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Any speculation about MainStage for the iPad ?
Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2016 3:59 pm
by GregC
AFAICT there is no MainStage app for the iPad.
But I would like to think there will be an effort of some variant .
Is this wishful thinking ? Is the iPad hopelessly underpowered for
Mainstage ?
Or can something be done to ' piece ' it together
Thanks !
Re: Any speculation about MainStage for the iPad ?
Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2016 9:00 pm
by Bachus
GregC wrote:AFAICT there is no MainStage app for the iPad.
But I would like to think there will be an effort of some variant .
Is this wishful thinking ? Is the iPad hopelessly underpowered for
Mainstage ?
Or can something be done to ' piece ' it together
Thanks !
Mainstage is just a shell around collection of virtuall instruments... i dont think the ipad has the power yet to hold them all...
If there is anything of a collection that fully boasts the ipad, its the Korg gadget..
Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2016 5:09 am
by amit
I have been trying few things on my new iPad, pro.
Cubasis2 and other few daws and synths.(I have most of them except the ppg/palm ones).
The audio bus with it's multi channel update and preset system can get close to that, but it's audio only, you'd still need some app like midi bridge for midi routing and filtering as not all synths have that functionality, not to mention one important aspect of parameter/state recall in synths.
Re: Any speculation about MainStage for the iPad ?
Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2016 8:05 am
by gjvti
Bachus wrote:GregC wrote:AFAICT there is no MainStage app for the iPad.
But I would like to think there will be an effort of some variant .
Is this wishful thinking ? Is the iPad hopelessly underpowered for
Mainstage ?
Or can something be done to ' piece ' it together
Thanks !
Mainstage is just a shell around collection of virtuall instruments... i dont think the ipad has the power yet to hold them all...
If there is anything of a collection that fully boasts the ipad, its the Korg gadget..
It all depends....
Geekbench score of my laptop running Ableton/Cantabile with Alchemy and Omnisphere (can handle more or less ~4 to ~6 layers along with backing track) is around 2500 (multicore), what compared to other devices looks like this:
iPad 2 ~= 500 (Runs gadget with up to 3...4 gadgets including iM1 at lowest buffer setting more or less stable)
iPad Pro ~= 4800
iPhone SE ~= 4000 (4-6 AudioBus/AUM layers in real time is not a problem at all at lowest buffer settings)
iPhone 7+ ~= 5300
Macbook ~= from 2000 to 14000 (depending on year and model)
KorgKronos (Atom D525) ~= 1200 (Ok , it doesn't have to do regular PC tasks and is extremely optimised so can't quite be compared here)
Surface Pro 4 ~= up to 7700
So l would say modern iPads/iPhones are pretty equal in terms of CPU power with high-end Windows tablets and mid range win/osx laptops and I would like to think that technically there is no reason why MainStage couldn't be run on latest iPad devices apart from the fact that this would apparently require complete rewriting of code, what Apple will never do (I think Apple would rather acquire another developer/product if they find it fits to their business model helping to increase sales of their own hardware).
Meanwhile on iPad there is somewhat MainStage LE option - use AUM with AU (Audio Units) synthesizer apps of your choice - not terribly large number of available options as of now, but at least some are available
https://palmsounds.net/app-stuff/audio-units/ and hopefully this list will grow.
Re: Any speculation about MainStage for the iPad ?
Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2016 8:29 am
by Bachus
gjvti wrote:Bachus wrote:GregC wrote:AFAICT there is no MainStage app for the iPad.
But I would like to think there will be an effort of some variant .
Is this wishful thinking ? Is the iPad hopelessly underpowered for
Mainstage ?
Or can something be done to ' piece ' it together
Thanks !
Mainstage is just a shell around collection of virtuall instruments... i dont think the ipad has the power yet to hold them all...
If there is anything of a collection that fully boasts the ipad, its the Korg gadget..
It all depends....
Geekbench score of my laptop running Ableton/Cantabile with Alchemy and Omnisphere (can handle more or less ~4 to ~6 layers along with backing track) is around 2500 (multicore), what compared to other devices looks like this:
iPad 2 ~= 500 (Runs gadget with up to 3...4 gadgets including iM1 at lowest buffer setting more or less stable)
iPad Pro ~= 4800
iPhone SE ~= 4000 (4-6 AudioBus/AUM layers in real time is not a problem at all at lowest buffer settings)
iPhone 7+ ~= 5300
Macbook ~= from 2000 to 14000 (depending on year and model)
KorgKronos (Atom D525) ~= 1200 (Ok , it doesn't have to do regular PC tasks and is extremely optimised so can't quite be compared here)
Surface Pro 4 ~= up to 7700
So l would say modern iPads/iPhones are pretty equal in terms of CPU power with high-end Windows tablets and mid range win/osx laptops and I would like to think that technically there is no reason why MainStage couldn't be run on latest iPad devices apart from the fact that this would apparently require complete rewriting of code, what Apple will never do (I think Apple would rather acquire another developer/product if they find it fits to their business model helping to increase sales of their own hardware).
Meanwhile on iPad there is somewhat MainStage LE option - use AUM with AU (Audio Units) synthesizer apps of your choice - not terribly large number of available options as of now, but at least some are available
https://palmsounds.net/app-stuff/audio-units/ and hopefully this list will grow.
Geekbench favors mobile devices....
in general its save to asume that currently a high end Intel PC has about 10 times as much raw power then a mobile device... asuming that PC has enough memmory and is based on an SSD...
Geekbench does not take the amount and the speed of memmory into account when calculating total power...
Re: Any speculation about MainStage for the iPad ?
Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2016 8:41 am
by gjvti
Bachus wrote:...
Geekbench favors mobile devices....
in general its save to asume that currently a high end Intel PC has about 10 times as much raw power then a mobile device... asuming that PC has enough memmory and is based on an SSD...
Geekbench does not take the amount and the speed of memmory into account when calculating total power...
Perhaps....
But my physical judgement is that I am able to run 4-6 layers on my 2500 scored laptop and the same and even more (at least it does that more stable) on my 4000 scored iPhone SE so in terms of layers 2500 PC has similar capabilities as 4000 iOS device. To be more precise I eventually could do comparison using SynthMaster, which is available on all platforms, but I think that my current estimate based on real use of synth apps is enough.... at least for me

or to put it other way I know there are limits on my laptop, but I haven't experienced them on my iPhone SE yet
Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2016 3:10 pm
by mocando
An alternative, is to use an iPad with duet display, to display and control a Mac mini which is hidden somewhere in your gear rack. I'm currently using a MacBook Pro, but I'm seriously considering the mac mini route, mostly for convenience, and to avoid having to use my everyday work MBP for my live rig.
Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2016 4:00 pm
by GregC
mocando wrote:An alternative, is to use an iPad with duet display, to display and control a Mac mini which is hidden somewhere in your gear rack. I'm currently using a MacBook Pro, but I'm seriously considering the mac mini route, mostly for convenience, and to avoid having to use my everyday work MBP for my live rig.
wow, I never thought the iPad could also be a ' display ' for a mac mini.
I have 2 old minis sitting around, retired, about 5 yrs old. But the ram is minimal, so I think I would have to add Ram.
It would be a low cost solution , even with the modest processor on my old mac mini
Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2016 4:13 pm
by mocando
I think they are more than worthy for Mainstage. If they are 5 years old, that means they are 2011, which is the one I'm looking for. They only difference with the 2012 model is that one have USB 2.0 and the other 3.0, but that doesn't matter much, since the audio interface works in 2.0 anyway, and so does all the MIDI USB data interfaces.
BTW, I just purchased duet display, is 50% off right now (9.99), and tested it with my iPhone, and works like a charm.
Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2016 4:27 pm
by GregC
mocando wrote:I think they are more than worthy for Mainstage. If they are 5 years old, that means they are 2011, which is the one I'm looking for. They only difference with the 2012 model is that one have USB 2.0 and the other 3.0, but that doesn't matter much, since the audio interface works in 2.0 anyway, and so does all the MIDI USB data interfaces.
BTW, I just purchased duet display, is 50% off right now (9.99), and tested it with my iPhone, and works like a charm.
Thats tremendous information. I appreciate your knowledge.
I suppose I should purchase an audio interface. I read the Apogees are top notch .
I do have a mac mini I could sell. I could dig up more specs in a day or 2 ( Xmas here) if you are interested. The CD/DVD player is flakey- that likely would not function. This mini is also running EL Capitan OS
I replaced my old minis with new minis 1 year ago .
Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2016 4:33 pm
by mocando
GregC wrote:mocando wrote:I think they are more than worthy for Mainstage. If they are 5 years old, that means they are 2011, which is the one I'm looking for. They only difference with the 2012 model is that one have USB 2.0 and the other 3.0, but that doesn't matter much, since the audio interface works in 2.0 anyway, and so does all the MIDI USB data interfaces.
BTW, I just purchased duet display, is 50% off right now (9.99), and tested it with my iPhone, and works like a charm.
Thats tremendous information. I appreciate your knowledge.
I suppose I should purchase an audio interface. I read the Apogees are top notch .
I do have a mac mini I could sell. I could dig up more specs in a day or 2 ( Xmas here) if you are interested. The CD/DVD player is flakey- that likely would not function. This mini is also running EL Capitan OS
I replaced my old minis with new minis 1 year ago .
Oh yes, an audio interface is a must. I'm using a Behringer U-Phoria UMC204HD. Just love it.
As for the mac, I do am very interested, although I should wait a couple weeks for the budget. Let me just PM you anyway.
Thanks
Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2016 9:40 pm
by Bachus
mocando wrote:I think they are more than worthy for Mainstage. If they are 5 years old, that means they are 2011, which is the one I'm looking for. They only difference with the 2012 model is that one have USB 2.0 and the other 3.0, but that doesn't matter much, since the audio interface works in 2.0 anyway, and so does all the MIDI USB data interfaces.
BTW, I just purchased duet display, is 50% off right now (9.99), and tested it with my iPhone, and works like a charm.
I have an early 2011 macbook with a quad core i7, upgraded to 16 GB recently (even tough specs say max 8GB) it runs mainstage perfectly as long as i stay away from using to many Vst's inside a single concert... things like Uhe Diva and omnisphere can be pretty challengin..
Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2016 11:52 pm
by Bertotti
Neve head of using an iPad as a display. I do however use and older MacBook pro early 2013 16gig runs everything fine. I now use it with the Antelope Audio Zen tour and it is fabulous. I like this mc mini idea thought to have a dedicated device.
Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2016 5:19 am
by Bachus
Bertotti wrote:Neve head of using an iPad as a display. I do however use and older MacBook pro early 2013 16gig runs everything fine. I now use it with the Antelope Audio Zen tour and it is fabulous. I like this mc mini idea thought to have a dedicated device.
Using the ipad as the display of your Mac works like a remote desktop App... trough an ap that support thiss feature you can show the desktop of any computer (MAC, PC or Linux) that supports this feature...
However, if you want to use the ipad for controlling mainstage, i would advise to use a specialised app that allows you to create your own custom interface and controll mainstage over midi.... there is quite a few of them
Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2016 9:09 am
by amit
I prefer teamviewer over duet display mainly because I don't need to be tethered to the pc as well as I don't need a second monitor functionality when doing a lot of stuff, like music. I do use duet display though with lot of other tasks.
The best thing about teamviewer on iPad is, it all seems seamless like using native touch gestures on the remote display. Makes working with the DAW so easy at times, pinch to expand etc.
Do give that a try especially when it's free for home use and works wirelessly.