I’m looking to get an iPad to go with my Octatrack and was wondering how much the specs mattered… I know the oldest iPad I should get is the air so I’m deciding between the iPad Air 2 128GB version or the iPad Pro 32GB version since they’re similar prices.
Which would you go for and what apps would you recommend for iPad production? I’m ideally looking for something to create poly synth sounds without the poly synth price tag and to be able to create arppegiated sequences to sample on my OT
Faster is better. 32GB seems low; I’d get at least 64.
Thanks I didn’t know that, it’s a bit cheaper at 128GB.
Would you say that’s the minimum capacity to go for when making music or would 64GB be suitable?
My iPad 4 is 32GB and is still trucking along, but 128 is the minimum I’ll go with on my next one. I don’t keep files on it, and just with apps it’s basically full. If you’re going to spend the money, better to spend a little more if you can to better future-proof your purchase.
Wonder if Apple will EVER make things more fluid re shared audio folders + a solid vst equivalent etc… Sucks having to duplicate files etc. Shame almost zero devs are working on Microsoft surface stuff. Mine barely gets used. Keep thinking about grabbing bitwig tho…
Re diskspace, yeah agreed, grab biggest you can afford. Disappears pretty fast once apps + samples + audio files stack up…
I would definitely get 128 if you’re going to load up music apps. My 64GB iPad Air 1 is struggling with space and has been for a while. The biggest space offenders are things like Garageband (which I seldom use but is useful to keep along), iMaschine 1 and 2, and iMPC. None of these are that big on their own, but just a few such things together and just a few sample packs being loaded and you start fighting for space. And since you can’t really expand an iPad’s storage later, I highly suggest the 128GB. The new 2017 one is so well priced and spec’d out for its price. I haven’t quite run my iPad Air 1 into the ground yet but it’s getting there.
The other thing about the new 2017 model is it’s based on the A9 chip which Apple seems to be saying is their baseline spec for the next couple of years. My A7 based iPad Air 1 can’t run the ‘Alchemy’ synth in Garageband, for example. So if you get this new model at 128GB, I think it’s well worth its cost and should last you a few years.
Apple may be announcing new iPad Pros next week, but in the current lineup, there’s nothing really enticing about the current 9.7" iPad Pro for musicians that makes it worth the price difference over the 9.7" 2017 iPad unless you want to use the Apple Pencil.
That has been available since iOS 9: App Extension Programming Guide: Audio Unit
One reason to get a 12.9" iPad Pro might be that this is still the only iOS device with 4GB or RAM. Everything else. including the 9.7-inch iPad Pro model has 2GB or less
How well does it work in practise? Like for automatically Loading external instruments and restoring the session patch etc? Last time I tried it with modstep (loading Animoog and sunrizer) iirc) it would work sometimes and not others. And pretty sure it didn’t load the patch I was using. Didn’t really give it much effort tho tbh. Will look again 
It has worked well for me when I used it, but I will admit that I kinda abandoned the platform. I don’t really think the way Apple has set up the App Store works well for serious creative software, so I kinda moved back to using hardware combined with Maschine and Bitwig Studio running on a MBP.
I’d love to be able to use Bitwig studio in touch mode on an iPad Pro, but I won’t buy one until Apple figures out how to support pro software developers in a sane way.
Oooo, I hadn’t heard anything about that, but if they have a new 12.9" iPad Pro coming it might be time for me to get one. My iPad 4 is still perfectly fine for most things (especially casual use around the house), but I’d like to have a dedicated iPad with more screen real estate for the studio.
I might wait for the release in hopes their current products go a little down. Same strategy with the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 too
I’m at a bit of a personal cross roads while I mentally debate a road to go down on with my music and what I want from it so it’ll give me some time to decide on whether it’s worth keeping the OT and what to get with/instead of it
The new iPad Pro are largely improved in speed, while you cant compare it 1:1 to a laptop, they are faster than a surface pro with core i5 and are more in the macbook pro 13" territory than in macbook territory.
both 10.5" and 12.9" have 4 GByte RAM, Thats nice when you work with Audiobus. But there are only wo DAWs out there at the moment that are usable: Auria (with fabfilter Plugins!) and Cubasis. They offer what you get normaly on a 100 bucks DAW. If you want to use the iPad for mixing, Id recomend the 12,9" Model as youll need a larger screen. Its also large enough to play the synths with both hands onscreen.
APIs for music are still a mess under ios. You have AU, IAA, Audiobus etc. You cant use the software you bought for mac.
The Audio Interface of the iPads is just 44,1 kHz, but you can connect it directly to a Mac via Audio-MIDI-Settings and transfer 2 Channel of Audio via the lightning usb calbe (just one ipad or iphone at a time, son no concert). Otherwise youl need an Audio Interface (Tascam iXR is really fine on the go).
if you just wanna use it for midi and you dont want to play on the touchscreen, the normal ipad will do the job fine.
I think you can connect more than one iPad over usb and create an aggregate device out of it. Or use Studiomux on the iPads and you can have each app on their own channel in your DAW of choice. This can also be done with Modstep without buying Studiomux. You just have to install the Studiomux server thingy on your computer.
I didnt try studiomux for a while. last time the latency was pretty long, but Ill test it again. The direct connection from apple is done via IDAM, Apple said in iOS 11 they want to implement MIDI as well.
I won’t be able to test multiple devices till next week. But I think the last time I tried it it worked. Giving me 2 audio devices I had to merge because Ableton doesn’t support multiple usb audio devices for some reason.
I’m not using Studiomux, I use Modstep which has it sort of build in and haven’t really noticed any latency issues. I usually only run a few channels from the iPad. Routing of midi, FX and audio goes fine here. I must say that is all I use Ableton for: routing, arranging and recording.
just tested it with two ipads, works pretty well. Studiomux supports up to 8 stereostreams from up to 8 devices (audio, MIDI and fx), so you can built an ipad orchetra 
Latency compensation says the roundtrip is about 13 ms when u use 44,1 khz and a 128 sample buffer, which is ok for live play.
so the question is not which ipad you buy but how many
there’s a presentation / demo of it here:
https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/501/
starts about 48:15 minutes in
Cheers! This will be cool once OB is out. Multi tracking both the iPad stuff and DT audio channels whilst sequencing the iPad stuff rom the DT will be pretty sweet. Many options to be had when you’re not just recording/routing with Ableton.
