Low latency audio in Android 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich)

[SingleCell]

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.

Yeah, I think that's what makes this one so hard to fix. Google has to impose this on manufacturers as a first step. Google has some pull on the phone makers, but not that much. They mostly just licence their software (Market, Maps, etc.) and the rest is free. As you said, Apple have an advantage here because they ARE the hardware and software makers.

I still think it'd be worth having a look at the drivers for some of the high-end phones to see if the number can't be brought down. But for all I know, someone has already tried and failed. I simply don't have the time to pursue this.

Anyway, back to improving my sequencer app

[Sascha Franck]

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.

While I totally agree with the rest of your post, I still need to repeat myself: It *is* possible to do very serious, even professional work on a mobile phone.

See, when I started all that home recording stuff, I had a 4 track cassette recorder. Not only that the socalled "preamps" have been worse than what you can already get for, say, an iPhone - no, the entire handling was also a desaster, compared to just about any sequencer on an iPhone.
Almost the same is true for way better devices than a 4-track. It wasn't any more comfortable to handle that 16 track tape machine than dealing with 16 tracks inside an iPhone sequencer. Also, the effects available to the "advancing home recorder" (or let's call it project studio producer, whatever...) couldn't even remotely compete. Yet, you could *almost* get professional results out of such a vintage setup (sometimes even better than just "almost").
We're kinda spoiled by what is possible on even a mediocre computer these days.

Anyway, especially as just about everybody can easily transfer files to a fullblown DAW later on, mobile recording and sequencing is making a lot of sense, not matter whether it happens on a phone or tablet.
The only things it takes is low latency playing/monitoring and decent input devices (plus, well, some "input helpers", especially on smartphones when there's no MIDI keyboard available).
In other words: There's absolutely no reason why I shouldn't record a perfectly professional guitar take on a smartphone, as long as I can actually play through whatever software amp (low latency) and as long as the dry signal is good enough to be re-amped later on.
There's also absolutely no reason why I shouldn't be able to pre-produce a million dollar hit on a smartphone, considering I can easily do the final mix elsewhere.
Computing power certainly is no problem anymore. I have done some of the recordings of a demo CD (and some of them went on the final album later on) on a 200 mHz Pentium II computer. These days smartphones are quite a lot more powerful.

Regarding latency on an Android phone: I'm not a tech or programmer by any means, so forgive me if I'm drawing any wrong conclusions, but isn't the situation a little comparable to, say, generic Windows drivers and ASIO4All? I always found it amazing how that little tool would turn just about any mediocre PC with lousy onboard soundcards into a low latency, realtime capable music producing system. Of course something like that still wouldn't give you better input signals for audio recordings (I already mentioned why iOS devices are *way* better in that department), but for MIDI stuff it could already be close to perfect.

- Sascha

[Benutzername]

ASIO4All is just a wrapper for the existing driver. If you use WDM or WASAPI directly within a DAW then you'll often achieve better performance than with ASIO4All. Today it is only really needed to connect applications that are not able to use native audio on modern OS (like Steinberg's products) to onboard sound cards that don't have highly optimized and dedicated ASIO drivers.

Most mobile devices don't have have dedicated sound cards anymore as everything is squeezed into a single chip nowadays (SoCs). So the possible buffer sizes are most likely already part of the hardware design and are not changeable by software or drivers. It looks like there will not happen anything here unless google puts some pressure on the hardware vendors.

[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.

While I totally agree with the rest of your post, I still need to repeat myself: It *is* possible to do very serious, even professional work on a mobile phone.

See, when I started all that home recording stuff, I had a 4 track cassette recorder. Not only that the socalled "preamps" have been worse than what you can already get for, say, an iPhone - no, the entire handling was also a desaster, compared to just about any sequencer on an iPhone.
Almost the same is true for way better devices than a 4-track. It wasn't any more comfortable to handle that 16 track tape machine than dealing with 16 tracks inside an iPhone sequencer. Also, the effects available to the "advancing home recorder" (or let's call it project studio producer, whatever...) couldn't even remotely compete. Yet, you could *almost* get professional results out of such a vintage setup (sometimes even better than just "almost").
We're kinda spoiled by what is possible on even a mediocre computer these days.

Anyway, especially as just about everybody can easily transfer files to a fullblown DAW later on, mobile recording and sequencing is making a lot of sense, not matter whether it happens on a phone or tablet.
The only things it takes is low latency playing/monitoring and decent input devices (plus, well, some "input helpers", especially on smartphones when there's no MIDI keyboard available).
In other words: There's absolutely no reason why I shouldn't record a perfectly professional guitar take on a smartphone, as long as I can actually play through whatever software amp (low latency) and as long as the dry signal is good enough to be re-amped later on.
There's also absolutely no reason why I shouldn't be able to pre-produce a million dollar hit on a smartphone, considering I can easily do the final mix elsewhere.
Computing power certainly is no problem anymore. I have done some of the recordings of a demo CD (and some of them went on the final album later on) on a 200 mHz Pentium II computer. These days smartphones are quite a lot more powerful.

I completely agree, I was more or less responding to the smug individuals making dumb statements about "why would I possibly want to record on a phone when I have a full-blown DAW?"

These sorts of people forget easily about the Tascam Portastudio days, the reel to reel days, etc. when the sort of processing power and flexibility you find in GarageBand on an iPhone were pipe dreams. I often get the impression that most people on KVR started right out of the gates on quad core machines running 10 virtual instruments at a time with 40 plugins.

If someone can't see the power of being able to plug in a stereo condenser mic to the dock port (Tascam makes one, Apogee is releasing one) to the iPhone, and running a few tracks in before easily moving them to Logic later for additional tracking/mixing/mastering, then those people have extremely limited imagination. If someone can't see the appeal of tracking guitars in a hotel room on an iPad while traveling for work, and capturing great musical ideas when you'd otherwise being pulling your pud to abismal on-demand porn, then that's their loss.

[Karmacomposer]

How about field recording with massive battery life and large screen display and editing on the spot.

Mike

[kuniklo]

I think the answer here is the same as it is for other kinds of applications. Mobile devices and tablets can augment conventional laptops/PCs, but they can't replace them. Personally I wouldn't consider for a moment replacing my laptop + Ableton with a tablet or phone but I'm happy to have some new ways of exploring and discovering musical ideas.

[UltraJv]

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.

While I totally agree with the rest of your post, I still need to repeat myself: It *is* possible to do very serious, even professional work on a mobile phone.

See, when I started all that home recording stuff, I had a 4 track cassette recorder. Not only that the socalled "preamps" have been worse than what you can already get for, say, an iPhone - no, the entire handling was also a desaster, compared to just about any sequencer on an iPhone.
Almost the same is true for way better devices than a 4-track. It wasn't any more comfortable to handle that 16 track tape machine than dealing with 16 tracks inside an iPhone sequencer. Also, the effects available to the "advancing home recorder" (or let's call it project studio producer, whatever...) couldn't even remotely compete. Yet, you could *almost* get professional results out of such a vintage setup (sometimes even better than just "almost").
We're kinda spoiled by what is possible on even a mediocre computer these days.

Anyway, especially as just about everybody can easily transfer files to a fullblown DAW later on, mobile recording and sequencing is making a lot of sense, not matter whether it happens on a phone or tablet.
The only things it takes is low latency playing/monitoring and decent input devices (plus, well, some "input helpers", especially on smartphones when there's no MIDI keyboard available).
In other words: There's absolutely no reason why I shouldn't record a perfectly professional guitar take on a smartphone, as long as I can actually play through whatever software amp (low latency) and as long as the dry signal is good enough to be re-amped later on.
There's also absolutely no reason why I shouldn't be able to pre-produce a million dollar hit on a smartphone, considering I can easily do the final mix elsewhere.
Computing power certainly is no problem anymore. I have done some of the recordings of a demo CD (and some of them went on the final album later on) on a 200 mHz Pentium II computer. These days smartphones are quite a lot more powerful.

I completely agree, I was more or less responding to the smug individuals making dumb statements about "why would I possibly want to record on a phone when I have a full-blown DAW?"

These sorts of people forget easily about the Tascam Portastudio days, the reel to reel days, etc. when the sort of processing power and flexibility you find in GarageBand on an iPhone were pipe dreams. I often get the impression that most people on KVR started right out of the gates on quad core machines running 10 virtual instruments at a time with 40 plugins.

If someone can't see the power of being able to plug in a stereo condenser mic to the dock port (Tascam makes one, Apogee is releasing one) to the iPhone, and running a few tracks in before easily moving them to Logic later for additional tracking/mixing/mastering, then those people have extremely limited imagination. If someone can't see the appeal of tracking guitars in a hotel room on an iPad while traveling for work, and capturing great musical ideas when you'd otherwise being pulling your pud to abismal on-demand porn, then that's their loss.

Portastudios and reel to reel were much larger and less fiddly, they were dedicated to audio tasks. No comparison to mobile devices. Its quite obvious that you can make music on a mobile phone or a stylaphone or washboard or spoons. A friend of mine uses a Flute - never crashes, no battery problems and no updates required. So why isnt everyone using a Flute? I whistle or hum riffs into my mobile. Eight years ago, I have had music apps on my touch screen Palm T. It still works now. It does get boring to hear fanbois talk as though Apple invented everything, they didnt. If anything they use old tech and bring it to a new audience by making it look shiny and kewl. So mobile devices are the latest craze once more, nothing new here - that is all.

[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.

While I totally agree with the rest of your post, I still need to repeat myself: It *is* possible to do very serious, even professional work on a mobile phone.

See, when I started all that home recording stuff, I had a 4 track cassette recorder. Not only that the socalled "preamps" have been worse than what you can already get for, say, an iPhone - no, the entire handling was also a desaster, compared to just about any sequencer on an iPhone.
Almost the same is true for way better devices than a 4-track. It wasn't any more comfortable to handle that 16 track tape machine than dealing with 16 tracks inside an iPhone sequencer. Also, the effects available to the "advancing home recorder" (or let's call it project studio producer, whatever...) couldn't even remotely compete. Yet, you could *almost* get professional results out of such a vintage setup (sometimes even better than just "almost").
We're kinda spoiled by what is possible on even a mediocre computer these days.

Anyway, especially as just about everybody can easily transfer files to a fullblown DAW later on, mobile recording and sequencing is making a lot of sense, not matter whether it happens on a phone or tablet.
The only things it takes is low latency playing/monitoring and decent input devices (plus, well, some "input helpers", especially on smartphones when there's no MIDI keyboard available).
In other words: There's absolutely no reason why I shouldn't record a perfectly professional guitar take on a smartphone, as long as I can actually play through whatever software amp (low latency) and as long as the dry signal is good enough to be re-amped later on.
There's also absolutely no reason why I shouldn't be able to pre-produce a million dollar hit on a smartphone, considering I can easily do the final mix elsewhere.
Computing power certainly is no problem anymore. I have done some of the recordings of a demo CD (and some of them went on the final album later on) on a 200 mHz Pentium II computer. These days smartphones are quite a lot more powerful.

I completely agree, I was more or less responding to the smug individuals making dumb statements about "why would I possibly want to record on a phone when I have a full-blown DAW?"

These sorts of people forget easily about the Tascam Portastudio days, the reel to reel days, etc. when the sort of processing power and flexibility you find in GarageBand on an iPhone were pipe dreams. I often get the impression that most people on KVR started right out of the gates on quad core machines running 10 virtual instruments at a time with 40 plugins.

If someone can't see the power of being able to plug in a stereo condenser mic to the dock port (Tascam makes one, Apogee is releasing one) to the iPhone, and running a few tracks in before easily moving them to Logic later for additional tracking/mixing/mastering, then those people have extremely limited imagination. If someone can't see the appeal of tracking guitars in a hotel room on an iPad while traveling for work, and capturing great musical ideas when you'd otherwise being pulling your pud to abismal on-demand porn, then that's their loss.

Portastudios and reel to reel were much larger and less fiddly, they were dedicated to audio tasks. No comparison to mobile devices. Its quite obvious that you can make music on a mobile phone or a stylaphone or washboard or spoons. A friend of mine uses a Flute - never crashes, no battery problems and no updates required. So why isnt everyone using a Flute? I whistle or hum riffs into my mobile. Eight years ago, I have had music apps on my touch screen Palm T. It still works now. It does get boring to hear fanbois talk as though Apple invented everything, they didnt. If anything they use old tech and bring it to a new audience by making it look shiny and kewl. So mobile devices are the latest craze once more, nothing new here - that is all.

I'm not talking about just Apple. I'm saying mobile devices in general. It's only a matter of time before Android fixes it, so how about not throwing out the stupid "fanboy" card?

Additionally, saying Portastudios were dedicated devices and mobile devices aren't is a silly comparison, since we're using computers (multi-purpose devices) for recording. Mobile devices are just tiny computers. Throw an iPad into an iO Dock and it's now got the same IO as many dedicated devices, with far more flexibility.

[Leslie]

It's only a matter of time before Android fixes it, possibly as early as 2025

[UltraJv]

It's only a matter of time before Android fixes it, possibly as early as 2025

Its Google that owns Android and they have over a dozen major manufacturers onboard. I wouldnt sound too smug. Steve announced last year that Apple wont be producing PC format Macs anymore, so thats the end of mac pros and possibly imacs. Better get used to using your ipads n iphones as thats all that Apple will make. Thats why all the apps are appearing on both

[Leslie]

It's only a matter of time before Android fixes it, possibly as early as 2025

Its Google that owns Android and they have over a dozen major manufacturers onboard. I wouldnt sound too smug. Steve announced last year that Apple wont be producing PC format Macs anymore, so thats the end of mac pros and possibly imacs. Better get used to using your ipads n iphones as thats all that Apple will make. Thats why all the apps are appearing on both

Ignorance is bliss...

[polaris20]

It's only a matter of time before Android fixes it, possibly as early as 2025

Its Google that owns Android and they have over a dozen major manufacturers onboard. I wouldnt sound too smug. Steve announced last year that Apple wont be producing PC format Macs anymore, so thats the end of mac pros and possibly imacs. Better get used to using your ipads n iphones as thats all that Apple will make. Thats why all the apps are appearing on both

He made no such announcement. Proof? Link?

While there's a possibility of no more Mac Pros, the likelihood of them discontinuing MacBook Pro/Air, Mini, and the iMac are highly unlikely since you need one of them to code apps for iOS in the first place. Also, while mobile apps are becoming more capable, They can't match what can be done with OS X (or Windows or whatever).

They'd have to come out with XCode for Windows, and that's not going to happen. Why would they completely get rid of something that continues to grow in the market?

[UltraJv]

It's only a matter of time before Android fixes it, possibly as early as 2025

Its Google that owns Android and they have over a dozen major manufacturers onboard. I wouldnt sound too smug. Steve announced last year that Apple wont be producing PC format Macs anymore, so thats the end of mac pros and possibly imacs. Better get used to using your ipads n iphones as thats all that Apple will make. Thats why all the apps are appearing on both

He made no such announcement. Proof? Link?

While there's a possibility of no more Mac Pros, the likelihood of them discontinuing MacBook Pro/Air, Mini, and the iMac are highly unlikely since you need one of them to code apps for iOS in the first place. Also, while mobile apps are becoming more capable, They can't match what can be done with OS X (or Windows or whatever).

They'd have to come out with XCode for Windows, and that's not going to happen. Why would they completely get rid of something that continues to grow in the market?

http://moconews.net/article/419-apples- ... a-is-done/

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... sc&start=0

[Leslie]

Yep, it must be true, especially coming from such reputable websites what a joke lol
As I said, ignorance is bliss and it shows...

[UltraJv]

Yep, it must be true, especially coming from such reputable websites what a joke lol
As I said, ignorance is bliss and it shows...

Steve says "post PC", this dosnt mean working alongside PC. from the horses mouth - twist that round if you can. Anyways Im derailing. End of.