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iPads and AVB?
I'd really like to move to using the iPad with only an ethernet connection hooked up for audio and MIDI. I figured this was possible for MIDI. But, because of some stuff I've read about AVB not being compatible with Macs that could only use USB to connect to ethernet, I thought AVB wouldn't work with an iPad. To be clear, I'm talking about using the iPad directly hooked to an AVB switch with no audio interface connected to the iPad.
Then today I was looking for some info in Apple's developer docs and came across some documentation that AVB was added to the available I/O ports in iOS 14. I can't find any further info.
If it does work, I'm guessing it is limited to USB-C iPads but I don't know. Maybe it's just a placeholder for future Thunderbolt (USB4) enabled devices.
Has anyone tried this? Anyone have any information about it?
Comments
Curious to understand what AVB means and its potential implications. What does an iConnectXXX device not do that an AVB device could/should do?
Are we talking Dante etc?
Basically a Dante competitor. It's open spec. It's built in to macOS and a Mac can act like an AVB source or destination without anything more than an ethernet connection. MOTU and Presonus both have AVB devices. Lots of others too.
It's more flexible than an iConnect device. You can wire entire studios or live venues with an AVB network and pass the audio around in pretty much any way you want. There are even AVB audio interfaces that sit on the network and work as audio interfaces without any connection to a computer at all. There are monitor and headphone outputs that can sit on the network and work as output endpoints without connection to a computer. It's very flexible.
Also, you can do PoE over the network and then power the iPad from that.
I've got an iConnectMIDI that I would use to hook all my external MIDI stuff to and then I could route everything to the Macs and the iDevices.
It is. Been using it for a couple years now.
I’m pretty sure developers will need to implement this. I don’t think you’ll se it where you can just use and iPad Ethernet adapter and plug it straight into an Ethernet port
And there aren’t many switches that support AVB. The MOTU is the cheapest one you’ll fine.
Others are in the 1000$+ range.
I can’t say AVB is beneficial to anyone on a small scale home studio. I have 3 iPads and a few external hardware synths, and I only use it to track everything into logic on separate tracks on one go. I the. Take that logic file and send it to someone else for post.
The thing I've seen reported is that USB ethernet dongles don't work with AVB even on Macs. You have to have either an actual ethernet port or a Thunderbolt to ethernet adapter. I'm wondering what that means for iPads and Lightning to ethernet or USB-C to ethernet.
The implication from the Apple docs is that it works like any of the other AVAudioSession ports. I imagine that there will be some work needed on the part of the hosts. But, it might be fairly doable to write an adapter that would enable this as an Audiobus source and destination too. That is assuming that it actually is implemented in iOS 14 and that there is a way to actually hook up with a compatible ethernet adapter.
PreSonus has one at $400 that has POE builtin. The MOTU looks nice for what I need. I'll only need about 4 or 5 devices for what I want to do.
So, you have the iPads hooked to AVB or do you have them going through USB interfaces that are then connected to the AVB network?
Motu828es: 1 iPad connected to the USB port, 2 iPads connected to both adat ports using minidsp usbstreamer b’s. Motu AVB port connected to Mac mini ethernet port.
Dunno if you’ve seen this, but here’s a setup using presonus stuff.
You are correct about usb. Usb Ethernet adapters don’t work
Again, I’m doing this on a Mac. I dunno if you are as well.
You also don’t need an AVB switch unless:
1. You’re trying to connect more than 1 AVB device by Ethernet. You can go straight from interface to computer Ethernet. (Or motu will allow you to connect 2 interfaces via the AVB Ethernet then one of the interfaces to the computer with thunderbolt)
2. You’re using it as your main LAN switch with other things like printers, computers, etc
Overall, personally I’ve gotten no real benefit from AVB for a point A to point B connection.
If I had a large studio/office building with lots of nodes, then yes, I’d leverage AVB because it’s really not much different than wiring a building for internet.
This config alone sounds like an iConnectAudio4+ on steroids. Is this the ultimate solution for bidirectional digital audio and MIDI connection between mobile devices and computers?
Thanks for the info! I have seen the PreSonus and MOTU docs.
My goal is to have one audio device that is attached to the network. Then all of the computers and iPads are hooked up by ethernet only. The audio device can live by the guitar amps and synthesizers and monitors. The computers and iPads can live wherever they want (EG, iPad on the couch.) hooked up only to the switch(es). The switches are the central focus of what I want to do. That's fine for me though, I've got switches everywhere already and replacing them is cheaper than multiple good USB/Thunderbolt interfaces.
The part that is circled in red is the main question. From what I've read, the USB connection isn't really a problem. The connection is fast enough and good enough that AVB would work fine. But, since the device enumerates as a USB device, AVB won't, or Apple won't, enable it for AVB. I'm wondering if this still holds for new USB-C based iPads or if Apple has changed something in the Lightning based devices that will enable the ethernet to enumerate correctly for AVB.
My guess right now is that what is showing up in iOS 14 is preparation for next gen iPads/iPhones that use USB4/Thunderbolt 4. I have nothing to base this on except that Thunderbolt ports have also been added to the available audio ports in iOS 14.
It depends on what you want to do. The iConnect devices are really slick for a small local setup. I have an iConnectMIDI4 and the way it routes audio and MIDI between the devices is great for 3 devices. I've had a Mac an iPad and a Raspberry Pi hooked up and processing MIDI and Audio and then main I/O through the Mac for a while. It works well. But now I want to add more devices and distribute them wider. iConnectivity seems to be in the process of killing off all of their devices in the audio interconnection area. Also, I really like the I/O out of the MOTU M4. So, the flexibility of the AVB route is really appealing.
There is also Dante that can do similar things if you want to have a bunch of interconnected devices each with their own audio interface. The big advantage to Dante is that it doesn't need custom switches. AVB's advantage is that you don't need an I/O for each computing device (at least with Macs) and it is an open spec.
@NeonSilicon - Good Q! I'll maybe see if I can test this out in the next few days. I use a Netgear GS724TV4 which I configured for AVB, but I haven't set it back up since moving to the M1-mini. I wrote a bit about how to config AVB on the Mac and the related standards etc: https://aud1os.wordpress.com/2018/01/26/macos-networked-audio-systems-overview-avb-tsn-dante/
@NeonSilicon I know that cameras can work with iOS devices via a certain HDMI to Ethernet box and then Ethernet into the iPad via dongle, and have for sometime. And I’m guessing that includes POE (but I’m not 100% sure). Maybe that’s a clue for AVB working on iOS
There are ethernet dongles for iDevices that should meet all the specifications for AVB. I think it'll come done to if there is one that lists itself as just a plain ethernet port and not as an ethernet-over-usb thing. If Apple hasn't really enabled AVB in iOS and this is all placeholders for the future, then it's not going to work for sure. It doesn't seem too hopeful right now, but maybe?
Thanks for the link to your article. Nicely done! It's really clear for such a confusing situation.
I'm going to spend a little bit of time over the next few days seeing if I can get a test program that will report if there are any AVB I/O ports available.
I'm really interested in anything you find out.
I didn’t have the best of experiences with iconnect stuff. I’m sure I could have figured out what was giving me trouble, but in the end I sold them. Not because of the troubles, but I was thinking down the road like “what if they stop getting supported” or “apple could render this thing useless with an OS update”.
Here we are. They’re discontinued. iConnectivity’s support for the device is in question, apple updates will continue to happen, and it isn’t “if”, it’s when will it finally become a doorstop and everyone is left scrambling to redesign their iOS setup.
(Let’s be honest, no one wants to go back to iDAM)
How do you deal with midi routing ? Your setup is ideal for audio routing but how do you manage to send midi to your idevices with minimal latency?
Thanks !
I use ableton link mostly. All iPads have a powered usb hub or multi usbport cck. Motu has midi DIN with a midithru/splitter interface connected.
I tend to keep my sequencing external/hardware. I also look at the iPads not a source/master, but as rack units or modules, so they’re usually towards the end of the midi chain. Mostly cause developers dont implement any midi feedback from their apps. At least Drambo seems to be headed in the right direction for midi....just waiting for that multi output audio...
Really have no issues with clock at all. It’s usually with control surfaces that drive me bonkers.
This manual helped me tremendously with dealing with control surfaces, hardware, and 1 direction midi on iOS:
https://64.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1rbn8d2Yi1qzt40qo1_500.jpg
RTP-MIDI works well for this and it's basically an Apple standard, so all of their stuff works with it. The iConnectivity MIDI devices do MIDI over ethernet supporting RTP-MIDI. It wouldn't take too much to get a Raspberry Pi to work as a USB or DIN MIDI to RTP-MIDI bridge.
For MIDI 2.0. I think ethernet is probably going to end up being the best way to hook multiple MIDI devices together.
After reading the above comment.. i might have realized your asking about midi between the AVB rig and the computer
The answer is I don’t. Computers and DAWs are too much of a blank canvas for me. I get a nervous tick when i think of dragging blocks around a timeline in logic, let alone the thought of having to go into the environment window.....
Also, midi 2.0 can’t be implemented fast enough. But I have a feeling adoption rate of it is going to be painfully slow.
@NeonSilicon Sure, and thx for pointing out that AVB is showing iOS 14 compatibility in the dev docs, great find! I did take a minute to enable AVB on my M1-mini - one definite difference is that as of BigSur the AVB Audio Device doesn't enumerate in Audio MIDI Setup until there's an AVB audio stream that's actually sending audio to the Mac - previously you could just bring up avbutil with terminal, then 'virtual-audio enable(your ethernet interface...usually en0)'. Fairly certain doing so still brings up the AVB audio as I heard the clicks through my speaker soon as I enabled, but it won't show in Audio MIDI Setup as a device or in the Network Browser. I'd guess that a USB-C iPad might work with the USB-C equivalent of the Camera Adapter, but might have the USB enumeration/ethernet issue there, or maybe just a straight USB-C to ethernet adapter, which might have the not-enough-power issue. I'm just glad to see something new on the AVB front with Apple - I'm going to check if they ever updated their AVB support to carry the revised protocols published around 2016, which bring some further clock enhancements and other stuff. There are also some message boards out there with a small handful of posts from one of the Apple folks... think his name was Jeff Kostinoff or something like that - but he was answering some questions a few years back. I think it'd be really terrific to see the Video side of aVb come alive - that would be great for live streaming and the like. Will keep poking around and post back...
Ok I get it. Thanks ! So you re just using the computer to record and to mix stuff then ?
I was using the computer daw as a sequencer and to record all MPE clips, and the various I devices as sound modules I can get the audio from.
Yes thanks. But that means I have to wire the iPads and stuff through an Ethernet switch as there is too much jitter with WiFi. I get some latency also.
I love using MPE : problem is you can only have 1 network session and MPE eats lots of channels...
I think best would be to have controllers directly connected to the iPads or pc, along with the usbstreamers. To get rid of the midi thing, but I have to find a way to record the MPE clips somewhere. LK ?
By the way do the usbstreamers need external power besides the one provided by the usb-c hub (on new airs) ?
I don’t use the computer at all. I just use the avb to dump it all into logic in 1 go. Then I send that file off to someone for mixdown/mastering. I don’t care for that process at all.
They are bus powered, but I use them with a cck/hub.
I think a nice small portable solution would be going with Dante. You could get a Dante AVIO USB, or USB-C adapter, plug it out to a USB-C Hub with an ethernet jack, and plug that out to maybe the Focusrite Rednet X2P, which has 2 Dante I/O's, one is POE too. You could handle all the MIDI then through the USB-C Hub.
More I think about it you're probably right, it's a placeholder for some new iOS 14 devices that are going to be like the M1's with a USB4/Thunderbolt 3 port, because it doesn't seem possible to work around USB-over-AVB limitation, which would preclude all the current models out there.
I have looked at the Dante route. It does look like it would work. There are a couple of reasons I don't want to go with it though. The first is that the little dongles are pricey. The second is that I want to avoid proprietary protocols.
The reason I'm looking into this is that I'm starting a project to build a little portable musical production device that is based on a Raspberry Pi 4 compute module. It will be mainly driven by UI on the iPad or iPhone. (Android and computer too, eventually.) It would be nice to have the ability to add audio I/O to the iDevices over ethernet if possible as one of the main points of the little device is that it can live on the network. The idea is that MIDI would be input to the device over USB, bluetooth, or network and then it could rebroadcast this over the network connection (as well as be a MIDI source itself).
I'm sure that all the MIDI aspects will work fine to and from the iPad. If AVB is going to show up on iPads, that could make that part much more simple. It is likely that the board for the device will end up using an XMOS processor to interface with and that has AVB capability. On the other hand, if AVB isn't going to be readily available on the iPad, I'm looking in to using Jack or OpenAvnu to do this part.
I'm still in the early experimenting stage with this, so I have time for things to shake out. Thanks for your insights. It's very helpful. I'll update this thread if I see any more about AVB on iOS or if any experimenting with it actually does anything useful.
My apologies for reviving an old thread. I am interested in making a similar setup to what @AlmostAnonymous mentioned earlier. In particular I would like to use a MOTU 624 as a central interface for both a Mac (via AVB) and an iPad (via USB). I would use the ADAT ports to connect a Eurorack setup. My question is regarding the direct AVB to Mac connection, how much latency does this create? I realise the main interest in this forum/thread is the iPad-interface connection - but I'm having trouble finding the answer to this anywhere (including MOTU's support...). Thanks a lot!
I’ve never measured it exactly, but it’s pretty close to what’s advertised.
I have no latency issues with my setup and overall I’m super happy with it other than the web browser based software, and that’s really only an issues when I’m using the interface exclusively with an ipad.
I recently purchased a thunderbolt to ethernet device that supports AVB and iOS however I am unable to see any AVB I/O in any host apps… if the iOS14+ SDK includes “static let AVB: AVAudioSession.Port” is it just a matter of the developer adding that to the code?
Just wondering, did you ever get any clarification on this issue?
I have yet to find a host that supports it. Also, on macOS, the Mac can only be a client for AVB. It can connect to AVB streams, but cannot create them, so I assume it would be the same for iOS if some software was able to implement them.