5 ms·

Does anyone actually believe the reason " the Google Play store, the Music category is not even a top five revenue producing app category." is due to audio late

by mianos 12y ago

Does anyone actually believe the reason " the Google Play store, the Music category is not even a top five revenue producing app category." is due to audio latency? I am not disagreeing with the fact that there is a lot of audio latency (no worse than Windows 8) but maybe it's time to explain cause vs correlation? Interesting article all the same.

mcroft 12y ago
I think the argument comes down to the fact that audio latency is preventing the makers of the most popular/lucrative apps from developing for Android, the implication being that they would develop for Android if the latency wasn't there and the music category would therefore increase in revenue numbers.
serve_yay 12y ago
And so your preferred hypothesis is, what, everyone just forgot to write nice professional audio and music tools for Android?
- szantog 12y ago
  They did not forgot to write nice professional audio and music tools for Android. They can't, because of audio latency and dropouts.
likeclockwork 12y ago
It wouldn't be satisfying. I'm an Android user and have given thought to developing on Android but the only things I'm interesting in doing on a mobile platform are synthesis and sequencing. Based on everything I've read.. it seems like it would be a waste of time. Forget commercial viability, it doesn't even sound like it would be worth it to make something for personal use. I get 7ms roundtrip on my Linux music workstation, with my audio interface, JACK, ALSA, Bitwig.. total cost maybe $1600(when buying the machine I was trying to figure out how much I could leave out/how much of a cheapskate I could be).. not a huge sum but it shows how important low latency is. A lot of the people buying music apps(synthesizers, toys) own hardware synthesizers, have computer recording/sequencing setups, or play acoustic instruments.. some of them spend multiples of 10K on their setups over time.. when they pick up a phone or a tablet, they're not comparing it to a flash site or the performance from an integrated soundcard on a $300 laptop.. they're comparing it directly to the immediate physical response of their instruments or the low-latency response of the computer audio setup they've invested in. High latency feels incredibly sluggish and harms your sense of rhythm; unpredictable latency is just murder. Given that most makers of music software are themselves music makers.. when they pick up a device and see its audio performance is so poor the thought process is something like "If I can't even make something I would use myself on this, what's the point in trying to release something to the public?" There are some good music apps for Android, some that I would even say are very good efforts, but they're very few, and still suffer from latency pretty badly.
wpietri 12y ago
Perhaps you missed the section, "How Android’s 10 Millisecond Problem and Android Audio Path Latency Impacts App Developers and Android OEMs" and in particular the bullet points with specific examples of the problems high latency causes.
qq66 12y ago
The difference between the music app business on Android and iOS is a complex one that really encapsulates the meaning of a "brand." Apple has a long history of market success with creative professionals, so to make sure that they retain this success, they focus heavily on the product issues that would be relevant to creative professionals. These creative pros are who the advanced amateurs look up to, so when the creative pros, let's say Ryan Lewis, are all using Macs and iOS, the amateurs do too... Apple's success in these markets is a long history of positive feedback between engineering, marketing, and branding.

by mianos 12y ago

mcroft 12y ago

I think the argument comes down to the fact that audio latency is preventing the makers of the most popular/lucrative apps from developing for Android, the implication being that they would develop for Android if the latency wasn't there and the music category would therefore increase in revenue numbers.

serve_yay 12y ago

And so your preferred hypothesis is, what, everyone just forgot to write nice professional audio and music tools for Android?

szantog 12y ago
They did not forgot to write nice professional audio and music tools for Android. They can't, because of audio latency and dropouts.

likeclockwork 12y ago

It wouldn't be satisfying. I'm an Android user and have given thought to developing on Android but the only things I'm interesting in doing on a mobile platform are synthesis and sequencing. Based on everything I've read.. it seems like it would be a waste of time. Forget commercial viability, it doesn't even sound like it would be worth it to make something for personal use. I get 7ms roundtrip on my Linux music workstation, with my audio interface, JACK, ALSA, Bitwig.. total cost maybe $1600(when buying the machine I was trying to figure out how much I could leave out/how much of a cheapskate I could be).. not a huge sum but it shows how important low latency is. A lot of the people buying music apps(synthesizers, toys) own hardware synthesizers, have computer recording/sequencing setups, or play acoustic instruments.. some of them spend multiples of 10K on their setups over time.. when they pick up a phone or a tablet, they're not comparing it to a flash site or the performance from an integrated soundcard on a $300 laptop.. they're comparing it directly to the immediate physical response of their instruments or the low-latency response of the computer audio setup they've invested in. High latency feels incredibly sluggish and harms your sense of rhythm; unpredictable latency is just murder. Given that most makers of music software are themselves music makers.. when they pick up a device and see its audio performance is so poor the thought process is something like "If I can't even make something I would use myself on this, what's the point in trying to release something to the public?" There are some good music apps for Android, some that I would even say are very good efforts, but they're very few, and still suffer from latency pretty badly.

wpietri 12y ago

Perhaps you missed the section, "How Android’s 10 Millisecond Problem and Android Audio Path Latency Impacts App Developers and Android OEMs" and in particular the bullet points with specific examples of the problems high latency causes.

qq66 12y ago

The difference between the music app business on Android and iOS is a complex one that really encapsulates the meaning of a "brand." Apple has a long history of market success with creative professionals, so to make sure that they retain this success, they focus heavily on the product issues that would be relevant to creative professionals. These creative pros are who the advanced amateurs look up to, so when the creative pros, let's say Ryan Lewis, are all using Macs and iOS, the amateurs do too... Apple's success in these markets is a long history of positive feedback between engineering, marketing, and branding.