Why do they make music on iOS, but not on Android and Windows Phone?

I was always interested in the question of why there are so many cool music apps on iOS, and on Android some kind of slag, God forgive me. And I decided to look into this issue, as always Google came to the rescue.



By the way, in this article we will not forget about the “just about, about, already, soon, out” Windows Phone 8, and Windows RT.
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In general, the essence of a simple music software developers for Android simply can not make a well-functioning application for this operating system. Why?

What's in android?

The fact is that the guys at Google did not bother with the problems of the latency of the audio signal. (Preved ASIO for Windows!). Laterance in Android is just awful. The standard delay in Andiod is 100 ms . If for ordinary players and other applications - this is not critical, then for applications for creating music, as you understand, it does not go through any gate.

Once again - latency is the delay between how you performed some action, for example, you pressed a key on the virtual keyboard (in this case it is entered into the delay, as you rightly noticed in the camments and the delay of the touchscreen itself) or pulled a string on a real connected the sound of the guitar was heard (in this case, the touchscreen delay does not play any role, and the latency is determined only by the size of the buffer in which the audio signal accumulates and the path that the signal passes inside the device, and it’s about this latency delay speak). With such a wild delay, no music application will simply be comfortable to use.

In general, here the guys from Google made a blunder, as they say. While the Apple guys did the exact opposite. They have, as they say, the delay is about 10 ms and even lower. And it was immediately used by programmers who develop music software for mobile platforms.

For Android, everything is bad? Hmm, rather yes than not, but it's also too early to despair. Google realized its blunder. And in Android 4.1, Jelly Bean tried to fix it. At least, the stated goal is 10ms and below. Plus, support for USB-audio devices and multi-channel recording is announced, and these are high-quality external audio interfaces. In general, cool.

But soon the fairy tale affects, but it is not done soon. In addition to the need to provide support for low latency at the operating system level, developers should be given the opportunity to use this delay, and for this you need to use a new API, with which developers most likely are not yet familiar. Well, again, with Android, the whole zoo of their devices will play a cruel joke. If, on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, as they say , it was possible to achieve a delay of 12ms (not bad, but less than 10 is much better and this will attract developers), then who can guarantee that you can achieve the same on Asus’s hardware, not Samsung? ? Moreover, there is evidence that the Nexus 7 with latency, which came out in summer, still has problems .

On the other hand, it is believed that the usual thing for Jelly Bean will be a delay of about 15 ms, and this is quite enough for the “average user”. Again, it is possible that some vendors of Android devices will try to reduce latency on their devices and position them as “devices for musicians”.

So, what do we, as people who are not indifferent to music making, promise Andriod 4.1 Jelly Bean?

• USB Audio Support, via Android Open Accessory Development Kit
• Multichannel audio via HDMI
• Access to audio codecs at the platform level (with a lot of cool low-level chips)
• Audio record triggering
• Audio preprocessing
• Audio chaining, which among other things means the simultaneous playback of multiple streams.
• Media routing
• Midi support (was still on ICS)

In general, on the one hand, everything is rosy and promising, but on the other hand, it is not clear how this will all be implemented on a specific device. And again, how many Jelly Beans are on the market right now?

And what about Windows?

Well, for users of desktop versions of Windows 8 in Desktop mode for x86 architecture, everything remains the same. No, even better. According to the measurements of the guys from Cakewalk, their product on Win 8 runs even faster than on Win 7!

Well, and mobile applications? Metro Mode, Windows Phone 8, Windows RT?

Until recently, everything was bad, the guys from Microsoft set a goal for themselves in the same notorious 100ms delay . And all about it lamented, they say, how is it! And rightly lamented. Well, Microsoft would have no experience (like Google) in solving such issues, but WASAPI (Windows Audio Streaming API) appeared in Vista, with which help the so-called. "Exclusive mode" could achieve low latency. And here is such a cant! Some even suggested that Steinberg would write ASIO drivers for Win RT, as they wrote for Win NT, where WASAPI was not yet. Hmm, is it necessary to Steinberg? That's it ...

But they didn’t grieve for long, the same guys from Cakewalk received confirmation from Microsoft that Win RT would support WASAPI and so-called. “Exclusive mode” (but only through C ++). This potentially promises a delay at the level of iOS devices. But again, while there are no devices on hand, it’s too early to draw any conclusions.

It also remains an open question about the support of USB-audio interfaces. Well, the built-in midi support in Metro, although not stated, is “high in their list”, that is, in the priority list, so it is already possible to wait for updates.

What is the result?

Summing up, we can say that iOS, at the moment, is the undisputed leader in the quantity and quality of software for musicians and music production. Since all of which was discussed above, they have long been implemented.

Android and Windows RT are now at about the same level, because the technical capabilities are similar, but neither software, nor additional devices and accessories for music production are present and not foreseen, at least until low-latency devices appear, both on one and on another platform.

The attentive reader probably noticed that I talked more and more about Win RT, and I only had Win Phone 8 in the headlines. This is because of the fact that about Windows Phone 8, little is known in terms of musical application and work with sound. According to MS , it’s still two different platforms, even though WP 8 is based on RT. The latter fact gives hope that in the telephone version of Windows 8 everything will be about the same as in Windows RT.

Comments and corrections are welcome!