Eyes get worse with aging … that made me buy a 12.9" pro. It has also got more real estate for my fingers and it just feels right for me. I don’t need to zoom in/out often. I fear that with the smaller screen I would have had more twiddling going on 
If you plan to work with a decent sample library, samplers, and to create much HD audio material, get enough SSD capacity … 128 GB or more is better.
Using that pencil of the pro is a joy too 
I’m considering music only iPad too. All tips appreciated.
Wondering - Is there a bit of typical Apple pain getting wavs onto it?
Not to be going against the consensus, but I would personally recommend a surface pro, the new ones out this year are super powerful and you can then run reason or bitwig instead of dealing with the iOS music making nightmare.
Otherwise yeah, iPad Air 2 is the best bang for bucks.
dropbox support in your apps of choice is the least painful method IME
I actually agree with you, but since the OP is already using an iPad…
So where would you guys place iOS apps on the spectrum between softsynths and hardware? As far UI/playability, are they in between soft and hard synths? Are they closer to soft synths? Are most of the hassles that come with soft synths (using a mouse, updates, crashes, etc) gone? Or are the apps not much different than using a laptop?
AudioShare is the best app for file management. Most decent apps support it. Otherwise Dropbox will do the job. Apparently file system support is coming in iOS11.
Good news is that at the end of the year OS 11 has been announced AND there shall be a regular file-system access eventually.
Inside the pad … I have apps which prefer AudioShare or AudioCopy so I use both.
For mass sample transfer from my PC to the iPad I use ZIP-Files (structured sample libraries in folders), transfer the ZIP via USB-Drive app to the iPad, import ZIP to AudioShare, un-zip there and pick the files as needed.
Spectrum … software indeed because it’s just that, isn’t it?
There are many pro-synths and pro-audio-apps on offer, which are fun to use, seem stable to me, generate pro-sound quality, and on an iPad those support fluid workflows. The GUIs in combination with the iPad touch-screen are really good and sensitive … well not for playing instruments via the graphical keys in a traditional way, but since the iOS devices linke up to external gear, a decent keyboard can be attached easily.
I personally struggle with making music on a laptop but have no issues hooking up the ipad to the MPC and using it a either a source of sampling materials (mostly using Nave or Attack) or as an outboard effects processor. The physical gesture of touching something makes a big difference to me.
Has anybody run into storage limit thing easily with 32GB edition of iPad 2017 when making music?
Slightly OT but I don’t suppose anyone has a back up file of iOS 10.3.3?
My iPad mini 2 has a cracked screen and now the dreaded iOS 11 is here I don’t want to update it, I want to buy a mini 4 but need iOS 10 as I have so many apps that aren’t supported.
Sorry mods if this is not quite welcome here!
Just wondering if iPad 2017 9.7 (non-PRO) is appropriate/strong enough to make music in the next some years.
Depends on what you are planning to do.
I got the 2017 Pro and if I use virtual synths like Moog Model 15, the Korgs, or Arturias together (via Audiobus), the iPad tends to generate crackles from time to time. The various gadgets in Korg Gadget seem to be okay with the performance of the CPU. Using samples takes a significantly lower toll on the CPU compared to high quality synth engines . If you use one of the iPad DAW apps you might even “freeze” synths to audio and work with multi-track projects without hassle.
Possibly. I got years of value out of my 4th gen iPad and it still runs well as long as I only run 32-bit apps on it - well, it can’t run 64-bit anyway.
Now if you intend to run Auria Pro with 80 tracks plus AUM w/ 20 CPU hungry plugins all at once, you might have some problems. Actually, I think even an iPad Pro would have problems with that kind of load, though not as much.
One of the Audulus guys said that the speaker crackles due to CPU vs. sample rate. Quick fix is to use headphones and/or run audio through an audio interface instead of speaker.
I don’t plan such super-heavy use. I don’t know if music making really requires the Pro version of iPad or is it just the hype 
Yeah the Pro version has a nicer display and it seems to be significantly smoother. So I’m just wondering if the “basic” 2017 edition would be also a good choice for such purpose even with its 2GB memory and slower CPU.
My 4th gen iPad has worse specs than that and it’s been running fine. When I got my iPad Pro I didn’t notice a dramatic difference in display, but then again I never use graphics apps or play fancy games or anything.
Honesly the only reason i chose the Pro is I want to be able to use Apple Pencil - and that’s for Notion only.
I have an iPad Air 1 and I feel that it’s starting to stay behind, specially on complex setups, or with heavy apps (Model 15, I can run it with no problem, but not much else)
I’m considering going for the iPad 9.7 2017, wich is supposedly about 2x faster according to some processor tests I’ve seen around
also I really want to play with two iPads for my ambient/drone setups, to avoid switching screens wich is a bit annoying
Had my crackles on headphones 
Fun fact … the Model 15 has quite some energy … the other day I had not yet plugged in the headphones, but started the sequencer, which was driving the synth… man … some of the bass sounds got the iPad shaking and vibrating really heavy 