iPad Amp Sims

panhardleft said:
Since I'm always using the iPad (for the awesome Loopy Pro!), I wanted to measure my latencies in the 'real world' too. So, I shelled out some cash and bought the Latencymeter app to measure the physical latency with a loopback cable.

And then the surprise: With IOS 26 there is a significant improvement!

Here's the table with the comparison values - it's noticeable that my ancient Focusrite (I think it's 2nd Generation) performs way better than the Zoom I bought, because it is really compact for 4in/4out. And to top it all off, I also measured my Helix LT. And what we all know: As an interface, it's really not great...


Code: 
iPad-OS | Interface     | Buffer | 48 kHz | 88,2 kHz | 96 kHz
--------+---------------+--------+--------+----------+--------
18.6.2  | ZOOM AMS-44   | 34     | 7,58   | 6,55     | 6,39
18.6.2  | ZOOM AMS-44   | 66     | 8,96   | 7,30     | 7,05
18.6.2  | ZOOM AMS-44   | 130    | 11,63  | 8,75     | 8,39
26.0    | ZOOM AMS-44   | 34     | 6,48   | 5,33     | 5,17
26.0    | ZOOM AMS-44   | 66     | 7,81   | 6,02     | 5,83
26.0    | ZOOM AMS-44   | 130    | 10,44  | 7,47     | 7,18
26.0    | HELIX Audio   | 34     | 8,31   |   –      |   –
26.0    | HELIX Audio   | 66     | 9,63   |   –      |   –
26.0    | HELIX Audio   | 130    | 12,31  |   –      |   –
26.0    | Scarlett18i8  | 34     | 5,54   | 4,01     | 3,94
26.0    | Scarlett18i8  | 66     | 6,88   | 4,73     | 4,60
26.0    | Scarlett18i8  | 130    | 9,54   | 6,20     | 6,05
Click to expand...

Thanks for this - very good info ! :)

It seems to support my "hypothesis" [ <- wanker ] that the CoreAudio Subsystem simply cannot process RTL Audio at anywhere near as well written PC ASIO Drivers or Hardware modelers.

It just seems that no matter how powerful your iPad is and how great your Audio Interface is, it just cant get to the 1.5ms <-> 2.5ms RTL's you get with Top Tier modelers and well written [ie: RME] ASIO PC drivers.

And now Windows ARM is getting its own native ultra-low latency subsystem like CoreAudio, the differences could/will get even greater.
 
BenIfin said:
Thanks for this - very good info ! :)

It seems to support my "hypothesis" [ <- wanker ] that the CoreAudio Subsystem simply cannot process RTL Audio at anywhere near as well written PC ASIO Drivers or Hardware modelers.

It just seems that no matter how powerful your iPad is and how great your Audio Interface is, it just cant get to the 1.5ms <-> 2.5ms RTL's you get with Top Tier modelers and well written [ie: RME] ASIO PC drivers.

And now Windows ARM is getting its own native ultra-low latency subsystem like CoreAudio, the differences could/will get even greater.
Click to expand...

Yup. That’s why I’ve punted and just ordered the pod express, to use with my iPad.
 
paisleywookiee said:
Well, I disagree. It’s really quite trivial for me to use a device for five years, and then flip it for a decent price and get the new one.
Click to expand...

My last three iPhones have cost me $200 each after trading in a 3 year old iPhone. I figure I am basically renting the things for less than $70 per year or $5.56 per month. That could change at anytime, and it might when I upgrade next, but I can't complain about the cost. They sure haven't been $1000 devices to me.
 
Chocol8 said:
My last three iPhones have cost me $200 each after trading in a 3 year old iPhone. I figure I am basically renting the things for less than $70 per year or $5.56 per month. That could change at anytime, and it might when I upgrade next, but I can't complain about the cost. They sure haven't been $1000 devices to me.
Click to expand...
Yup. Macs and iPhones are cheaper than equivalent Windows/Android devices respectively, if you're willing to do a tiny bit of work flipping them or trading them in. I can sell a 3-4 year old Mac for WAY more than I can a Thinkpad or EliteBook of similar new price. Same goes for Android phones. When I managed MDM still, and handled phone accounts, I couldn't get fuck-all for two year old LG and Samsung phones, compared to what we got for iPhones.
 
PorcinePicker said:
I'm still running an iPhone X, also with a battery swap, and it looks and works like new. That's what I expect from a thousand dollar computer. I'm astonished that anyone would view it otherwise. A phone is still just a phone, and the very simple functionality of even a very smart phone is easily handled by 2018 tech. Honestly nothing significant has happened in that space since the iPhone went to 64 bit architecture about a decade ago. We've gotten far too accustomed to buying hype.

I apologize for the somewhat OT diversion....but I sure wouldn't use an iOS device as a DAW for these reasons.
Click to expand...
That iPhone X no longer receives security updates, so do as you will with it with your personal information
 
paisleywookiee said:
Yup. Macs and iPhones are cheaper than equivalent Windows/Android devices respectively, if you're willing to do a tiny bit of work flipping them or trading them in. I can sell a 3-4 year old Mac for WAY more than I can a Thinkpad or EliteBook of similar new price. Same goes for Android phones. When I managed MDM still, and handled phone accounts, I couldn't get fuck-all for two year old LG and Samsung phones, compared to what we got for iPhones.
Click to expand...
I’m glad I’m not managing MDM or end-user devices anymore 💯
 
Mikael Dez said:
That iPhone X no longer receives security updates, so do as you will with it with your personal information
Click to expand...

Yeah man, we can all have a differing opinion on longevity or lack there of, but one absolutely should not be running an unsupported device for security reasons.

EDIT

Actually though, it looks like 16.7.1 has all the current security updates, from what I can find. Which is cool.
 
paisleywookiee said:
Yup. Macs and iPhones are cheaper than equivalent Windows/Android devices respectively, if you're willing to do a tiny bit of work flipping them or trading them in. I can sell a 3-4 year old Mac for WAY more than I can a Thinkpad or EliteBook of similar new price. Same goes for Android phones. When I managed MDM still, and handled phone accounts, I couldn't get fuck-all for two year old LG and Samsung phones, compared to what we got for iPhones.
Click to expand...
The last 2 years we can't flip shit, our flip shit guy has 38 MBP's last I checked with nobody buying things anymore.
 
CorrosiveMatter said:
The last 2 years we can't flip shit, our flip shit guy has 38 MBP's last I checked with nobody buying things anymore.
Click to expand...

Ah that’s too bad. It’s been awhile since I’ve had to flip shit en masse. Lately I just flip shit for myself. And flipping shit in this regard has still been pretty easy.

I used to regularly get 40-50% back on resale, when the device had a three year depreciation anyway. Additional dough went to bonus IT equipment.
 
Mikael Dez said:
That iPhone X no longer receives security updates, so do as you will with it with your personal information
Click to expand...
That’s precisely why I’ve come to loathe Apple. There’s absolutely nothing about keeping a phone secure that requires new hardware. The most secure device in my house is a dedicated Linux firewall, running on hardware that make even older phones look like supercomputers.
 
But what is the alternative? Use an android?
puke GIF
 
Chocol8 said:
Perhaps you should try writing and supporting operating systems for multiple generations of hardware, including regular security updates and bug fixes, before criticizing companies that drop support for old hardware.
Click to expand...

While there's certainly that, in case of Apple it often (and possibly more often than not) is the case that there's rendering things obsolete without any real technical neccessity. Tons of Macs easily becoming upgradeable once you use Open Core are proving that.
 
paisleywookiee said:
I can sell a 3-4 year old Mac for WAY more than I can a Thinkpad or EliteBook of similar new price.
Click to expand...

This is slowly changing. Defenitely not as fast as I think it'd happen, but Mac resale values have dropped quite noticably now that after 5 years it's defenitely the end of OS support for any of the affordable machines. So if you buy a 4y old Mac, you'll have one OS update left.

Now, I know that you'll still get 3 more years of security support and that even without that it'll likely be pretty safe to run machines for even longer - but that's where 3rd party software support comes in. If you want to stay up to date with your software titles (and there's sometimes pretty good reasons for that), you will likely need a pretty recent macOS to run things. Logic by now requires the second to latest macOS, with many others it's usually the third to latest.

This is precisely why I opted for a new Macbook M3 last year, even if a 2nd hand M1 would've been sufficient for my computing needs in terms of horsepower.

Admittedly, it seems to be a bit better with iPhones and iPads. For example, 3rd gen iPad Pros, released in 2025, are supported by iOS 26. So these are still a good 2nd hand purchase.
And fwiw, I plan on getting one of these sort of soon (well, I might actually go for a 4th generation one) and my next phone will very likely be a 2nd hand iPhone, too, simply because I'm just getting sick of Samsung (which I've used for phones and tablets since quite some years by now).
 
PorcinePicker said:
That’s precisely why I’ve come to loathe Apple. There’s absolutely nothing about keeping a phone secure that requires new hardware. The most secure device in my house is a dedicated Linux firewall, running on hardware that make even older phones look like supercomputers.
Click to expand...

You’d love Android then, where they’re dropped even faster.
 
Sascha Franck said:
This is slowly changing. Defenitely not as fast as I think it'd happen, but Mac resale values have dropped quite noticably now that after 5 years it's defenitely the end of OS support for any of the affordable machines. So if you buy a 4y old Mac, you'll have one OS update left
Click to expand...

I don’t think we’ll really know they until the Mini M1/Air M1 are dropped for support. Apple was quick to drop support for 5 year old entry level Intels recently, but I think that’s because they wanted to get out of Intel ASAP. We’ll know next summer, when they announce MacOS 27.
 
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