Ableton Forum

So let me be "that guy" and immediately ask about plans for Ableton Note on Android.

The help section over at https://www.ableton.com/en/note/ states very clearly: "Note is only available for iPhone and iPad". But is an Android version on some roadmap or at least being considered, or should I stop holding my breath?

Currently, we have chosen to focus our efforts on iOS and not on Android, but we'll be paying close attention to how the music-making app space continues to develop.

Seems like a good app. I look forward to it one day being on Android phones.

The kind of low latency, low level, optimized, C++ video game audio performance you can achieve on iOS is possible on Android these days, with the Oboe audio library https://developer.android.com/games/sdk/oboe

See Cubasis in the Android Play Store for an example of this kind of performance.

Considering most people use bluetooth stuff nowadays (even with computer), latency should not be a showstopper.

EDIT: In retrospect, Note has no sequencer for offline programming, it is actually for recording real-time playing, plus also maybe latency affects Ableton Link and such, I guess an Android version is harder than I thought... And improvements in Android audio may only appear in newer Android versions, may end up not appearing in my current Android device...

This was the app I was dreaming of recently and today I checked my email and wow, just what I had envisioned to be the perfect mobile Ableton mini for my phone. I read through all the features and as I was about to head to the Android app store there it was in black in white. ONLY FOR APPLE.


damn what a shame.....

Trevbo wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 19, 2022 11:15 am

A big issue with android devices is the general latency. It varies a lot between android devices and a lot are simply unusable for audio apps.

Which is where that library comes in, it automatically switches between different audio engines to deal with older, or newer devices - and therefore the different degrees of latency in each device, as well as appropriate buffer sizes to prevent audio glitches.

[jur] wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 18, 2022 11:39 am

Currently, we have chosen to focus our efforts on iOS and not on Android, but we'll be paying close attention to how the music-making app space continues to develop.

I won't switch to iOS so please add an Android version.

Maybe, if that's the case it seems silly to make something that relies so heavily on latency.

So much more could be done with a cross platform app, that was more about recording and audio manipulation, plus some melodic creations.

This is all conjecture though as haven't actually tried the app.

Trevbo wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 19, 2022 6:30 pm

Cuv wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 19, 2022 2:28 pm

Trevbo wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 19, 2022 11:15 am

A big issue with android devices is the general latency. It varies a lot between android devices and a lot are simply unusable for audio apps.

Which is where that library comes in, it automatically switches between different audio engines to deal with older, or newer devices - and therefore the different degrees of latency in each device, as well as appropriate buffer sizes to prevent audio glitches.

I think the point is that a lot of the android devices the latency is just too high to be usable.

A lot of Android music apps work just fine without latency issues.

[jur] wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 18, 2022 11:39 am

Currently, we have chosen to focus our efforts on iOS and not on Android,

That we already know. An explanation to why Android is not supported would be welcome.

but we'll be paying close attention to how the music-making app space continues to develop.

What does this mean? What exactly needs to develop? There is already a music making app space for Android, which Ableton of course already knows. So no need for paying attention.

Testing and reliability is the most difficult part I’ve learned from working with other app developers. There’s just orders of magnitude more hardware to test on Android. You can’t use the OS version to specify minimum requirements like you can on iOS, too many android phones will run an OS and still be too underpowered to run these kinds of apps on them.

Funny that apps from Cubase and FL Studio and also other apps just run fine. I don't read about compatibility or latency issues.
I used DAW like apps more than 5 years ago (Caustic, G-Stomper Studio etc). Today's hardware is more powerful and Android better.
Many phones and tablets are more powerful than certain iPhones and iPads. It's getting a bit old, mentioning that Android phones are underpowered. An iPhone 8 is also underpowered compared to 14. Yet no hardware requirements for Note.
Ableton can set a minimum requirement for the Android version, just as they did for iOS version.
An app is developed for Android, not for certain hardware. So that's no excuse either.

Guess it's not as easy as either of us think then.

Are people still complaining about the lack of music app development for android? Don’t they get it?