KVR Audio

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 1:58 pm

Why are there so few synth apps for Android available?:

https://market.android.com/search?q=synth&so=1&c=apps

The Windows platform is over saturated with freeware synths, I hope some of the programmers will turn their attention to developing for Android instead of Windows.

There is bascially no freeware synths available so far, with the exception of some rather primitive ones.

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 2:40 pm

Numanoid wrote:Why are there so few synth apps for Android available?:

https://market.android.com/search?q=synth&so=1&c=apps

The Windows platform is over saturated with freeware synths, I hope some of the programmers will turn their attention to developing for Android instead of Windows.

There is bascially no freeware synths available so far, with the exception of some rather primitive ones.

Android applications are written in Java, which is almost never used for audio plugins. So you're basically talking about developers changing to an entirely new operating system and language. That's a considerable amount of effort...

dadaumpa · Post by **dadaumpa** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 3:00 pm

whyterabbyt wrote:Android applications are written in Java, which is almost never used for audio plugins.

...and for good reasons

the problem is not only the effort, is also that the result of this effort will much probably suck in the end.

I only have very limited experience, but seemingly good tools like eg. Jasuto seem to have lot of latency/click problems on Android. there are of course exceptions, most notably CAUSTIC. which, in fact, is coded in C++.

sadly the Android platform itself simply does not offer suitable tools for audio synthesis. or at least, doesn't really help the developer when it comes to implementing DSP.

I heard many say that this could change with Android 2.3.x, but I'm not very informed on the topic.

cheers,
Aldo

cyberheater · Post by **cyberheater** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 3:02 pm

Isn't latency a huge problem for Android devs. Which is why IOS is the platform of choice for portable music.

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 3:42 pm

cyberheater wrote:Isn't latency a huge problem for Android devs. Which is why IOS is the platform of choice for portable music.

These work pretty good on a low spec android phone for instance, so I think it should be possible to program more software like this:

RD3 Groovebox (https://market.android.com/details?id=c ... rch_result)

Nanoloop
(https://market.android.com/details?id=c ... rch_result)

Guitar solo
(https://market.android.com/details?id=c ... rch_result)

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 3:46 pm

dadaumpa wrote:
whyterabbyt wrote:Android applications are written in Java, which is almost never used for audio plugins.
I heard many say that this could change with Android 2.3.x, but I'm not very informed on the topic.

I hope so. For new developers there is a big potential for recognition on the Android platform as it basically is a tabula rasa so far when it comes to audio software.

kuniklo · Post by **kuniklo** » Tue Aug 02, 2011 12:21 am

Unfortunately Android just isn't a good platform for music tools right now. You can't get reasonable latency, so anything with realtime performance is out. There's no midi support at all. Java is too slow for serious DSP work and bridging into C++ is a lot more painful than it is on iOS.

All of those things are fixable, but I don't expect Google will make them a priority anytime soon. They have much bigger fish to fry. iOS inherited most of OS X's mature audio stack for free.

jupiter8 · Post by **jupiter8** » Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:32 am

You can have wireless midi thru the Wifi or Bluetooth so that's not an issue. I seriously doubt Java is the limiting factor here. I've heard about the latency argument but i haven't tried it so i can't comment on that.

I believe the big difference is

1. How many of the freeware Windows synths are actually coded from scratch ? I don't think i have 10 in my VST folder. So i'd say the majority of freeware synths are done in SE/SM.

2. Android is a much younger platform. And the devices aren't that powerful until just recently.

planeth · Post by **planeth** » Tue Aug 02, 2011 12:04 pm

kuniklo wrote:Java is too slow for serious DSP work

I partial agree. Latency is a serious issue in java, since for the moment you still have to feed the android's AudioTrack with data, which dominates the latency. With that fixed, much less latency would be possible. I wrote a complete Drum Sequencer in pure java, in fact, for the latest device generation (1gHz+). I work with an internal Buffer is 192 Samples, which is somewhere between 4 and 5 millis. I may be wrong, but I think with a powerful (native) audio output library, 20ms latency should be no problem.

kuniklo · Post by **kuniklo** » Tue Aug 02, 2011 9:46 pm

jupiter8 wrote:You can have wireless midi thru the Wifi or Bluetooth so that's not an issue.

There is *no* midi support in the Android SDK. There's at least one third-party solution I"ve read about but it's not free to use for paid apps.

Contrast this with iOS which has CoreMidi and and the CCK as a standard interface.

kuniklo · Post by **kuniklo** » Tue Aug 02, 2011 9:53 pm

planeth wrote: I partial agree. Latency is a serious issue in java, since for the moment you still have to feed the android's AudioTrack with data, which dominates the latency. With that fixed, much less latency would be possible. I wrote a complete Drum Sequencer in pure java, in fact, for the latest device generation (1gHz+). I work with an internal Buffer is 192 Samples, which is somewhere between 4 and 5 millis. I may be wrong, but I think with a powerful (native) audio output library, 20ms latency should be no problem.

Long but useful article on this subject:
http://jazarimusic.com/2011/06/audio-on ... rspective/

Android compatibility for Gingerbread mandates latency of no higher than 45 MS. Which is fine for a sequence-driven app, but not for a real-time instrument. The issue as I understand it has more to do with drivers than Java itself.

It's just too difficult to write fast DSP code in Java. And iOS not only makes it easy to write your DSP code in C++, it also, since 4.0, provides the Accelerate framework wich makes it very easy to take advantage of the SIMD capabilities of the ARM chips. I can do realtime FFT in my iOS apps and it barely registers on the CPU.

jupiter8 · Post by **jupiter8** » Wed Aug 03, 2011 9:10 am

kuniklo wrote:
jupiter8 wrote:You can have wireless midi thru the Wifi or Bluetooth so that's not an issue.
There is *no* midi support in the Android SDK.

Yeah i know but there's third party solutions for that so that's not really an issue.

kuniklo wrote:There's at least one third-party solution I"ve read about but it's not free to use for paid apps.

Yes i kind of conviniently forgot about that. Don't know what's the deal with the bluetooth midi driver is. Luckily for me the OP was asking for Android freeware synths so that point is still moot.

kuniklo · Post by **kuniklo** » Wed Aug 03, 2011 12:25 pm

jupiter8 wrote: Yeah i know but there's third party solutions for that so that's not really an issue.

For a developer contemplating writing an Android app it's an issue. On iOS I know I get a solid midi layer for free. On Android I have to depend on a third party library with unspecified license fees. On iOS know it's also very likely that my customers already have at least one midi app and probably the camera connection kit and aren't going to need a lot of handholding. In fact, I have yet to receive any support requests for midi help with my iOS midi controller app.

MIDI may not be a showstopper on Android, but it's one more hassle and source of uncertainty in what is already a really dicey proposition. The only thing Android really has going for it right now as a potential dev target is less competition.

I say all this as someone that would really like to see Android improve in this area. I don't think it's good for any one company to dominate in this market.

MFXxx · Post by **MFXxx** » Sat Aug 06, 2011 5:35 pm

Im a little naive and green re android and iphone malarky.

So in short I have a Samsung Galaxy2S what fun apps should I be looking at?

The wife has an iTouch4 is that iOS so better for audio, midi experimentation and so forth@?

cocomo joe · Post by **cocomo joe** » Mon Aug 08, 2011 8:08 am

Bought an ASUS EEE PAD recently..it's on android version 3.2 now.
It's amazing what it's able to do compared with IPAD and for less bundle.
Check it out:

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac ... 145/review

I'm waiting for Spectra's Omni app to appear.
Android is going fast and the apps will follow suit.

More synth apps for Android please