check this thread. Over 3k posts
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First and last: you WANT Aum.
Then good luck to choose and pick in the thousand other apps 
Probably if you have an idea about what you’d be looking for, you could recommendation over here.
Amongst categories you have Synths, Virtual Instruments, FX, Samplers, Sequencers, Virtual instruments, …
I even discovered you can play trumpet with your guitar via iOS!
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AUM was also instant buy for me!
The GUI is nice although it would be great if you could scale the mixer view.
Now I can only see 4 channels at the same time on my iPad Pro 11".
Maybe there’s a setting I missed?
I can also recommend Mixbox from IK Multimedia.
Easy and fun way to create some great channelstrips with 70 500serie modules.
I just used a TAL Juno60 arp, feed it some tape emulation, reverb with Mixbox and it just sounds so wonderful!
Can’t wait to hook the IPad on Digitakts sequencer which should be here next week. 
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I’m looking through the Appstore and found this plugin called ‘Radio Unit’
It’s basically a radio player that can be used a plugin. You can even add your own stations.
The app is €3,50 and I can see myself using it a lot. EG: create your own daily news snippets. 
Anyone using this app, or know something similar?
Here’s a video about it: Radio Unit - AUv3 Internet Radio Player by BeepStreet - Very Cool Beans - Demo for iOS - YouTube
Unless you’re really into sampling radio, my experience is that if you buy every app that “looks cool”, you’re going to end up with pages and pages of apps that you don’t use. It’s better to run into an issue or missing feature while you’re actually recording and THEN find the appropriate app.
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You’re correct that it can become easily addictive buying all kids of apps.
I want developers to release more demo versions of their apps period.
It would increase their sales by a lot as I would’ve bought 10x more apps if I could first try a demo.
And of course would’ve bought less apps that are total crap.
Overal I’ve spent a couple hundred euros which I think is pretty low over a 10 year period.
I would’ve spent way more on software if I was on making music on a Mac.
I bought it and use it in drambo. So far used it to grab some sci-fi film samples, jazz breaks and weird drone sounds.
Anything i have done has been just experimenting but has lots of potential. i also have the YouTube app that lets you add it as an auv3 which is great for sampling
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The Audiobus forum is a great iOS music making community, but beware the temptation to buy apps every day for the rest of time: https://forum.audiob.us/
Here’s a few rec’s from my experience:
Definitely get AUM for open-ended jams…it’s a fun, creativity-inducing mixer… within a day on AUM, I boxed up my Mackie… it’s an insanely excellent mixer for your hardware, and you can record tracks with a click
DAW: Cubasis 3 is my choice, but Garageband is included so give it a try.
Sequencing: Rozeta is a suite of interesting sequencers / Xequence2 is a standard piano roll sequencer which is kind of futzy… works OK with AUM
Drums: Patterning is fun
FX: K7D tape delay, Eos 2 reverb, Discord4, Modley multieffect chain… and a hundred free apps worth trying…
Synths: there are a million of them… depends what you like
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Thanks for that yes it just so happens I’m in the market for some form of recording solution. I had been looking at various mixers but I definitely want something that can function as an audio interface. I had been looking at the 1010bluebox which is nice and compact but isn’t an audio interface at all.
Forgoing the traditional huge mixer and going with something like the motu 828es to multitrack into AUM or a desktop DAW does seem interesting. The 828es was released 4 years ago so maybe motu is about to release the next big thing? Maybe not…
Thanks for the info!
iOS is a great recording solution if you don’t mind incorporating the iPad. And I like having the choice between AUM for “jamming” and Cubasis for more traditional DAW work.
It’s magical when you’re running a hardware synth into AUM, and then you start adding iOS effects to the channel. Also, once you buy a few top-quality iOS reverbs for $5, you realize how ridiculous Strymon pedals are…
Bluebox is a mixer as I understand it, which you won’t need. Just get any audio interface with enough channels to accommodate your hardware collection and you’re good to go.
important: make sure the interface USB is “class compliant,” which indicates compatibility with ipad
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Not to be a downer compared to the effusive enthusiasm for the iPad for music here - but I’ve actually sold my music iPad on. Like any piece of technology, there are tons of things you can do with it, but what’s not often considered is whether it’s better (in some specific way) than doing those things other ways. For me, the biggest drawbacks were:
Dongles, cables, adapter, wireless trouble, and other various connectivity issues:
The iPad has very limited connectivity and almost always requires a breakout box or external interface or other stuff to get your audio in and out of it. These are not cheap, they’re bulky, not all of them permit charging while operating, and so you end up with a spaghetti mess of additional components with a variety of frustrating limitations. And once you add a controller or whatever to it, you’re really not portable anymore as you need a stand for the iPad and a place to set the controller and even if you’re just working on the sofa things just aren’t very ergonomic for getting stuff done. so it’s relegated to an expensive toy and I know a lot of other toys I’d rather have for that purpose that are more dedicated to the job (Deluge comes to mind immediately).
This basically kills the real mobile utility of the iPad unless you stay purely in software-land, and in that case the decision revolves around…
The touchscreen:
I find that touchscreens are a terrible interface. Yes, I know some people love them, and you’re welcome to them all. I want nothing to do with them anymore. Know why? Cos you can’t use them without staring at them. There’s no “feel”, not even muscle memory since the apps keep changing their UIs. This means a lot when you’re working on a performance routine, or even just wanting to get in the flow and get the interface out of your way. At first it felt liberating, “wow I can do all this on this one device” and after a while the constant context switching, flipping, swiping, trying to accurately grab a control and move it, etc just because frustrating and a drag on the process rather than an aid. And I’m not a boomer - I grew up using touchscreens and am very used to them. I just find them the least-useful way to interact with musical devices in a fast manner. I even ended up buying physical flying faders for my DAW because I work so much faster and more accurately with them.
The UI:
The iPad’s one-app focus (or split-screen on some) is a big hindrance too. Having a variety of windows open so you can see multiple pieces of essential information (audio levels, effects GUIs, performance controls, etc.) makes for a fluid workflow. The iPad limits this too severely in my opinion (see my comments about swiping around between apps above too). One of the real advantages of the iPad is as an interface for external hardware (my H9s, for instance) and you can’t run that plus an audio interface/router (AUM or whatever) plus your sequencer all together. And don’t ask me how many times I’ve had to go through more than one app to hit various stop buttons because they don’t always sync together nicely or some of them are necessarily not synched. Much more of a pain than having all your windows facing you and just going click-click-click done. This was especially a problem for trying to use more than one app for making rhythms and sequences, or resampling, etc.
Anyways, sure there are nice things you can do with an iPad musically, but I, personally, am not convinced it’s better by any metric than using a general purpose computer for any serious use cases involving a usual production’s worth of various apps, plugins, external gear, etc. and the more and more you get towards it’s core value (one or two apps, tops) the less and less you can do with it. To me, it’s more of a solution in search of a problem.
That said, it’s just one person’s experience and you have to decide what you really want to do and how you interact with it and what you value in terms of flow (and what yanks you out of it - probably different things than yank me out of it).
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If all I had was the iPad than I would get bored pretty fast, but that’s why MIDI controllers were invented. 
Most DAW’s on IOS are still pretty much useless to me until they start using MIDI properly so I won’t be going that route anytime soon. AUM provides a lot of flexibility in routing and there’s a sort of MCU mode coming I believe. (its already in the beta version).
While AUM isn’t a DAW, it can do most of what I want to do on the iPad.
At first I wanted to do entire projects from start to finish on the iPad and while that is possible it’s not really ideal. So for the final stage I’ll finish it on a Mac. In the meantime I’m still trying out lots of MIDI controllers to see which will be perfect for my workflow. The most frustrating part is that most manufactures don’t provide editors for their controllers on iOS unfortunately. They really should work on that.
For me the iPad can be a great piece next to other hardware. It keeps my entire setup not to big and overal cheaper than doing it all on a Mac. But it was a long search for me and also frustration. I had to rethink what I wanted to do and now that I have I feel the iPad is extremely useful.
PS: Just bought Fabfilter Pro Q3. €33,-
Fabfilter Pro bundle (which includes EQ, Comp, Limiter, Multicomp, DeEsser and Reverb!) €130,- Compare that to MAC/PC and you safe yourself almost 500 Euros! 
Probably the best dynamic EQ on iOS and I think has full control with MIDI.
This will be standard on every channel in AUM! 
I’ve been thinking about this as well: using iPad as a DAW, specifically just as a tracker, no need for plug ins or VST’s really. Would be pretty dope just to have a touch screen like that, as when just tracking stuff you don’t really need fine control.
There’s a billion things you can do with midi controllers.
Pretty much anything is mappable to a midi cc.
Issue really is no midi feedback to the controller.
Also there’s a bazillion translators out there, so find a midi controller layout you like, and if it’s not mappable in the controller itself, you can use midi translators. I swear by translators.
Or the DIY route. Can’t tell you how many controllers I’ve built.
It’s really the only way you’re gonna find that perfect controller for you. It’s far easier than you think it is. It’s far harder to make it look pretty than it is to make it functional.
( urgently in the middle of building the next scection of the full controller —— I have 16 motorized faders working for mixers, drawbar organs, parameters eqs). There’s quite a few libraries out there that make the code part pretty easy.
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Gimme your Youtube channel. I wanna see you build stuff! 
Haha. No YouTube I’m sorry. I’m so anti social media I sometimes have anxiety just posting on this forum.
If you’re having problems in the midi controller world (like everyone else trying to adopt iOS) PM me and I can give you some resources, tips, photos, etc.
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Borderlands Granular. An iPad app doesn’t get any better than that! Especially thru some (a lot of) reverb and Analog Rytm’s master compressor.
Okay Samplr is great too.
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Just picked up a Digitakt, and now that it’s class compliant, I can directly hook in my iPad Pro for both MIDI and audio over USB with it. I connect my Keystep Pro into the Digitakt via MIDI cable, so that can also use it as a controller.
Using AUM, for instance, I can route audio into the iPad from the Digitakt, and then use any number of effects on it, such as Blackhole Reverb, and then route it back to the Digitakt and out to my studio monitors. It’s been great.
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i’ve been getting better at not hating music on an ipad this last year. i’ll share what changed.
-i used to just get mad tapping on glass and never getting shit to do what i could easily do on gear. but then i made the ipad my “on the couch” tool. like a sketch pad. i play with ideas and could give a crap if it’s good. that’s when better times started coming.
-i found seekbeats. it’s like 6+ voices of digital drum synths with level after level of randomization and probability, and is easy to literally make dope techno. fuckton of memory slots like scenes on elektron.
-i started really fucking with miRack, making myself figure out controlling it from my op-z. it’s amazing when you sequence it in AUM. all the clouds/rings/marbles free. dope.
-i found kqdixie. huge dope yamaha dx7 synth. loads 10,000 dx7 patches and i share them with you now. believe me you need this. and AUM (to have it on 10 tracks with clouds over it)
Dropbox - DX7_AllTheWeb.zip - Simplify your life
-i found out how to sample youtube inside the ipad into any app: an app called “beat time”. if anyone buys it and can’t figure it out message me and i’ll walk u thru it. it’s easy. i copy said sample into samplr/bm3/borderlands and play ya ya.
-honestly, the op-z made me love the ipad. 16 tracks of no latency bluetooth sequencing. what’s not to fucking love? but the op-z is not so awesome in other ways. so i keep it.
-bouncing everything to “multitrack” the app. it’s multitracking, it’s ugly. it works great. like audio share, AUM. audiocopy, essentials.
but do i use these recordings in the end? not really so far. but it’s fun. i tend to put out stuff i grabbed in ableton or max from hardware/modular.
anyways, good luck. if anything, there’s my favorite apps!
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Skip the midi cables. Just plug a hub into the iPad and both the digi and keystep into the hub. Play both…and more…