Out of Iphone Storage

logoclick

Hi all,

When I go to restore and do a full stagetraxx backup RESTORE it's saying that my storage is full I only have an ipad with 32GB of storage, I started using WAV files on some of my tracks and need to know, if there anotherway to store stagetraxx music files, lyrics, wav, mp3, files, data, database songs, etc. beside on my phone and ipad? Can I somehow use a usb C flash drive or dropbox, etc. for the files? Is there something I am missing?

AnthonyB

logoclick

+1 on everything @jaytrax said above. I recently changed from using 16-bit 48kHz .WAV files for all my multitrack audio to 16-bit 48kHz 320kpbs .MP3. On average this reduced file sizes by approx. 75% with negligible audible difference based on my A/B comparison tests.

One additional tip that I use that will help.
My Primary ST iPad has 64GB so I can comfortably alway do a Full Backup (for me, that is around 9GB) to local storage.
My Spare iPad, that I always keep prepped for gigs in case of emergency, is (like yours) only 32GB so I don't have space for my ST install and all the audio files AND the full backup from my main device, to able able to restore from.

The solution was, as you suggested, to use a USB thumb drive. I have a number of Lightning-to-USB-A multi-adapters (they cost ~$12 on Amazon) and so my full process has become:

On Primary ST iPad - create Full Backup to local storage (so I now have an 'on-device' backup I can restore from if needed)
On Primary iPad - copy that Full Backup file from local storage to a USB drive
Plug USB Drive into PC and copy the ST Full Backup to my OneDrive (this is (1) extra redundancy, and (2) MUCH faster than trying to get a copy to any cloud storage on an iPad)
On Spare iPad - Plug in the USB Drive
On Spare iPad - Perform Restore of Full Backup directly from the USB Drive (this avoids using up space on the spare iPad with the 9GB backup file)

jaytrax

So if you have limited storage
Firstly see how big the backup is

Now presuming you have made a backup on a computer etc

On your iPad If you have files in your ST you would need to go to settings
Show files
Select all
Delete
Go to file manager
Recently deleted
Select all
Delete all

Then transfer your backup and restore

Now as for Wav files
Firstly what is the original source of the file
Is it Wav
Because if it’s mp3 from Karaoke version for example you are not improving quality
Just re encoding and taking up space

If the source is WAV then convert to AAC which is higher quality than MP3 with same or lower file size

peter

Apps are quite heavily restricted by Apples Sandbox when it comes to accessing files outside of the app folder on iOS. So moving your song library to for example a usb drive is out of the option.

So I would go along with the other comments and suggest to go with a lossy compressed format. With 320kbit mp3 it's simply impossible to hear any difference on a PA system in an untreated rooms. Literally every other component in the signal chain will have a bigger influence on the sound than the miniscule difference between a high bitrate mp3 and uncompressed wave.

If you really need lossless, go with Apple Lossless instead of Wav. That will need only half the space.

MarkGuitar

peter

Question for you @peter

Whilst I realise that from an audio point of view high bitrate MP3s are pretty much the same as a Wav, what about device processing?
I ask because my current playback platform, Ableton Live, recommends the use of Wav files due to the playback engine having to do additional processing when using compressed formats such as MP3s. And it is quite noticeable that CPU usage is much higher playing back a song made up of MP3 vs Wav (in Ableton)

AnthonyB

MarkGuitar I had considered that exact question as part of my decision to move from using .WAV to .MP3 files. It goes without saying that there should be an additional overhead to playing MP3 vs WAV due to, in theory, the decompressing on the fly that has to occur for MP3 playback.

The big questions then become:

Is it a theoretical performance impact or a practical (i.e. real world) performance impact?
If there is a performance impact, how much?

I just did a very unscientific test using ST4 Build 1897.
I played a multitack song with 2 x stereo WAV files and another with 2 x stereo MP3 files and watched the CPU meter at the top of the screen.
There was no perceivable difference in CPU impact.
In my case (iPad 9th Gen with iOS 26.0.1, ST4 playlist open, timestamped lyric sheet with highlighting open, audio regions defined and Top Panel Display = Audio Regions control [i.e. buttons]) both songs ranged from 20-30% CPU.

Just out of curiosity, I then tested another song also using MP3 files but no Audio Regions - big difference on CPU. It was usually below 20% with the odd spike into low-20s.
So on my device with my config, Audio Regions are a bigger performance impact adding approx. 5-10% CPU overhead.

Very unscientific, but makes me comfortable that I'm not risking increasing load on my iPad by moving from WAV to MP3.

MarkGuitar

AnthonyB

Thanks for trying all that. Good to know. Ableton strongly recommends not using MP3s in Live. I guess generally a lot more processing is done in a DAW than would likely be done in ST, so more likely to be a problem.

AnthonyB

MarkGuitar I'd definitely be interested is seeing other people's feedback, especially if they are using more tracks in ST and/or older hardware with less powerful CPU.

peter

The impact is indeed neglectable between mp3 and wav. Wav files need a bit less cpu for processing but a bit more time for loading as they are larger files. Both of these aspects seem to pretty much balance out each other.

The higher cpu load for songs with audio regions is caused by the fact that regions need to be prescheduled and playback needs to be controlled. With all the playback modes available for regions the calculations what to do when approaching the end of a region are quite complex. But a 5-10% overhead seems to be a bit high. How many regions did you have in your song?

AnthonyB

peter How many regions did you have in your song?

I honestly can't remember which song I tested with, but of the 4 songs I've setup Audio Regions for testing in ST4, they range from 7 to 14 but the average is closer to 11.