Would this be first step move to subscription?
A brand new iPad Air of Apple Silicon M* spec starts at $600
So for those who are hybrid / sort of DAWless but want multitrack recording⌠this is cheaper than a dreamed-for (Iâve put it forward myself) âOverbridge boxâ type device Elektron might try to ship for $1000.
You can even get an M1 iPad Air refurbished from Apple for $380. Iâve spent more on bad pedals. Itâs a lot easier to dedicate a cheaper iPad like this to your music setup than it is a laptop.
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running on ipad pro only?
Minimum M1 chip if iâm right.
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Everything Iâve heard is âM1+ chipâ which means the last 3 version of iPad Pro (since 2021) and the most recent 3 versions of iPad Air (since 2022).
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OB on a laptop is practical, utilitarian, appreciated. OB on an iPad seems futuristic, joyful, utopian.
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From what I hear yes. Which make sense as thats when macs and iOS started to share the same cpu and same under hood architecture, so coding for for mac and coding for iOS has a a lot of crossover. Thatâs why auv3 work both on iOS and Mac now.
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I have an older iPad Pro and would definitely trade it in and upgrade to a M version if this became a reality. Would love to see transfer come to the iPad as well. Iâm not much into digging through samples but would be much more into it if I could sit on the couch with a iPad and sort through them and transfer them across
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Right its a technical decision for ease of development and not unreasonable.
Apple Intelligence features in new iPad OS has similar M1+ requirements, likely for similar reasons.
By the time OB on iPad (hopefully, fingers crossed) ships, itâs going to support 4-5 year old iPads out of the box, which seems fine.
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Iâd definitely like to see that one. 
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doesnt transfer allow transfers via sysex?
i use Sysex Librarian on iOS manage basically every bit of gear including my MDâs
(i dont have any newer gen elektron stuff to test for you)
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I had a good play with it today and a long chat with Thomas Elektronâs product manager for it. Itâs real. Theyâve been developing it and only just before the show decided to bring it to demo. Itâs not a secret. Itâs not ready for release yet, he said thats going to take some work, but itâs surprisingly stable and it did exactly what I hoped it would for the entire time I was using it. They said they wanted to see if people were interested and theyâve had a really positive response. So I think itâs pretty likely it will see the light of day, given they have a workable pre-release driver and app and people are really keen.
Itâs great. It works with all Overbridge devices, and any iPad that has an M series chip. I discussed why the most recent A series in the mini wouldnât work, but he didnât know what the limitation was on Apples side. I think this is a DriverKit thing.
Apparently Apple were pretty wowed that Elektron had made it work.
They had a usb-c hub hooked up, it had a two Syntakts, and Analog Rytm and a Digitone II plugged in, and it was powering the iPad. You could switch between each device, but Thomas confirmed that itâs an iOS limitation that you can only select one device as soundcard for input/output at a time. So no multi-device Overbridge for now. You can however take input from one device and send output to another. He showed me that with the Digitone II â iPad â Analog Rhym. You can return the audio to the same device too. Which I did while I was playing.
You can use the driver to send multitrack audio into apps like AUM and Logic. Both were on demo. Both worked well. They also had a basic Overbridge app, which showed levels for each channel. I expect theyâll expect the capabilities of that to more closely mirror what is available on Mac, but I didnât ask about that.
In Logic I was able to arm all the Digitone II tracks to monitor and record all of them simultaneously. I grouped the first 5 as a drum bus, put distortion and compressor on that, added a delay send. Then added another compressor to the master channel before sending that output back to the Digitone II to monitor on headphones, having muted the internal channels locally. It all worked as expected. I could mute, effect, solo things individually.
Iâm pretty excited about this and about Elektronâs willingness to show it and talk technical about it.
In its current form itâs great and worked perfectly for me. Iâd love to Beta it and give them feedback.
I can see some great live performance possibilities, combined with a nice tactile controller for controlling fader groups, fx , etc. I like the idea that I can do all this performance and record all the individual tracks at the same time.
I get why people are skeptical about it being real, but I assure you itâs real. Elektron definitely didnât 100% say they would release it, but they kept stressing that they wanted to see if people wanted it and that the response has been really positive. So Iâm going out on a limb and say that it will be released. I donât see how they could not release it when youâve got companies like Polyend already doing class compliant multi track audio, and Elektron have well and truly let the cat out of the bag.
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Would love to know if that works
works pretty flawlessly for me, but iâve always use sysex to back things up. Since dinosaurs roamed the earth.
Im pretty sure if your new gen elektron accepts sysex from the transfer app, then sysex librarian will work.
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shitâŚim a moron and need to correct myselfâŚ
on the ipad its sysex base app, on mac its the sysex librarian app.
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Thatâs something I have in mind for ages.
I wouldnât come back to Elektron just for ThatâŚ
But it would certainly make me want to add one or two Digi even more.
- At home Iâm on Ableton+Reason Rack+Maschine > Arrangements on Logic Pro
- on the go Iâm on Logic Pro for iPad sketching Arrangements Drafts
I would definitely see the benefit of returning one box in my workflow.
(even the heat+FX)
Iâm assuming this also means that you canât use this in combination with an audio interface, such as if you had a 4 input interface with a handful of synths, you wonât be able to mix this iPad OB simultaneously with the other synths?
Ultimately, itâs one usable Elektron box with multitrack support per iPad device?
Logic pro for iPad has the ability to use 1 interface for input and a different one for output. But Logic, while nice, is hardly the most versitile thing on the iPad. AUM has this in settings but itâs hit or miss.
What i have found itâs still best to just use one interface, and in the case when you do need several connected (for MIDI reasons, and, in the case of possible Overbridge, to switch), the last one powered on will take over as the one in use.
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Thatâs right, because Overbridge just behaves like any other audio interface on iPad. Let me put it this way. iOS can see all the audio interfaces you connect to it, but you can only select one of them for inputs, and one of them for outputs. But you canât merge two or more of them to select all for input (or output) - which is something you can do on MacOS.
The other thing you can do on MacOS with Overbridge is use the Overbridge plugin AU/VST as a soft instrument in your daw, alongside a different interface. As yet, Elektron didnât show an AUv3 Overbridge plugin for iPad - I donât know if theyâre thinking about that, it didnât occur to me to ask.
On the Digitakt II (I think others too, but I donât have experience of those) you can of course use the audio inputs as either a stereo pair or two mono inputs, and those also appear as inputs on the iPad. Thatâs how I intend to use this: a couple of mono synths into the Digitakt II, all those channels going into the iPad, plus some soft synths on there, group everything into sensible busses with their own performance effects, master EQ and compressor too. Then use some sort of control surface hardware or iPad app to give me really easy control of faders, filters, distortion, stutter FX, etc across each of those groups. I think it will provide some real improvements for performance options.
The other use case thatâs quite interesting is using an iPad and a compact class compliant multi channel sound card as an audio bridge. Digital goes into iPad, use AUM to route each channel back out of the soundcard, and then suddenly youâve got a neat compact setup that lets you have individual channels into a mixer.
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Perfect. Everything you said is what I had in mind for usability, given my assumption was true. Thank you for confirming!
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