KVR Audio

midinut · Post by **midinut** » Fri Sep 27, 2013 5:38 am

It seems to me Apple could please a lot of keyboard players by porting Mainstage over to the iPad. Any ideas why it hasn't been done or theories of conspiracies and such? I'd buy it and gig with it if it were available. Is there a technical reason why it couldn't be done?

miden · Post by **miden** » Fri Sep 27, 2013 6:24 am

gjvti · Post by **gjvti** » Fri Sep 27, 2013 6:42 am

Probably Mainstage needs more power than current ipad models can offer.
I have thought out an ipad app concept for app with somewhat similar functionality (as my buddy Mainstage user pointed out to me), but I can't code myself and looks like developers (marketing) doesn't see a market for this either - so far no developer, which I contacted, expressed real interest. Everyone is interested in new sounds, but not in finding a new ways how to work with current sounds.

Dewdman42 · Post by **Dewdman42** » Sun Sep 07, 2014 7:01 pm

I don't think an ipad would have enough power either for much of anything useful other then very simple situations. But one thing that would be SUPREMELY useful would be if they came out with an ipad mainstage thin client which just presents the mainstage "perform" screen and communicates all interactions with another mac over wifi in client/server mode. This can be done now with screen sharing, but there are several drawbacks to that approach and an actual ipad application that interacts in an "ipad way" and then communicates via wifi with mainstage to present the actual perform screen would be super useful.

Then we could put our mac offstage or back someplace safe and velcro the ipad to the top of our keyboard and off we go.

setAI · Post by **setAI** » Sun Sep 07, 2014 8:20 pm

why the disinfo? The A7 processor is SCARY fast and powerful- it certainly is far speedier than any PC I've ever owned-

timobrien · Post by **timobrien** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 6:53 pm

They probably just haven't gotten around to it yet. Wouldn't be surprised to see it show up at some point...

ZenPunkHippy · Post by **ZenPunkHippy** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 6:59 pm

setAI wrote:why the disinfo? The A7 processor is SCARY fast and powerful- it certainly is far speedier than any PC I've ever owned-

Nah, these processors are fast for mobile processors but at least an order of magnitude slower than a regular desktop machine.

Just look at the CPU usage in Cubasis with only a couple of other audio apps running via IAA to see what I mean.

Maybe in a few years they'll catch up but not now.

siriusbliss · Post by **siriusbliss** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 3:05 am

Apps just need to be very optimized-coded.
Possibility is that Cubasis is a just a heavy app.

Current iPad Air and iPad mini (with 64-bit iOS7 on A7) could easily handle Mainstage.

There are folks tracking multiple channels in Auria while using plugins now.

G

ZenPunkHippy · Post by **ZenPunkHippy** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 3:25 am

16 channels of EQ would barely touch a single core on a desktop class CPU.

I tested a Mac + PC recently by running DAW Bench with over 200 instances of M-Pressor.

Don't get me wrong, the A7 and iPads are very impressive, but they are not anywhere near as powerful as desktops yet and Mainstage is very heavy on CPU.

Winstontaneous · Post by **Winstontaneous** » Thu Sep 11, 2014 7:43 pm

MainStage 3 is the most resource-hungry audio program I have on my 2012 MacBook Pro (compared to Logic, AudioMulch, Reaper, Tracktion, Reason, Pure Data, and Adobe Audition).

At least for me, simple Apple instrument chains that Logic handles with no sweat can cause processor overloads, audio dropouts and temperature/fan spikes in MainStage 3. That seems to be the experience of other folks at Logic Pro Help, as well.

planeth · Post by **planeth** » Fri Sep 12, 2014 9:04 am

Winstontaneous wrote:MainStage 3 is the most resource-hungry audio program I have on my 2012 MacBook Pro (compared to Logic, AudioMulch, Reaper, Tracktion, Reason, Pure Data, and Adobe Audition).

At least for me, simple Apple instrument chains that Logic handles with no sweat can cause processor overloads, audio dropouts and temperature/fan spikes in MainStage 3. That seems to be the experience of other folks at Logic Pro Help, as well.

Then MainStage is obviously badly coded (from the performance point of view).
Actually that is the way mobile devices do change way of coding applications. The mobile world pushed developers back to the 80s/90s, the time of low CPU and rare Memory. Due to the fast going hardware improvement over the last 20 years, a lot of devs forgot what it means to take care of CPU load and memory consumption since it simply was no issue for a long time.

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Fri Sep 12, 2014 9:15 am

ZenPunkHippy wrote:16 channels of EQ would barely touch a single core on a desktop class CPU.

I tested a Mac + PC recently by running DAW Bench with over 200 instances of M-Pressor.

Don't get me wrong, the A7 and iPads are very impressive, but they are not anywhere near as powerful as desktops yet and Mainstage is very heavy on CPU.

That's what I have been saying over and over. There are people convinced that a tablet can replace a laptop, or even a desktop computer. They can't, especially for tasks like Mainstage.
Remember Mainstage has built-in all the VIs coded by Emagic/Apple, among them ES2 and Sculpture, which are VIs way out of the league for a tablet. And it runs them with processing chains that included Aux channels with several audio processors added.
A tablet is already sweating to run a single instance of a simple subtractive synth with reasonable quality, and things like the current generation of VIs that are being offered simply cannot be done on those platforms in their current status.
Besides, Mainstage suffers from the problems already pointed (channel chains that run perfectly in Logic cause processor overloads in Mainstage).

Winstontaneous · Post by **Winstontaneous** » Fri Sep 12, 2014 7:36 pm

planeth wrote:Then MainStage is obviously badly coded (from the performance point of view).
Actually that is the way mobile devices do change way of coding applications. The mobile world pushed developers back to the 80s/90s, the time of low CPU and rare Memory. Due to the fast going hardware improvement over the last 20 years, a lot of devs forgot what it means to take care of CPU load and memory consumption since it simply was no issue for a long time.

Totally agree, I think that the move to 64 bit desktop OS has let developers get really lazy with memory management & CPU efficiency.

ZenPunkHippy · Post by **ZenPunkHippy** » Fri Sep 12, 2014 8:07 pm

Sorry, but you are kidding yourselves if you believe that apps running on iPads are mainly slow because of poor optimisation. That is simply not true, it is pure speculative fantasy and does not match with reality.

The reality is: tablet and phone CPUs are 5 - 10 times slower than desktop CPUs. It's not very difficult to understand!

Note: I am talking about raw number crunching ability. Go look at the benchmarks if you don't believe me.

Dewdman42 · Post by **Dewdman42** » Fri Sep 12, 2014 8:35 pm

They also have very slow ram compared to desktop computers.

Mainstage for the iPad