Consistent Audio Dropouts on iPad 10th Gen – Possible RAM Bottleneck?

Prana66

Hi everyone,
I've been experiencing persistent audio dropouts while using Stage Traxx on my iPad 10th Gen running iOS 17.5.1. The issue happens both when using the XR18 audio mixer and when playing directly from the iPad’s internal speakers. At specific points during playback, tracks—including vocals—consistently drop, making it difficult to perform smoothly. I’m running multiple tracks, between 5 and 6 at a time.

Setup:
iPad 10th Gen connected via Lightning to USB-C to an XR18 audio mixer.
Current buffer size in Stage Traxx is set to 512 samples at 44.1 kHz.
When playing from the iPad’s internal speakers, I still experience the same issue.
Observations:
The audio dropouts happen at the same positions during playback, regardless of track complexity or file size.
I’ve already tried lowering the buffer size (to 256 or 128), but it hasn’t resolved the issue. I’ve also closed background apps, restarted the iPad, and optimized system performance, but the problem persists.
Additional Info:
The audio files work perfectly fine when tested on other systems.
The iPad has 4GB of RAM. Could this be causing the dropouts? Would upgrading to a model with more RAM (6GB or 8GB) help? Or are there any other settings or adjustments I should try to resolve this?
Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Damir

Prana66 have you tried increasing your buffer size instead.

Prana66

Damir ...Did not help but thank you

peter

Stage Traxx does not need much ram. Increasing buffer size could help with this, but what puzzles me is that you say the dropouts happen at the same position. This indicates that the problem is in the audio file and not happening during audio processing.

Prana66

I bounced files from logic. Ran test on other audio players and the tracks worked fine. I did run the same song on a Mac desktop and it worked fine. Puzzling indeed.

Damir

Prana66 what about the output interface you are using, might be causing this if the file works elswhere.

peter

I also thought about the audio interface or usb connection first, but @Prana66 says that it also happens on iPad speakers.

Prana66

Thank you, peter and Damir. I'm going to load all the songs onto a Mac desktop and test them there. It’s really strange—out of 25 songs in ST, some work perfectly fine. It seems like the issue could either be with the specific iPad or the tracks themselves. But if it’s the tracks, why would they work perfectly on a different media player? All the songs were exported with the same settings. I’ll keep you posted!

Damir

Prana66 if you can note the dropouts when they happen and check those points in a DAW to see if those levels are perhaps peaking too high , maybe your iPad engine can’t handle them as well as other devices,
Just clutching at straws here as it’s very strange.

Prana66

Damir I will try that out. Thank you

peter

@Damir makes a very good point. If you boost the volume in Stage Traxx, you might get clipping which could sound like dropouts. So if those dropouts always happen at the same time on the same songs, try to lower the song volume and see if that helps.