IPad Air 2 Ram?

[lukebredin]

I have received my iPad air 2 today and can confirm it does have 2gb RAM. Auria has been running very nicely on it today too! Glad I didn't upgrade my iPhone to a 6plus and waited for this iPad upgrade.

Can you share any info. on whether Auria runs more smoothly with the FabFilter effects, like Timeless 2 or Saturn? Those things are hogs, but I love them!

Well it defiantly has 2gb ram, is a 1.5ghz tri core (so about a 20-25% increase in performance over the iPhone 6plus on multicore tests as the 6plus only has a 1.4ghz duel core).

In terms of using some of them plugs, I don't actually have them yet as I have only just really seriously just started using Auria as a main platform due to only having an iPad 2 before. So my ipad2 never had the power to really do stuff with it. Plus I still mainly work in my mastering studio. But having seen the power this pad has got, I have started to use it more already. I'm sketching out a basic idea of a new track in Auria at the moment. I was looking a few months ago about getting some of the FabFilter plugs and now I have the Air2 and already love the mobile workflow I will get them later and post back and let you know how I am getting on with them.

[lukebredin]

So I don't have an extensive project yet to really push the pad but I made up a quick project just to see what happens with some of the plugins. I put 5 audio tracks in, just chucked some loops to see what happens. Sample rate at 44100. I closed all other background apps and Auria said i had about 900mb of RAM free. I don't know how Auria uses inactive RAM as I am assuming there would be more RAM classed as inactive and I am assuming it would come available once all the free RAM used (but I have no idea on that front). Anyway I put on 5 instances of FabFilter timeless, 4 instances FabFilter ProQ, 1 instance of IK Multimedia Amplitube through Inter App Audio, a couple of the standard channel strip compressors and my RAM only went down to around 850/860 mb free. CPU only upto about 15-20%. On the meters about the disks it never went above 2% which isn't suprising considering I only had 5 tracks of audio.

I know it isn't exactly a monster project but that is promising. I can see using the freeze button being able to do quite a sizeable project on this no problem.

Hope that helps.

Luke

[supanorton]

I'm still on an iPad 2, so this really is promising for me. Thanks for the report, Luke.

[papertiger]

Thank you so much for posting, Luke. These results are really exciting. Running that many FF plugs is sick.

[CEIsar]

Another comparison somebody made for me in the audiobus forum.

I created a new project (44,1)with just a single,empty track with one instance of saturn.I took a very hungry preset with 6 bands active (preset:"crispy fats I").CPU was 32-34% on my Mini Retina (and a skyrocketing 134% in HQ mode )

On the Air 2 the same test,result was shifting between 21-25% CPU (and 100-104% in HQ) .Not too bad but it also means the third core is not kicking in and needs to be adressed by the developers OR the CPU meter of Auria just doesn't reflect it and needs an upate?

But sadly,with all the power of the new monster GPU (2,5x times faster but still the same retina resolution),Aurias edit screen STILL seems to run not smooth on the Air 2 according to another user in the AB Forum.

Auria is the main reason again (third time after upgrading from iPad2->iPad4->Mini Retina)to buy the Air 2 but i'm getting tired if Auria is always ahead of what is possible on iPad

Nonetheless,it's an amazing peace of software and also the main reason why i left my Macbook behind me.

[lukebredin]

I'm still on an iPad 2, so this really is promising for me. Thanks for the report, Luke.

Thank you so much for posting, Luke. These results are really exciting. Running that many FF plugs is sick.

No problem. As I'm starting to use my pad more now for some personal projects I will start using this stuff in a more realistic project. Will have to grab that Saturn plug and chuck that in the mix too . Will keep you guys updated but I'm guessing most people wil start to get their new iPads before I get a full on project going!

[supanorton]

I'm turning 50 in February. I know what I'm getting. Hopefully all the big iOS 8 audio/midi bugs are squashed by then, and Auria's running smoother than ever.

[Emmitt]

Ifixit.com did the teardown - it's 2 gig - YAAA!!!

[rkmonkey]

Installing Auria on new Ipad as I type. Plan to use it exclusively for music production!

[jsol]

Cool, ifixit confirmed it! Now, I'm on the fence becuase I I wouldn't mind a bigger screen with the rumored iPad Pro.

Decisions, decisions...

JSol.

[Washboy]

Have you got your Air2 yet, @Rim ?

We know now that it has 2GB RAM but I'm wondering what advantage the A8X's 3 cores offer Auria. Is it something you'd need to code specifically to leverage or does iOS handle that side of things automagically?

[Rim]

Yes, it's definitely 2GB of RAM, as others have already discovered. I'm playing around with optimizing for three cores, but even without optimization, it's faster than the Air.

Rim

[Washboy]

Great news, @Rim Thanks for the feedback.

BTW, have you noticed the internal speaker causing distortion, with excessive vibration of the back casing? It's a relatively minor issue (most Auria users will use monitors or headphones for mixing) but I found it off-putting, when I demod in-store. It would also be good to have @Tarekith 's evaluation (he of the golden ears ), when his Air2 finally arrives.

[Tarekith]

Hoping to have it today now it looks like. Not really sure what difference it makes anyway to be honest, none of the iPad speakers are really accurate per se. FWIW, the Air 1 speakers would vibrate the iPad too, that's justt eh trade off of a really slim device made out of lightweight materials I suppose.

[Washboy]

Yeah, I don't expect anything wonderful from iPad speakers but I've always thought the one in my ageing iPad3 is clear and clean, albeit a bit 'quiet'. What concerned me about the Air2 I looked at in-store was that the sound seemed muddy and somehow 'distorted'. Admittedly, a busy store isn't the best listening environment but I thought, "why go to the trouble of fitting stereo speakers, if they sound so bad?". That's why I'll value your listening evaluation in time