Low latency audio in Android 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich)

[Sascha Franck]

Karmacomposer, Sascha Franck - It has got to be fixed! Why must one put up with Apple when Android has the potential to 1. do it better, 2. do it cheaper (maybe), 3. while not having even one of the proprietary niggles mentioned?

Thing is, I simply don't wanna wait.
I'm already waiting for a decent audio/MIDI input device for the iPhone. Such a thing should be there somewhen during the next year (at least I hope so). For Android there's not even remotely anything in sight.


- Sascha

[Karmacomposer]

How the heck would I know? I can't bring about change for anything but my own little tiny microcosm.

Fact is, most Android devices have a usb port, but in order to use audio hardware of any kind, drivers have to be written and recognized by the host software.

iPad can do this because it is EXACTLY the same audio code as its bigger brother and sisters (mac computers and notebooks). They did not have to write any new drivers or anything - it's already there.

Mike

[UltraJv]

Im an experimenter, ICS is being ported to my cheap as chips LG GT540, tried an early beta and its looking good. Previous version of Cyanogen mod 7 Android (Gingerbread 2.3.7) worked great with very low latency. Android is great to experiment on and such. These things are fun, why anybody would want to spend more than $100 on it for audio I dont know, if I want to do serious stuff I use my DAW. If you want to get serious with audio on the move, get a laptop or for fun a netbook.

[UltraJv]

Further to this - give it time. Im sure it will be sorted eventually. Fruity loops is being ported :

http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/31/fl-s ... beats-too/

[Sascha Franck]

if I want to do serious stuff I use my DAW. If you want to get serious with audio on the move, get a laptop or for fun a netbook.

I have a laptop (it's my main DAW). Yet, I already *do* experience the advances of using a smartphone for certain "musical duties". None of them could be satisfied with any Android phone ATM. As easy as that.
And it's not as if I'd carry a netbook, tablet or anything else with me all the time. But I *do* have my phone with me *all* the time. That's the key difference. And yes, as said above, I can get some rather serious work done on a smartphone, it's all about the interface (unfortunately, quite some apps fall quite short regarding that) and low latencies (yes, really - and quite some other apps fall short on that, too, unfortunately Garage Band as well...).
As easy as that.

- Sascha

[The Safe Places]

UltraJV -

Android is great to experiment on and such. These things are fun, why anybody would want to spend more than $100 on it for audio I dont know, if I want to do serious stuff I use my DAW. If you want to get serious with audio on the move, get a laptop or for fun a netbook.

Unbelievable. Given the way tablets are growing, I bet by next year-end they'll be able to do most laptop jobs, and would be overpowered only by dedicated desktop DAWs. Given, of course, the software, audio interfaces, and OS support - the tablet innards, for one, sure seem to be headed into that territory. That's the whole point - give the OS a shot in the arm, the apps and audio interfaces will come trickling in...

Karmacomposer -

iPad can do this because it is EXACTLY the same audio code as its bigger brother and sisters (mac computers and notebooks). They did not have to write any new drivers or anything - it's already there.

I see. Well, that certainly can't be said for Android. I wonder if those Linux tablets would go this route...

[UltraJv]

UltraJV -

Android is great to experiment on and such. These things are fun, why anybody would want to spend more than $100 on it for audio I dont know, if I want to do serious stuff I use my DAW. If you want to get serious with audio on the move, get a laptop or for fun a netbook.

Unbelievable. Given the way tablets are growing, I bet by next year-end they'll be able to do most laptop jobs, and would be overpowered only by dedicated desktop DAWs. Given, of course, the software, audio interfaces, and OS support - the tablet innards, for one, sure seem to be headed into that territory. That's the whole point - give the OS a shot in the arm, the apps and audio interfaces will come trickling in...

Karmacomposer -

iPad can do this because it is EXACTLY the same audio code as its bigger brother and sisters (mac computers and notebooks). They did not have to write any new drivers or anything - it's already there.

I see. Well, that certainly can't be said for Android. I wonder if those Linux tablets would go this route...

I paid £500 for my Quad core PC. ipad costs £400, iphone costs £300. Android phone is £100. Would I spend 3 times the amount to do audio on iphone or higher spec Android? No. Tablets/phones are great for some tasks, I use my Android phone for a lot of fun stuff. These things are designed for low power use, ARM is no where near the power of X64, thats how its designed. If you happen to have a tablet/phone and want to use it for audio, cool. To buy one just for that reason, no. Its amusing to watch people spending $$$ on several addons to make an idevice work as a DAW. I have other expensive hobbies, Steve Jobs certainly knew how to make money for Apple. Horses for courses

[Thunderchief]

Hi Guys, as an interesting note, I have an app installed on my Samsung Galaxy s2, called xPiano by cyandroid. I find that this app has quite low latency, I think at least half that of Caustic. (which is an excellent program btw)
Now it doesn't report it's latency so I'm guessing, but it is just about playable, if not in the same league as a IOS app, it is the lowest latency if seen in a android app, somewhere around 20-40 ms.
I wonder why this app is very nearly playable? Its quite simple, just a basic sample player, maybe that's it, but if the problem is to do with the buffers I don't see how the simplicity would help. Any Ideas, anyone else tried this app? a free version is available in the market to try if you haven't already.

[SingleCell]

Hi Guys, as an interesting note, I have an app installed on my Samsung Galaxy s2, called xPiano by cyandroid. I find that this app has quite low latency, I think at least half that of Caustic. (which is an excellent program btw)
Now it doesn't report it's latency so I'm guessing, but it is just about playable, if not in the same league as a IOS app, it is the lowest latency if seen in a android app, somewhere around 20-40 ms.
I wonder why this app is very nearly playable? Its quite simple, just a basic sample player, maybe that's it, but if the problem is to do with the buffers I don't see how the simplicity would help. Any Ideas, anyone else tried this app? a free version is available in the market to try if you haven't already.

Indeed it seems like all they're doing is playing samples. If you don't need to mix anything yourself, you can use a different API meant for one shot game sounds. Maybe that's got slightly better latency. But you'll never get anything fancy with it.

[Thunderchief]

Indeed it seems like all they're doing is playing samples. If you don't need to mix anything yourself, you can use a different API meant for one shot game sounds. Maybe that's got slightly better latency. But you'll never get anything fancy with it.

Ah I see, Interesting thanks. Personally for me on my phone I don't need really low latency, It would be nice if Caustic was slightly faster so automation recording was easier. But I mainly sequence on my phone, (I have big fingers and playing on a tiny screen not going to happen) and for that caustic is great, can't wait to try out the pattern sequencers which you say you're adding in the next version.

But I am after a Tablet, so unless Google get their act together, which I think is unlikely unfortunately, I suspect my tablet will be iOS or Windows 8 depending on what Microsoft come up with.

Simon.

[polaris20]

One could make the argument that it's silly to do anything "serious" on a mobile phone, but on a tablet, I think it's a completely different story. Apps like GarageBand, Loopy HD, Multitrack DAW, etc are extremely useful for working on as either a live recording device or as a musical sketchpad. Having used a netbook, I definitely think tablets are better. The netbook was horribly underpowered, the keyboard crap, and the screen useless.

Tablets are under-powered, perhaps. But they're more powerful than desktop computers from just a few years ago. I don't know about you, but I didn't JUST start recording on computers when computers started using dual-core chips and 8 gigs of RAM. I've been using computers since the 700Mhz Athlon days, of which my iPad is definitely faster (yes, I know x86 != ARM).

Now with something like the Alesis IO Dock, there's really no reason not to use an iPad in lieu of a laptop for many things, especially since it's so small and light.

Android is missing the boat here, but Google doesn't seem to care as that's not its target market, apparently.

[kuniklo]

Android is missing the boat here, but Google doesn't seem to care as that's not its target market, apparently.

The problem is that Google has bigger problems to solve and that they can't leverage previous work the way Apple did with Core Audio. If Android continues to grow I'd expect this to get addressed eventually but I can't really blame Google for keeping it on the back burner right now. As much as these things matter to us they don't really shift that many units.

[polaris20]

Android is missing the boat here, but Google doesn't seem to care as that's not its target market, apparently.

The problem is that Google has bigger problems to solve and that they can't leverage previous work the way Apple did with Core Audio. If Android continues to grow I'd expect this to get addressed eventually but I can't really blame Google for keeping it on the back burner right now. As much as these things matter to us they don't really shift that many units.

While it's true they have bigger fish to fry (notably their security issues) the low latency stuff depends on how much they've based Android off of Linux. There is a low latency kernel for Linux; Ubuntu Studio makes great use of it. But integrating that kernel into Android, on a general purpose phone? No idea how easy/difficult that is, nor if it's even possible.

[polaris20]

The alone affair I anamnesis is an commodity discussing ICS and the actuality that there hadn't been any cogent advance made.

Huh?

[kuniklo]

While it's true they have bigger fish to fry (notably their security issues) the low latency stuff depends on how much they've based Android off of Linux. There is a low latency kernel for Linux; Ubuntu Studio makes great use of it. But integrating that kernel into Android, on a general purpose phone? No idea how easy/difficult that is, nor if it's even possible.

I've heard (I don't have hard technical evidence of this) is that it's the sound device drivers as much as anything in the kernel that's the issue. Apple has an easier time here thanks to their homogeneous hardware.