Apple silicon

[yur2die4]

I’d have to admit that another limiting factor is old devices vs new devices, when it comes to releasing things in the App Store and what those devices can handle.

I know that they have a spot for ‘recommended for use on these devices’, but a lot of naive people attempt to use the apps anyway, and then have a poor experience.

If something like Live were to be released, people might be enthused about it finally being available on an iPad, but they could get frustrated when they realize they’ll need a brand new, latest model, in order to use it.

Do I believe Live would run on the current gens? ... not quite. But I’ll also admit I have limited experience with how Live runs on macs. I am sure there are distinct differences in experience, despite them being essentially the same. (Audio drivers for example)

Currently on my ipads, everything ‘just works’. It’s pretty magical, and promising. Even Bluetooth midi is astoundingly low latency, and robust! (Given that it’s a good quality product).

I do not have any idea why someone would believe ‘audio’ is an issue though. In what regard? Audio quality of playback from recorded channels? Audio processing of synth tones being generated from audio units?? It’s a computer doing computer things. It has just as much a problem with ‘audio’ as Live has had or currently has... which, was indeed more a factor than it is today.

I remember when people did not take Live seriously. Today it is extremely common and considered a standard. I also remember when people thought CDJ and computer users didn’t qualify as real djs.... yet most reputable djs regularly make use of those devices.

My passion was on Live from the start as a ‘new frontier’. I was quite excited exploring the unique qualities it offered, especially the flexibility of it as a playground.

In the past 6 years, I rarely touch my computer. I get all my new music kicks out of the rapid progression which has happened within the iOS realm. You buy apps as plugins. You buy apps that are equivalents of their PC counterparts. You have some apps for arranging, some for live interplay (like AUM). You can sync multiple apps together with a combination of Ableton Link and hosting by other apps and connect it to Audio Interfaces (most are class compliant and low latency) and multiple midi controllers (especially with the use of a USB hub).

I can do all this not only on my iPads. But also on my phone. And it sounds great. No different than what I can listen to from a wav that I am playing from my phone... which is just a computer. And in October, that computer is about to make a huge leap in performance.

[Tone Deft]

I know that they have a spot for ‘recommended for use on these devices’, but a lot of naive people attempt to use the apps anyway, and then have a poor experience.

I have no problem with that. that was an angle I was after with desktops going after workstation performance.

I do not have any idea why someone would believe ‘audio’ is an issue though. In what regard? Audio quality of playback from recorded channels? Audio processing of synth tones being generated from audio units?? It’s a computer doing computer things. It has just as much a problem with ‘audio’ as Live has had or currently has... which, was indeed more a factor than it is today.

yeah, therein lies a discussion that maybe I should stay out of due to my lack of experience with iPad trends. rendering times are one thing, phase issues in processing, latency, graphics quality, GUI response time, crap like that I could PULL OUT OF MY ASS if I disregard an open mind and the joy of riding the wave of technology, it's a great time for electronics that appear to be toys. it's wonderful to be able to research this stuff too and dig under the hood, if you're so inclined.

as much as I love and really really want to learn audio hehehehe I would not be surprised at all if lo and behold all things audio could be easily handled by standard processors one day. in my experience the lowest possible latency through an audio stream the the length of one Word Clock IOW, the sample rate. that's on the microsecond scale, an EON in computing terms. I absolutely put audio on a pedestal, I've spent half my life designing audio hardware and know how dumb of a signal it is compared to high speed GHz designs I've done. heh, I saw the first web pages in ~1992 when there was only Telnet, I thought that was crap because the internet bandwidth at the time could not transfer images fast enough, text was slow enough as it was. I was soooooo wrong and happy to be so, I was an idiot. that goes along with strong opinions.

My passion was on Live from the start as a ‘new frontier’. I was quite excited exploring the unique qualities it offered, especially the flexibility of it as a playground.

YES and I do not want to diminish your mojo in this, run with it!

I get all my new music kicks out of the rapid progression which has happened within the iOS realm. You buy apps as plugins. You buy apps that are equivalents of their PC counterparts. You have some apps for arranging, some for live interplay (like AUM). You can sync multiple apps together with a combination of Ableton Link and hosting by other apps and connect it to Audio Interfaces (most are class compliant and low latency) and multiple midi controllers (especially with the use of a USB hub).

I can do all this not only on my iPads. But also on my phone. And it sounds great. No different than what I can listen to from a wav that I am playing from my phone... which is just a computer. And in October, that computer is about to make a huge leap in performance.

YES! and I'm planning on investing the money on a proper iPad to get on board with what you guys have taken the time to show me.

so I'm posting more. I don't want to be a jerk and just could shoulder you. you don't deserve that, you're a level headed person.

blah blah blah, hyped up in too much morning coffee.

[yur2die4]

Well. I don’t want to hijack this and go from ‘Live on different kinds of processors’ to ‘making music on iPads’ so I’ll keep this short.

If you consider doing music on iPads, there are still some sticklers. The lifespan of an iPad is respectable but by no means perfect... in fact, it is easier than ever to end up with a useless pile of delicately arranges metal/plastic/glass.

The other catch is that there are some distinctions in the currently offered lines. And it’s often best to ask people or groups about which models are kind of the most ideal for music (music as usual is quite resource heavy and there is never true satisfaction).

Currently, the iPhone 12 will be the most powerful iOS device on the market. But I’m sure Apple is just itching to throw that processor in all their options. So iPad in 2021 might be a great bet (they might be kind on the pricing also).. I’d be supremely envious.

Lastly, the investment of an iPad for music comes with it the one-off investment of some peripherals but also a never ending cycle of craving the latest and greatest apps... incrementally achieving desirable qualities that we take for granted on PC, yet rarely free (for the good shit)... but always within the realm of the cost of a drink at Starbucks. This is a real cost that one would have to wrap their head around.

If you want to mess with an iPad in person, you can do the embarrassing method of going over to the display at Best Buy and tinkering with GarageBand or djay (usually installed on display devices). Won’t give you the full picture, but there’s a lot with regard to tactility and user experience that nothing other than iOS and its associated hardware offers.

[Tone Deft]

put on a different hat and look at this. what about the touchscreen experience with Live? what can the hive mind come up with to make Live's GUI experience optimized for fun with an iPad? leave it as is? what size to plan for? I think it could be greatly improved.

my main computer is a laptop with a touch screen that folds back into tablet mode, check my signature. I never even consider using the touch screen while using Live. (I bought it as an emergency replacement at Best Buy one night, sucked but it was fun, false alarm anyway, idiot.) a great description I love is that Live's GUI is like doing a medical operation through a keyhole. when I have used the touch screen for curiosity it was with the pen to poke at little holes on the screen like I was poking out a voting chad.

another one.
if I go iPad/desktop I'll still have this laptop around as a powerful touch screen tablet. but the GUI is so tight. this new version of Live could be catered to ease those pain points.

I also have a 7" touch screen for the Raspberry Pi, another user market Live can go after, small form factor Linux... that would open all this up to hobbyists to make their own controllers and Ableton can get out of the hardware business with it's HUGE overhead of materials to plan. I love this shit and I do not care about a $700 Push. I could get a used guitar amp for that.

and thinking about it, what about physical control devices for iPads that those users ultimately find fun and useful? I'm thinking like the BCR2000 was for desktop's using Live, amazing cheap box for the time.

is Live's GUI ready for an x" iPad touch screen, what size has the general population found to be the most fun? (forget functional size, I want fun first, functional second and price third.)

which I'd get LARGELY depends on the community support. I don't rely on corporations for much support or information anymore, even if I'm on an older device. adopt late, follow the heard of my choice, repeat.

[Tone Deft]

I feel like an idiot for not knowing this existed, here's the roadmap folks... The Avid Pro Tools Dock, $900. So expect something from Ableton already in the works (feeling dumb here) that will phase out/undersell Push at $800 or whatever it lists at, for now.

https://www.avid.com/products/avid-cont ... s#Features

I haven't read up on this, I just wanted to post before Ableton announces this soon. probably made by Novation, Akai? I'm drinking the Kool-Aid...

[yur2die4]

I guess since this is called Apple Silicon, I can pretend this is the new ‘iPad music’ my thread. And at least use it as a means to explore the push / pull with the whole Apple platform, approach. Arm and SoC comes down to Apple’s direction being to approach computing as a whole from the user, through the hardware, and into the chip which is designed explicitly for the hardware. Understanding that, then it wouldn’t be unreasonable to view the current hardware as a further review and exploration of the future of ‘Apple Silicon’ and how it applies to the future of MacBooks, iPad music, and Ableton Live.

And with that excuse out of the way.

Touch interfaces, Windows, iOS, and ‘docks’. There’s a lot to unpack here. My initial thoughts were mostly within the realm you’re considering. But as one actually ends up using a device, sometimes their whole idea of what is and isn’t desirable flips on its head.

I also have had a bit of experience with a touchscreen and Live (though the computer I have doesn’t get to flip over.... so I reeeeally feel the worst of the ergonomics in that regard). I feel Live/Windows have improved in microscopic ways for this, but it’s far from natural. I set zoom to a ridiculous amount of I plan to touch. I keep in mind that only some vsts support multitouch, though not Live or any of its native devices. And at the end of the day nothing about Live is inviting to touch... the only exciting parts are when I manage to exploit some touch mechanic in a way that I thought was undoable. When it’d ideally all be doable, and the excitement should be with how easily I can do those things.

On the iPad, and iOS, touch is a much different experience. Especially for things like keyboards, but because it is by default void of a qwerty and mouse, it’s essentially designed to be tactile.... and this actually allows you do do things in refreshing ways. You might for instance have audio samples visually strewn across the play area, and drag ‘orbs’ which granularity play back bits of that audio across different sections of it.... even drag those orbs over combinations of audio clips layered on top of each other like papers strewn about. This is the concept of ‘Borderlands Granular’.

But... on the flip side, we are getting a lot of bread and butter apps that focus more on just being touchable (which is still very nice) but more of the excitement is the standard idea that it’ll be an effective tool within the iOS music ecosystem. ‘Here is a sidechain compressor by audio damage’. Does it have any unique qualities that the PC version doesn’t? Not really. ....still, my current favorite is ‘AUM’, of which you can find hundreds of videos for. It’s basically just a host/mixer. Holds everything together in an easy way which allows you to network it all. But it offers No sequencing options on its own. Apps had to be made to exist which did sequencing. AUM is still a sound designer’s heaven. It’s very easy to do the fun wonky experiments one would do in Live... just, with apps and a tactile mixer instead. There are a lot of limitations in processing and there isn’t really any form of ‘grouping’ though there are plenty of Bus/Send options. It’s expected to be tactile as a whole and used on the fly, you can still record the experience of course.

For actual DAWs, I’d say that the iPad is Very useable in some regards, but severely limited by options in other regards. As mentioned previously, Cubasis is the big one with all the bells and whistles. It’s a real DAW (latest version was quite an ambitious release but is ironing out a lottt of bugs). Auria is claimed to be great for audio track mixing, arranging and mastering. Aside from that, there are usually compromises. Roland released Zenbeats which is essentially a mobile Ableton Live. Korg has Gadget, weird scene-reliant structure and closed off with Only Korg devices. There is BeatMaker 3, a groovebox with loads of possibilities yet... the devs have been silent for quite a while... still, it fully allows audio units and many other great features that professionals could easily find useful. NanoStudio2 put all its chips into arranging with strictly audio units and it’s own devices, no audio arranging.... yet, but the arranging is very smooth and comfortable, similar to Live.

Lastly, docks. People seem to get the impression that either docks make a device more pro, or that the only peripheral devices you can use with your iPad are docs. If you can connect it to Live as a standard midi controller or audio interface, you can probably also connect it to the iPad ... with the caveat that you’ll probably need to use a USB hub that has a power supply.

The docks are a turn off for me because they generally fit some devices and not others. Might be strictly iOS (lightning but no USB?) they’ll Hog your one connection option, the lightning port, so you are unable to connect any other peripherals unless they connect to that dock. And usually if they made it Just for the iPad, it’s probably built very cheap with the expectation that people are willing to spend for the novelty. And then to top it all off, you’re no longer using an iPad... there’s no reason to have an iPad anymore.. you’re reducing the portability. Making it harder to touch the thing etc etc. Still, docks CAN offer convenience if you’re committed, they’ll give you such and such number of inputs/outputs and some dedicated controls.

I’d say I do half my music exploration on the iPad. And half on the iPhone. They play well together, some apps are iPad only, but AUM, NanoStudio2 and Cubasis can be used on the phone. It’s great exploring ideas on a couch, or getting a quick idea and getting immersed suddenly on the phone when I’m waiting somewhere for something haha. I’d say that for what I Do in Live, I easily get the equivalent experience and satisfaction on my phone. Just, different.

[Tone Deft]

I guess since this is called Apple Silicon, I can pretend this is the new ‘iPad music’ my thread. And at least use it as a means to explore the push / pull with the whole Apple platform, approach. Arm and SoC comes down to Apple’s direction being to approach computing as a whole from the user, through the hardware, and into the chip which is designed explicitly for the hardware. Understanding that, then it wouldn’t be unreasonable to view the current hardware as a further review and exploration of the future of ‘Apple Silicon’ and how it applies to the future of MacBooks, iPad music, and Ableton Live.

strong point.

Touch interfaces, Windows, iOS, and ‘docks’. There’s a lot to unpack here. My initial thoughts were mostly within the realm you’re considering. But as one actually ends up using a device, sometimes their whole idea of what is and isn’t desirable flips on its head.

wow. great point about a dock making an iPad a moot point.

I have an understanding of now that the big picture is that hardware is hitting a crescendo and software is quickly catching up to hardware's ability. hardware trickle down theories are outmoded.

personally I've seen this because I got my EE degree 23 years ago (before surface mount components) and this trend exactly follows my career opportunities. it'd be easier to lay low, get an entry level SW job just to learn the standards and in a few years jump ship to a nice salary. or EE management, and all the older EE guys grew into it and guard that shit, corporate BS. blah blah

so much hardware has been demystified it's easier to design so it's all just a matter of physics and going sub 5nm etc (latticing, 3D transistors, both? that in itself is an interesting shit show in the silicon industry. talked to a friend recently whose a system architect at Nvidia with all this in mind), or don't put all your eggs in one basket and make specialized chips. if there's an ARM core designed for it it can be fabbed out, packaged and sold. it's a matter of money with the design, it is after all simple slow audio and human interaction.

so my post about Live being limited to iPad processing power is retracted.

[TLW]

I saw the first web pages in ~1992 when there was only Telnet, I thought that was crap because the internet bandwidth at the time could not transfer images fast enough

Telnet? Lynx, surely (yes, I'm that old as well). We had our first home internet connection in 1992, courtesy of CiX, then not long after that via Demon Internet. A full internet service accessible to any computer that could be networked. Download an entire megabyte in as little as 20 minutes, I remember it well - and sometimes, usually when regarding something on twitter, I miss those days.A bit, but not too much.

[Tone Deft]

I saw the first web pages in ~1992 when there was only Telnet, I thought that was crap because the internet bandwidth at the time could not transfer images fast enough

Telnet? Lynx, surely (yes, I'm that old as well). We had our first home internet connection in 1992, courtesy of CiX, then not long after that via Demon Internet. A full internet service accessible to any computer that could be networked. Download an entire megabyte in as little as 20 minutes, I remember it well - and sometimes, usually when regarding something on twitter, I miss those days.A bit, but not too much.

I'll have to look up CiX. my dad (I was a senior in HS class of '91) had some dial-up service he'd subscribe to that he'd yell and scream at like it was showing him messages from god but the printer was spewing data from the bowels of hell. he ate up sooo much paper fucking around, I dared not go near it. went to CU Boulder where the backbone of the internet went through the elevator shaft in the EE building (CO is all about the Defense Industry). my friends were hired as the UNIX opps team because they were a-hole goth kids crashing shit (spamming out the Bible to crash the system and prove an internet God argument) and finding backdoors to the SysOps accounts (that was embarrassing in his interview for that job). they showed me Mozilla with the MTV web site, looked amazing. all I cared about was downloading guitar tabs from OLGA.net on FTP. long live Chris Carmen for his Smashing Pumpkins tabs, the best ever made. I still have a LARGE white binder from then labelled "Big Book Of Grunge Tab", which people give me shit for, then they pick it up. downloading them was like the early days of Napster, took sooo long and you didn't know what you got.

[Tone Deft]

for a better understanding of the evolution of high speed signalling this is a short read with lots of pictures:
page 60 - MT-201
I think you guys could appreciate this because it's all about A/D and D/A converter communications but at GHz speeds. they use this for satellite radar imaging. I'm studying for a job interview so I really need to know/teach this stuff, now. I loved this as a general review of the fundamentals. DDR2 etc are just exotic clocking schemes, this is the physical layer interface.

JESD204 is the latest SERIAL I/O pushing 30GHz PCB signalling with the new revision. it's CML logic based, current mode logic. the general evolution of the standards demonstrate how they've continually evolved and tightened the electrical specs, eventually going to constant current based logic, not voltage based logic. this seems to be approaching a limit in bandwidth because there will be gains elsewhere, like smarter ARM architecture etc.

https://www.analog.com/media/en/technic ... -Guide.pdf

[Tone Deft]

video games. how are they holding up on iPads? that's another thread I'd pursue in scoping this all out.

my current laptop my Live 10 Performance Test is mediocre and during COVID I've gotten into games like Overwatch and Rust which also show me that my laptop is pretty mediocre. (Overwatch video settings are low and Rust only plays at 10FPS, unusable.)

maybe it's just beating a dead horse but is there meat to discuss there or am I just charging windmills?



in the meantime I'm studying up on microprocessor history to fill out my blind spots. already my statement above ranting about 16/14 nm fabs being bleeding edge is totally wrong.

I'm starting with what I know, Intel processors and step my way through AMD then Apple silicon. there's no single resource that's laying out what I'm trying to learn, once and for all.

in considering Intel it's important to consider that their Process Optimization model that they went to in 2016 over 'tick tock' model.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process%E ... tion_model
note that that would make:
Cannon Lake - die shrink
Ice Lake - uArch change
Tiger Lake - optimizations
etc.
it's the 5th and 8th generations where the cycle starts and repeats.

pretty good INTEL article
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15926/in ... party-fabs
but AGAIN, this one glosses over details I need to put into context to see the big picture.

soon I'll connect the dots to the Apple Silicon October release and where it all fits in.

[TLW]

Given Apple's tendency not to announce anything definite until they're ready to release it I think it's a bit early to try and work out exactly what Apple silicon will end up being. If they could license the instruction set from Intel they could probably build a chip that could run Intel-based code as well as it runs its own. Or include chip-based virtualisation, maybe.

As for games on the iPad, I'm probably not the best person to ask. My tastes run towards historically based strategy games of the Ageod kind rather than massively gpu intensive games. What I can say is that there is now quite a lot of overlap between desktop and iPad games with developers releasing iPad OS versions, sometimes cut down presumably due to the iPad not having the humungous amounts of working or graphics RAM available on most modern desktop/tower machines.

[Tone Deft]

I think it's a bit early to try and work out exactly what Apple silicon will end up being. If they could license the instruction set from Intel they could probably build a chip that could run Intel-based code as well as it runs its own. Or include chip-based virtualisation, maybe.

nothing to do with Apple running on Intel, I have no interest in that. you'll see what I mean from my point of view.

chipsets are planned many many years in advance. they are MANY billions of dollar investments and everyone in the f-ing world knows exactly what those are up to. I did a very quick and simple search for new Apple foundries and this was the first hit FFS:
https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/14/2125 ... a-a-series
the health of the US, China, Taiwan and South Korea defenses and economies are at stake with funding these foundries. start learning by googling "TSMC competitors".

I have this page up for AMD right now. I think I have one for Apple, but one at a time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_AMD_processors

how is this mysterious? it's a market study of trending. since it's a market it is bound by basic market realities, like each generation improving on the previous in specific ways. generations of chips mean new chips in different market segments as new ones replace older ones with SPECIFIC gains on each step like Intel's model but a consistency that has sane expectations from the user. each mfg taking chances at different times, sometimes with management or personnel changes. these companies swap employees like teenagers swap spit, and take the same risks (don't try that...).

I'm getting a kick out of pc building web sites. I'll use Apple as a reason to learn Intel and AMD.

after I do uPs I'll study bandwidth issues between external components and the uP. this is what ARM solves, the local bus issues inside a uP. so you might as well make a specialized feature set with AMD. I would also need to feel out how hard it would be for Apple to catch up to AMD or if it's worth the money to do so.

[Tone Deft]

here's an interesting point of data
https://www.macrumors.com/guide/apple-silicon/

check the Easing the Transition section and the "The Developer Transition Kit is a ‌Mac mini‌ equipped with an A12Z chip from the ‌iPad Pro‌."

Apple has been screaming to the customer base what to expect but the message didn't get here. that should answer the basic question. I don't speak Mac so I can't speak to more details. Logic Pro is already being used by Apple on this development kit, boom, there ya go. now connect the dots between the A12Z chip and imagine you had the choice of what to take out to save power, limit RAM, lower clock speeds etc... interpolate the data. taking the hood of a CPU only has more understandable building blocks. it's all learnable. you can probably speculate on the price point as well, assume the rest of the hardware won't change and work from there.

I'd need to put the A12Z into perspective by studying its history and where it fit in their product line over the years to see why it was chosen. the article is dated recently so I feel like it represents the current state of affairs.

all for the sake of understanding why hardware development is slowing down(?) and why Apple's choice to go with an ARM architecture is a smarter way to push innovation rather than pushing process size sub 10mn with exotic tapeout schemes.



or did I just show you that Live would probably run on an A12Z iPad?

[Tone Deft]

a link doing what I suggested above, take off the hood and play with the Lego bits under the hood...

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comme ... potential/

now I'm learning all the stuff that wasn't posted before... this is obvious information guys.

edit - in taking to gamers online a guy I play with knows my main focus is running Ableton Live etc, NOT games. he said that he has a friend pursuing a career in music in college and the crossover is that the GPU strength equals 'SOUND CARD' strength when it comes to picking a processor for a custom build like
pcpartpicker.com
just like the gamers, audio guys share the same processing units, we want HUGE GPUs, probably RAM and a speedy pipeline to interface those. then put the demands of the UI (touchscreen mainly?) in consideration. AND power. forget cost for now. they can tricks for that. like making a larger scale then just turning off some logic blocks, like an article above suggested when comparing A12x and A12z, could be just die to predicted yield fallout and parts binning. consider that. cost reduction from mfg dropout. funny industry.

so to dreamscape Live "running in the palm of your hand" consider the A12x known architecture and then maybe take a look at the cores that AMD has available licenses for and treat the CPU architecture like Lego blocks.
https://www.amd.com/en/support/eula maybe start here... ?