since they mostly just 1/10 of the price of desktop tools and often offer the same or even you get the same tools for 1/10 and no piracy (iOS at least).
But this "everything for a dollar" mentality might be not so good at all. When consumers are the market where the money goes there might be no place for "pro" tools anymore.
We will see how it goes.
I don't care which OS, which device or software i have to use as long as it makes me happy and i can do what i want and can afford it.

Environment, mood and feelings are super important. Also a sense of technical "rightness" is a factor. I would or could never make a piece of music on a phone, it would seem whimsical and throw away. Music making should be life enhancing, I aim for the conditions to make that so. Maybe it is an ok compromise with a laptop and good quality headphones for the travelling/gigging musician.

I think most people making music feel the same. There are many depths to computer music (and that is what this forum is about I think) , the technical side, the synthesis, the recording, mixing etc. ups and downs of creativity, discussion etc. A phone just does not seem to cut it.

If you can make something great on a phone though, hats off. I personally doubt the phone and where it is, is the right environment for optimal creativity (maybe be cool for scratchpad in inspirational places ...on the beach, in the open plains, valleys or mountain tops). I like to get lost making music not do Facebook, answer SMS and phone calls, a bit too close to mundane life for me.

[chk071]

The sound quality of some apps are on par with the latest and greatest on desktop.

Well it's all digital CPUs which ultimately do exactly the same thing. Since the iPhone 7 and other smartphones offer amazing performance, they can certainly sound just as fine, no question about it That said there is probably still a substantial difference in overall performance, i.e. when you run large projects with many instruments/fx inside. I'm not aware of any DSP-relevant comparisons between Smartphones and Intel desktop CPUs (which must include the SSE/AVX vector features since everyone uses them) but my guess is that desktops will offer at least 2-5 more performance for DSP than Smartphones do.

Richard

I think it is much more than that. Mobile CPU's are designed for conserving system ressources, and save battery, hence they will even rank lower than laptop CPU's in most cases, performance wise. The only real performance critical apps are games, and those are hardly comparable with games you run on your desktop computer.

[Cinebient]

The sound quality of some apps are on par with the latest and greatest on desktop.

Well it's all digital CPUs which ultimately do exactly the same thing. Since the iPhone 7 and other smartphones offer amazing performance, they can certainly sound just as fine, no question about it That said there is probably still a substantial difference in overall performance, i.e. when you run large projects with many instruments/fx inside. I'm not aware of any DSP-relevant comparisons between Smartphones and Intel desktop CPUs (which must include the SSE/AVX vector features since everyone uses them) but my guess is that desktops will offer at least 2-5 more performance for DSP than Smartphones do.

Richard

I think it is much more than that. Mobile CPU's are designed for conserving system ressources, and save battery, hence they will even rank lower than laptop CPU's in most cases, performance wise. The only real performance critical apps are games, and those are hardly comparable with games you run on your desktop computer.

Yes, yes, i agree with you all on this one for sure. I just wanted to say that there is also a growing community which looks for the cheapest way to create music (beside only free ware) and there are a lot in mobile forums which worked on desktop DAW´s but felt in love with multi-touch because of some great GUI, easy to use tools and they hate sitting in front of a desktop.
That´s fine of course. The cpu, yes of course desktops and even powerful notebooks are still better but especially the latest iPads are very powerful and they seems to growing faster than the X86 platforms. RAM is the bigger issue there.
I still prefer a notebook (but it must be at least 15") since it´s the best mix of power and mobility for me personally.....at least for now.
Everyone has it´s own workflow.
Like i said i use both and there are unique tools on all platforms and the best is still to combine that. I just wish a lot desktop tools would have better optimized and more interesting GUI´s.
Dune 2 is really fantastic but it could need some better GUI in terms of workflow (and size for me). But it´s a minor thing since Dune 2 GUI is still very user friendly and usable for me.
We live in great times.....if i just had more time for the things i love to do

[Vectorman]

I personally doubt the phone and where it is, is the right environment for optimal creativity (maybe be cool for scratchpad in inspirational places ...on the beach, in the open plains, valleys or mountain tops). I like to get lost making music not do Facebook, answer SMS and phone calls, a bit too close to mundane life for me.

That's pretty much how I feel about it. I couldn't see a mobile device ever being useful to me for more than a scratchpad. When it comes to getting serious and actually recording, I need more screen real estate, decent monitors, keyboards, bass, guitar, microphone, etc. The other items needed to get it done are the deciding factor in portability (or the lack thereof). Swapping the CPU tower for an iPhone wouldn't suddenly enable me to record an album in a tent at a campground (even if the iPhone could run all the software from the desktop, which isn't going to happen anytime soon).

[chk071]

Yep. Never quite got the obsession of making music with a mobile device. Too many limitations, small screen, low system ressources, workarounds to work with audio interfaces, limitations in the amount of instances of devices, and so on. Only thing i could imagine a tablet for is as a virtual MIDI controller. But, even then, fiddling virtual knobs instead of real ones isn't really what i'd like to do, when i already have phsyical knobs and faders on my controller keyboard...

[OzoneJunkie]

While desktop and laptop CPU power/speed will always be ahead, I suspect that in five years time mobile phones will be powerful enough to cover what laptops currently do as of today.

And since many of us use laptops exclusively now (I have been for ten years now), I imagine that plugging our phones into a shell that houses a keyboards and screen, or into a docking station on one's desktop that hooks into all our necessary peripherals, will be viable.

The cellphone laptop shell has been done before, but with limited success. But I believe we'll get there.

[carrieres]

we will never be there for physic reason, the power of your phone will always be inferior to your laptop because the most powerful is your cpu the most cooling system will be necessary, do you imagine a small phone which should be the size of your hand with a cooling system enough efficient ?
The same logic could be applied to photography, the lens of a phone will never be the same quality as a pro lens with 16 lens and a weight of 950 g !
but on the other hand you can make beautiful music or photography with a phone !

[OzoneJunkie]

Right, the phone won't pass or be equal to the power of a laptop at the same time as the laptop.

My point is that in five years, a phone will have the power of TODAY'S laptop, which is powerful enough (of course) to do music production.

And while music software and operating systems will require more power in the future as they always do, again, the point is that in five years time we'll have enough power in a phone to run multiple soft synths of 2015 era.

Right now, while we've come a long way and can run some great mobile DAWs and light soft synths, we're still too underpowered to do full production the way we're used to, running multiple modern soft synths. But 5 years ago we couldn't do any of what we can do on a phone right now.

[AnX]

In 5 years a phone will still be much smaller than a laptop/pc screen (for obvious reasons)

Regardless of its power, its still not practical.

[chk071]

... and soft synths will be more demanding in 5 years too, so the gap between the performance of mobile devices, and desktop devices will remain the same. Frankly, we will never see something like Monark or Diva on a mobile device. Development for such platforms will always be a compromise to save processing power. And, who knows, maybe people will have enough of that gadget type of thing in 5 years anyway. They're already developing foldable displays now, who knows how a mobile phone will really look like in 5-10 years.

[recursive one]

In 5 years a phone will still be much smaller than a laptop/pc screen (for obvious reasons)

Regardless of its power, its still not practical.

Agree. TBH I don't udnerstand this iphone music making craze, this marked seems to cater people who love doing everything on their iphones just because they love their iphones. For portability a small notebook seems to be as close to a perfect solution as it gets.

[OzoneJunkie]

In 5 years a phone will still be much smaller than a laptop/pc screen (for obvious reasons)

Regardless of its power, its still not practical.

Agree. But this is why I said that I think we'll see cellphone shells. Laptop keyboard+screen shells, where we plug our phones into them. That and/or desktop hubs. Again, the laptop shell has been done before, but it wasn't the right time - phones weren't really powerful enough.

In the same way that laptops have become desktop replacements for many people, now tablets (with keyboard attachments) handle many laptop duties.

We'll get there. Carry you phone with you - that's your CPU, RAM, storage. Plug into a shell. It's inevitable.

I say 5 years, but maybe it's more like 7. It's coming, tho, I believe this.

[Richard_Synapse]

Right now, while we've come a long way and can run some great mobile DAWs and light soft synths, we're still too underpowered to do full production the way we're used to, running multiple modern soft synths. But 5 years ago we couldn't do any of what we can do on a phone right now.

Yep, and it's conceivable that some day the smartphone processing power is simply enough to do whatever you want, when it comes to DSP applications. Suppose that in the future we have 10x better CPU performance on our desktops than we have today, and somewhat later smartphones catch up, it's possible that there's simply enough CPU, and that using more CPU no longer improves the audio quality in a noticeable fashion.

Richard

[Touch The Universe]

t's possible that there's simply enough CPU, and that using more CPU no longer improves the audio quality in a noticeable fashion.

Richard

I hope not, what fun would that be Hopefully developers, despite the increase in cpu enhancements, still will push and use the same percentage as they do now. The more power they have availalbe, the more they can and will use Even with a 10x faster cpu, ideally, the new synths too would try to use the 10x power creatively.