How Many Synth Plugins Can Budget iPads Hold in a Project?

[VanillaBeans]

Hi guys. I'm shopping for my first iPad and it's a choice between the base 9th gen one and the 6th gen mini.

My question is how many tracks can you have in a project on the 9th gen ipad and 6th gen mini respectively, in terms of number of synth plugin tracks (including a basic processing chain after the synth)

Also if anyone has synthmaster, I'm curious how many instances with EQ + Reverb each of the ipads can handle.

Also, is the smaller screen real estate of the mini a big hinderance or is the extra processing power worth it?

Thank you

 

[twerppoet]

In theory the iPad Mini (6th gen) should do better than the iPad (9th gen). It’s SOC is two generations newer, and it has more RAM: A13 and 3 GB of RAM vs A15 and 4 GB of RAM. To be sure you’d need someone to do real world tests on both iPads. It is possible there are other bottle necks, and Garage Band (I’m guessing this is about GarageBand) may have built in limitations. Maybe you can find something on YouTube or one of the other tech video platforms.

Here is a Wikipedia page you can use to comparei hardware specs. iPad - Wikipedia

As far as screen size, unless being super mobile is the primary concern, a bigger screen is always easier to work with, especially if you’re going to do something touch intensive like using GarageBand’s instruments.

If you have the money, and are professional level interested I’d suggest going with one of the new Pro models. Otherwise, I think you’ll find either model will handle more instruments than you‘re likely to need. But don’t take my word for it. Do some more research. I’ve never done more than fiddle around with GarageBand, mostly just plinking on the instruments.

Another adantage of the Pro models is better speakers. Of course you can always use headphones.

 

[VanillaBeans]

In theory the iPad Mini (6th gen) should do better than the iPad (9th gen). It’s SOC is two generations newer, and it has more RAM: A13 and 3 GB of RAM vs A15 and 4 GB of RAM. To be sure you’d need someone to do real world tests on both iPads. It is possible there are other bottle necks, and Garage Band (I’m guessing this is about GarageBand) may have built in limitations. Maybe you can find something on YouTube or one of the other tech video platforms.

Here is a Wikipedia page you can use to comparei hardware specs. iPad - Wikipedia

As far as screen size, unless being super mobile is the primary concern, a bigger screen is always easier to work with, especially if you’re going to do something touch intensive like using GarageBand’s instruments.

If you have the money, and are professional level interested I’d suggest going with one of the new Pro models. Otherwise, I think you’ll find either model will handle more instruments than you‘re likely to need. But don’t take my word for it. Do some more research. I’ve never done more than fiddle around with GarageBand, mostly just plinking on the instruments.

Another adantage of the Pro models is better speakers. Of course you can always use headphones.

Thanks for the detailed reply. This is helpful. I've done a lot of digging online and unfortunately didn't find any such benchmarks.

The 3 gigs of RAM might be limiting though, I thought it would have 4.

As for the mini. Is 64Gb enough? I would plan to have a few synth plugins like alchemy and synthmaster and not a whole lot of drum samples. Also I wouldn't be recording much. And I'd probably have 1 or 2 games on it like PUBG.

Also, are tracks resizable to account for the smaller screen? (In both GarageBand and cubasis)

 

[twerppoet]

Having only 64 GB is unlikely to limit the size of a project, but it could certainly make things more cramped when you have many projects, or discover all the other apps and files you’d like to have on your iPad.

If you get one of Apple’s iCloud + plans, the extra cloud storage space can make an iPad with less local storage easier to manage, but if you want it all on the iPad or plan on offloading to external storage, go for the storage you can afford.

My iPad Mini is my smallest storage device. I keep most of my big apps and files off of it, and still use up 30 GB. On the other hand my iPad Pro has 512 GB, and I’m only using 61 GB. It has pretty much everything on it. I’ll probably halve the storage on it next time I update, and double the storage on the Mini. Or not. Who knows what Apple with tempt me with next time.

 

[VanillaBeans]

Having only 64 GB is unlikely to limit the size of a project, but it could certainly make things more cramped when you have many projects, or discover all the other apps and files you’d like to have on your iPad.

If you get one of Apple’s iCloud + plans, the extra cloud storage space can make an iPad with less local storage easier to manage, but if you want it all on the iPad or plan on offloading to external storage, go for the storage you can afford.

My iPad Mini is my smallest storage device. I keep most of my big apps and files off of it, and still use up 30 GB. On the other hand my iPad Pro has 512 GB, and I’m only using 61 GB. It has pretty much everything on it. I’ll probably halve the storage on it next time I update, and double the storage on the Mini. Or not. Who knows what Apple with tempt me with next time.

Thank you for the advice. I've found a 9th gen 64 GB ipad with a good black Friday discount so looks like I'll be going for that + external storage and icloud. Thank you guys a bunch for your help.

 

[twerppoet]

No problem. Enjoy your new iPad.