Android 7.0 (Nougat) any improvements in audio / touch latency...?

[Cinebient]

The absolute ridiculousness of Windows 10
I bought a WIN 10 tablet for live synth duties, nearly every application is near unusable with touchscreen, including Maschine 2, why do i mention Maschine 2, because Kore 2 by the same company Native Instruments, now discontinued for a lot of years works flawlessly and has become my live platform.
How maddening, out of date software works, modern software seems to get worse and worse on touch !!

I would agree from my short experience with win10.
Maybe Apple did it really right to seperate touch and mouse input.
Indeed are the trackpads already a kind of multi-touch inputs and working great for some plug-ins.
The touch bar is crap!

[epatricio]

Unfortunately touch doesn't seem to be considered seriously by Music application developers.
I really like to have touch enabled machines, but its usefulness is secondary, it's something that complements mouse/trackpad in specific scenarios.

[Cinebient]

Unfortunately touch doesn't seem to be considered seriously by Music application developers.
I really like to have touch enabled machines, but its usefulness is secondary, it's something that complements mouse/trackpad in specific scenarios.

Maybe for a desktop workflow...yes!
But if a tool is created with just multi-touch in mind you get some new ways of playing with sounds you never see on any desktop tool.
Like i already said f.e. Borderlands Granular. This makes no sense for a one point mouse input and there is nothing even close like that in the desktop land (and vice versa for other tools of course).
I even don´t like hardware controllers (or my Seaboard Rise due to stupid limited software and personal configuration) much these days.
A hardware knob and/or tactile feedback is great, yes but playing direct on the screen and seeing exact what parameter you change and stuff like this is just better (for me).
If you edit a lot midi and working with 100+ tracks in a song, score films and need to make money out of music a big DAW on a desktop and all these plug-ins are still for sure better but for me it´s a bit like the transition from hardware to software where people thought it is a joke at the beginning (some people still seems to stuck in the past here).
It will grow and i see more interesting things coming up from independent developers (but also from famous brands like Moog and Korg etc.) for new ways to interact live with music.
The FX and synth engines for macOS and windows are of course (mostly) more advanced and so on but they need a lot more tweaking and modulation and automation and whatever to get out of the static dinosaur land (dramatized).
Both platforms offer unique things and workflows, so it´s still the best to combine them.
If i have to choose one i would go still with my notebook at the moment but that might change while iPads going to be more powerful, getting love from developers, easy to install, deinstall everything, not so much bloated OS (yes it´s lacking still a proper file system and a few other things) and the limitations even forced some developers to create new things i can´t do so easy and fast on my notebook. The desktop platform is not moving on as fast in terms of hardware and software...but that might be just my personal experience since i use both things side by side.
I have all the greatest and latest plug-ins from U-he, Spectrasonics, some great Kontakt libraries, Falcon, Avenger, Logic Pro X etc. and whatever but they are not nearly as fun to use and they all lack the performence for live editing/playing i get in so many iOS tools.
Of course i wish Apple would just release an freaking multi-touch 15-17" iPad with 3D-touch (which is awesome on my phone for music apps) which runs OSX and iOS and put Logic for iOS out.
But please not in a mixture like windows 10 which let developers not think about new ways of creating music and forcing them to make bad multi-touch or still only tools which needs mouse/trackpad/external hardware to play them.
I see not much innovations in terms of sound engines but in new GUI´s and interaction with sounds/waveforms/expressive playing and all these stuff.
But who knows what new generations will use to create music...the choices are there!
The perfect thing will never exist anyway!

[3lu5iv3]

I'm currently running Android Nougat 7.1.1 (Benzo Rom) on my Nexus 6P
and i'm not really sure exactly what the the latency is in FL Mobile 3.1.16
but i'm pretty sure you don't have to worry about it because
i can play 32nd notes at 70BPM without any glitches or audio cutoffs.
I did enable multi core processing but sound mode is set to safe instead of fast.
So Android Nougat is far better in terms of audio latency than previous versions.
Playing beats live before Nougat was a nightmare to be honest.
Latest version of G-Stomper Studio also has a new audio engine specifically
designed for Nougat i think and it has no latency problem if you choose new audio engine
from the option menu.

[emef]

i'm using a google nexus 9 tablet running latest version of g-stomper, latency is basically gone now, the nougat update is fantastic
g-stomper shows latency is 5ms

[bungle]

That is audio latency, Android has UI latency and Touchscreen latency, hopefully they are better in Nougat too.

[planeth]

i'm using a google nexus 9 tablet running latest version of g-stomper, latency is basically gone now, the nougat update is fantastic
g-stomper shows latency is 5ms

Thanks for mentioning, emef .

That is audio latency, Android has UI latency and Touchscreen latency, hopefully they are better in Nougat too.

You're right, there's UI and Touchscreen latency (but it's by far not only Android version dependent), and yes, my personal experience is that it got slightly better with Nougat. But I'm using a Nexus 9 and Nexus 6 to test with, and these have anyway (even with Lollipop) a way better Touchscreen and UI reaction time than than most other devices I tried. There are surely some rare exceptions like the Shield tablets for example, but most others simply cannot hold up with Nexus or Pixel devices.

Bottom line, audio, if you want best latency results on Android, try a modern Nexus or Pixel device from Google, as most of the other fancy brands are usually 6-12 Months or even more behind the official Android updates (and if these finally get N, Google will probably be out with O already).

[bungle]

Bottom line audio, buy an iPad.

[UltraJv]

Samsung are making improvements here with low latency pro audio and Soundcamp. I have recently bought Samsung Galaxy tab A 10.1 2016 and its great with Soundcamp with low latency and plugins. Less than half the price of ipad, bigger screen and no tie in to itunes.

http://www.samsung.com/uk/apps/mobile/soundcamp

http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/amplitubesapa

[bungle]

And in comparison literally no software whatsoever for music making, I love Android, and i just purchased an Nvidia K1 tablet which is amazing, horrific charge time, but then i suspect it has a large battery because of the GPU, but in no way will it ever compare to my iPad for making music, Android is too far behind right now in terms of available software unfortunately, People like Nikko Twenty creating amazing apps many years ago and then just letting them dwindle in to the dust, Reloop could have been an absolute beast of mobile music audio sequencer, with no comparison on Android or IOS, and its gone, not even downloadable anymore i don't think.

If you buy Android for making music, it is a false economy and you wasted your money.

[UltraJv]

you bought the wrong android tablet. the k1 is great for games with nvidia chipset but Samsung is best for audio as Soundcamp only runs on Certain Samsung models. i didnt buy the tablet for audio, it was a bonus. Read my post above.

[planeth]

And in comparison literally no software whatsoever for music making, I love Android, and i just purchased an Nvidia K1 tablet which is amazing, horrific charge time, but then i suspect it has a large battery because of the GPU, but in no way will it ever compare to my iPad for making music, Android is too far behind right now in terms of available software unfortunately, People like Nikko Twenty creating amazing apps many years ago and then just letting them dwindle in to the dust, Reloop could have been an absolute beast of mobile music audio sequencer, with no comparison on Android or IOS, and its gone, not even downloadable anymore i don't think.

The K1 has actually good latency results, if (and only if) running Android 7.x. The K1 Android 6.x was not one of the best OS derivations, as it had quite a lot of lags and glitches. I just tried the K1 of a friend these days, updated to Android N, and the latency results have been pretty good.

Try G-Stomper Rhythm on your tablet, the free drum machine. It comes with an audio system, that is specially designed for Android N. Once installed, press VIEW, select the Drum Pads and just try it yourself.

Btw. the apps you mentioned vanished, because it was Niko's decision to let them vanish. If or if not Android was part of that decision is just guessing. Only Niko can answer this question, if he's willing to.

[bungle]

I didn't say that the K1 had bad latency ?
It is probably the best tablet around for Android audio right now (Yes the latency is lower than the Samsungs, I have both)
Nikos decision was based on the fact that they didn't sell as far as i know, nobody back then was using Android for audio.

Point is, IOS is a viable Music making platform as much as Windows or OSX, Android is not so much, it has some great apps, but they are either also available on IOS or there is something comparable that is better, one big exception to prove the rule is Stomper studio, when that has Link (Coming this year according to the developer) it will be worth owning an Android device just for that alone.

[planeth]

I didn't say that the K1 had bad latency ?

Ah OK, sorry, misunderstood you in that point.

Point is, IOS is a viable Music making platform as much as Windows or OSX, Android is not so much, it has some great apps, but they are either also available on IOS or there is something comparable that is better, one big exception to prove the rule is Stomper studio, when that has Link (Coming this year according to the developer) it will be worth owning an Android device just for that alone.

Thanks a lot, I'm more than happy to hear that, as I am the developer of G-Stomper Studio (but I guess you knew that already, didn't you?). "Link" is coming closer with every week. There are still a few urgent tasks in front of it, but not that many anymore.

[bungle]

Nope didnt have any idea haha, just read you say it on your forum, and i have been telling people on the ios audio forums that Stomper is a huge loss to IOS and they should look for a device to run it for their setups.
Good to have you over here though