Nick Parker at Evolver.fm has some interesting things to say about the state of music apps for iOS, arguing that the idea of an iPad recording studio is still a dream that’s out of reach:
Tablet hype continues at a fever pitch, but we shouldn’t get too cocky about the iPad or any other tablet replacing everything we can already do with a mouse, keyboard and old-fashioned desktop.
Case in point: We recently set out to find a MIDI control surface for iPad that could supercharge a home recording studio with its touch controls and sharp screen. The iPad seems almost custom-made for acting as the main interface to your home studio, but every app we tested came up way short.
Despite many pained hours hunting for, installing, and trying to comprehend these apps, we’ve written a story we didn’t set out to write: the narrative of why these apps — and, by extension, the tablet — are simply not up to the task.
Yes, it is possible to record directly onto the iPad into a digital audio workstation. But for real-time multitracking, no mobile hardware can get even close to delivering the required processing power to record — especially considering the demands of real-time effects plug-ins.
To a certain degree, Parker is right – tablet computers like the iPad are not as powerful as workstations and tablet software isn’t as mature as desktop DAWs.
But Parker’s cup-is-half-empty view also is stating the obvious – and missing the point.
Tablets computers are the fastest growing platform for music, and there’s a lot that you can do with them. On the iPad, there are multitrack recorders, DAWs, synths, workstations, virtual instruments and experimental music instruments. It’s a pretty impressive crop of software for a platform that’s not even two years old yet.
The real question to ask is whether tablet computers are useful to you as a musical tool.
For many musicians, the answer will be a resounding ‘no’. The iPad and Android music platforms just aren’t mature yet.
For musicians that are excited by new possibilities, though, and that can take a cup-is-half-full view of the iPad and other emerging tablets, there’s tremendous room for discovery, experimentation and – yes, fun.
What do you think? Is the iPad recording studio ‘a dream’?
And does it make sense to use desktop computers as the measure to compare tablets against?
No, you missed the point again.
The iPad 2 has dual 1 GHz ARM processors with Neon SIMD extensions. In terms of raw hardware capabilities, it compares quite favorably to my old laptop, a PowerBook G4 Titanium, which had a *single* PowerPC G4 (with Altivec SIMD), running at 800 MHz.
If the iPad were "too slow" to be useful, then the laptop would have been similarly useless. But that laptop ran Reason, Live, Pro Tools, etc. just fine.
The inescapable conclusion is that the iPad's CPU is more than adequate for running a wide variety of music software. If today's offerings seem limited, it has nothing to do with the underlying power of the hardware. There is no technical reason why you could not create a version of Reason, Live or Pro Tools for the iPad which would easily rival laptop performance in the early to mid 2000s, and which would be quite useful indeed.
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You realize not all clock cycles are created equal right? Just because two processors are running the same number of cycles doesn't mean they're doing the same work.
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Looking quickly at performance numbers, Neon claims 1.3 Mflops/MHz peak, which actually isn't nearly as good as the G4/Altivec's 8 Mflops/MHz peak. So approximately 1.3 GFlops for a single A5 (2.6 if you can use both CPUs) vs. 3.2 Gflops for the G4.
Comparing to x86 processors, the iPad 2's linpack results (170 Mflops measured by arstechnica) compare to a 500 MHz Athlon (180 Mflops) – maybe not great, but certainly usable.
For integer performance, the ARM should deliver 3000+ DMIPS vs. 1200+ on the G4/800.
For memory bandwidth, the iPad 2 shines: more than 2 GB/s measured by arstechnica, vs. PC133 (1 GB/s peak) memory in the PowerBook.
Lastly, remember that unlike the PowerBook, the iPad supports OpenCL, which allows computation to be offloaded to the iPad's GPU, which is no slouch either (Infinity Blad, anyone?)
Anyway, no use in beating this horse any deader – the iPad 2 clearly has the CPU performance to run a wide variety of useful and usable music software.
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Apologies for missing "e" and any other typos.
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I suppose. Reason could be decent on an iPad speed wise but trying to program a synth like Thor using your fingertips just sounds like a chore. Writing an email on a touch screen is bad enough trying to selected the filter type or waveform doesn't seem practical especially in a live setting (which the volunteer iPad salesforce seems to be promoting). I just don't see why I would use an iPad instead of a Macbook? It's like a solution in search of a problem.
I used to think the "Analog is the best" crowd was annoying until the iPad came out now I actually prefer hearing cranks bloviate on the superiority of analog instead of this iPad stuff!
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back to what type or genre of music you produce. only so many people can use a speak&spell and closely related technologies. the palette available to mobile devices will always be limited by the DSP processing power.
the complexities of multi-layered instruments with DSP driven effects is key to reproducing professional quality sounds. forget having any realistic sounding reverbs, such as convolution. and all the channel strip driven tools or even high grades of saturation and distortion DSP processes. forget about any sort of mixbus emulation on several tracks.
mobile device = electric bicycle
laptop = motorcycle
desktop = car
there are many ways to get somewhere… or no where…
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For the purposes of this discussion, consider "good" to mean satisfying for the artist to create and enjoyable for his or her audience to listen to.
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When I got my first laptop, it was a lot less powerful than my desktop. But I used that laptop all the time, because I discovered that I really liked being able to work at the kitchen table.
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My old analog gear has lots of saturation, distortion and noise, without any DSP required!
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Ahhh – saturation, distortion and noise……..
Who'd have thought we'd be nostalgic about that?
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Look it up on the Nanostudio website. Facts are painful sometimes, especially when you make comments based on emotion rather than facts.
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Beatmaker 2 supports time stretching. Sonoma copy and paste works fine for multitasking. While iOS might not be currently capable of being a full fledged DAW, it is moving in that direction.
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It'd probably help if you knew ANYTHING about the current state of iOS music production. You clearly haven't used any of these apps and it shows with ignorant comments like this one.
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To me the biggest limiting factor for recording music on the iPad is the lack of a centralized file system to tie all the apps together. There are so many music apps that each have their strenghts, but getting your work from one app to another is next to impossible, especially without involving a PC or Mac in the middle of it. For example, if I wanted to lay down a drum track in Garageband or Beatmaker, add a guitar and bass track in Amplitube, record some vocals in VocaLive, and add a synth part with Nanostudio, there's really no way I can do that using just an iPad even though they are all installed and can all produce audio file outputs. To me, being able to move audio back and forth between apps would make the dream much closer.
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It makes a great "100-in-1" portable instrument, offering very capable drum and guitar apps, as well as some very nice synths and esoteric sound generators.
I see it as a component. It's not a capable DAW, but then, I don't need it to be.
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OK, let me come in from a different angle. Imagine you have never recorded any music before. No laughing at the back. Everybody starts somewhere. You are in a band or doing solo stuff with real instruments/voice and things start to sound pretty good. You get some positive feedback and decide that it is time to record some demos. You are not so rich. You have some kind of average desktop/laptop but recently acquired an Ipad and use it alot. Are you A) going to make complicated decisions on the hundreds of dollars needed for music software and an audio interface for your desktop/laptop? or B) Download an Ipad DAW from the appstore for peanuts, buy an adaptor and get cracking? Either way, of course you will learn through hard work how to get the results you want, but……… option B) is by far the easier option. I didn’t have to think twice. I worked had a desktop, laptop and ipad and found myself working only with the Ipad. I have worked with Ipad Garageband for half a year and recorded several tracks with multiple vocals, guitars and drums. The most important thing was that I was pleased with the results and really want to do more. I recently bought an alesis io dock and started using Meteor Multitrack.
So, I believe that tablet computer recording is going to grow not because it offers anything like what professionals currently use, but because a growing number of people new to recording will find it the easiest way to get started. Each year, this growing number of people will demand more and more as they use their Ipads. Some will switch to desktops. Others will stick with their cherished work flow and enjoy the steady increase in performance of apps and tablets. That, to me is the future. Not a dream.
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http://auriaapp.com/Products/auria
This is truly an iPad studio, read the specs and wake up haters!
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You can do this through the copy and paste function on most if not all music apps by now. I own all the top apps and I can export the file. I also use 2 iPads, one as the synth source and the other as the recorder. I output the sound in and out through my Apogee One which sounds very nice and has 106db headroom. With the iPad 2 now reduced in price this becomes affordable.
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