Performance

Due to its nature Quincy can be fairly taxing on some devices. As mentioned before there a millions of calculations and of draw calls to perform. So, here are two things to keep in mind when working with Quincy.

First - what am I running on? A 3rd generation iPad will do fine, but can run into issues with compositions that are maxed out to the hilt - i.e. very high bpm, 48 x 48 grid size and all using image effects. An iPad Air on the other hand would do just fine under these conditions. In general iPhones do very well with Quincy. They largely have the same processors as their iPad counterparts and just a fraction of the draw surface to compute.

Secondly, have a good idea of what you are trying to do and limit the scope accordingly. Say, I want a metronome. For that purpose I don't need a large world. Or maybe I want to create something graphically impressive, but don't care too much about the music part. In that case I probably don't need all voices or rhythmic options in my module setting.

Optimization Tips

Go over these tips and just generally keep them in mind when working with Quincy. Most of it is just simple common sense.

Size Matters

The single most important optimization consideration in Quincy is grid size. It is also much easier sizing a Life world up than doing the opposite. Let's say for example you have a composition with an 16 x 16 grid size and did a lot of drawing in it. When sizing it up to a grid size of 32 x 32 your entire composition stays intact in the top, left corner of the display while the bottom right corners are expanded to their new dimesions. Going the opposite way you would lose all content beyond the coordinates 16 x 16 when sizing down.

Downsizing Effects

The various graphic effects in Quincy use processing power that can be released if necessary. Stars (Settings - Display Options - Stars) is the most processor intense display option that you may want to do without. Also quite demanding is Color Mash (Settings - Display Options - Color Mash) and lastly a high Generations setting (Life Settings - Miscellaneous - Generations) will affect overall performance on some devices.

Downsizing the Music

Quincy's modules have three to four tone generators for you to pick from. In general it is good practice to always start out with only one generator (i.e. the quarter note generator in Pentrix), then switch over to the others one by one just to get to listen to them individually. For your final settings try to use only those generators you really need.

Working with Audiobus

Quincy appears as an audio source in Audiobus. This makes it available for inter-app audio recording and as instrument. It is extremely important to understand that Quincy is not a typical instrument per se and can quickly exhaust a device’s resources with a high processor load if not used expeditiously. It takes a bit of experience and good working knowledge of one’s device’s capabilities to get the best results.
Quincy does great on iPhones. Older iPads on the other hand may have a hard time keeping up under some conditions. Here are some tips:

- In general smaller grids perform better than larger ones (s.a.).
- Use as few voices in your module as possible.
- Scale down the tempo if you can.
- Take note of the activity indicator (top, right corner). If it goes into red during simple playback in Quincy, the current composition is not a good candidate as Audiobus instrument.
- If your composition has a large grid and many voices, you are better of recording chunks of it (via IAA for example) and playing it back.

Summary

Quincy was designed with very few artificial limitations. That said, it is also a computationally very demanding program combining elements of motion graphics with intricate sound processing. Just something to keep in mind.