How would you use 4 ipads? Midi and audio ideas?

MFBT

Looking for ideas and inspiration!

I just bought a pro 12.9 as a present to myself for not going out or going on vacation since the pandemic started. I also have a pro 2017, iPad 2018, and a 2020 mini. I'm a speech language pathologist and use ipads for some patients who need them to communicate, but I've since shifted my work to a different population so I have more toys.

I exclusively use AUM with several midi lanes of sequencers (many generative ones alongside rozeta cells, ooda, atom) and midi fx routed to synth and drum apps, as well as hardware (hydrasynth, uno, uno pro, microfreak, volca fm). When I do the DAWing I usually fire up Reaper and use ipads as sound sources/fx boxes, so I'm not really looking for ideas for cubasis, AEMS, etc.

I've really only used one ipad at a time w/AUM unless I'm using another ipad for a full screen app like TC11, Borderlands , Shoom , or SAMPLR, routing audio to the other iPad using an audio interface. Animoog z and frms are super heavy on my older devices so I have been running them on separate ipads, synced with LINK, to save CPU. But other than that, I haven't tried much.

Other than using the other 3 ipads as sound sources or as fx boxes, how would YOU PERSONALLY use the extra devices? Especially when thinking about midi and smooth workflow (avoiding cables and managing lots of save files).

Also, is there a way to use multiple ipads with aum and save the aum project in a way that allows for me to recall the state on each ipad for a given project (other than saving projects on each ipad and being careful with naming conventions)? I don't think so but holding out hope someone more experienced has an idea.

Cheers!

rheslip

I use my old 2018 iPad as a midi controller. Use MidiMittr to set up a Bluetooth midi link between that and my M1 pro. Works great with apps like KB1, GeoShred, sequencers etc on the old iPad to AUM running on the pro. Offloads some cpu but mainly gives you a second screen to work with.

robosardine

I have 4 iPads as well. I sometimes just give them a synth/sequencer/Groovebox/sampler or drum machine each and jam with them like a hardware setup. Ableton Link is just brilliant for this.

wim

@rheslip - Just a thought ... you don't need MidiMittr to set up the Bluetooth Midi link if you're using AUM. It has its own built-in dialog for doing that.

Telefunky

You can handle 4 iPads with a single iConnectAudio4+.
2 connect directly to the USB host ports of the interface with both audio and midi data.
2 could send their headphone output into the 2 analog channel pairs of the iCA.
If you want midi for those, add an USB hub connected to the dedicated USB midi port of the interface.

The new control app ReConfig (an open source project because iConnectivity ceased support for the original iConfig app) can route:
midi between all 4 iPads,
20 virtual channels of audio between the 2 iPads connected to the host ports
and deal with output of the 2 iPads on the analog input channels.
Since these 2 don‘t have input capability, no audio can be send to them.
(ReConfig supports all versions of iConnectAudio+ interfaces)

israelite

@MFBT First world problems. Send 3 ipads to north Korea Just kidding. Enjoy jamming

Angie

I usually have an AUM session on one device, velocity keyboard on another and a network midi connection to and from Ableton & my Push 2 on my MacBook.

If I had more devices I’d add more AUM sessions and let each device act like a different part of the band. 🤣

rheslip

@wim said:
@rheslip - Just a thought ... you don't need MidiMittr to set up the Bluetooth Midi link if you're using AUM. It has its own built-in dialog for doing that.

Thanks!

Been a while since I used this setup. MidiMittr worked with almost everything I tried and it’s a free app for somebody looking to get a bit more mileage out of an old iPad.

Tamir_Raz_Mataz

I use 4 or more.
1. Aum session
2. Gestrument pro or Thumbjam
3. Launchpad or loopy pro
4. Guitar and vocal effects via zoom u44

I struggle with a small hub as a hot spot. It’s stopped working recently just before my gig

All recorded separately to Bluebox

MFBT

Thanks for all the ideas, folks. I've been using one or two ipads with one sequencer onscreen each through AUM Bluetooth midi to my central machine, which has the instruments. I've enjoyed using an iPad as an audio source for instruments that are made for touch (Samplr, Borderlands, Spacecraft, TC-11, Shoom, Mononoke) but prefer a keyboard or a sequencer for most everything else.

Offboarding instruments to to a second ipad that pipes the audio into ipad one is a good way to save cpu at the expense of a clunkier project experience since you can't state save and recall other ipads, to my knowledge. For me, it feels like when I use my hardware, but without the fun of hardware. If you play on screen, this is usually better for playing surface area.

Using a sequencer on a second iPad has the same project challenge, and doesn't save cpu given how lean midi apps are. But since I prefer keyboard to a screen, I've focused on sequencing with the other ipads. It's been lots of fun playing live with this setup since it's so easy to tweak sequences and sounds and the same time since they're in separate screens.

I await the day when multiple devices can be used in the same AUM project!

rs2000

@MFBT said:
Thanks for all the ideas, folks. I've been using one or two ipads with one sequencer onscreen each through AUM Bluetooth midi to my central machine, which has the instruments. I've enjoyed using an iPad as an audio source for instruments that are made for touch (Samplr, Borderlands, Spacecraft, TC-11, Shoom, Mononoke) but prefer a keyboard or a sequencer for most everything else.

Offboarding instruments to to a second ipad that pipes the audio into ipad one is a good way to save cpu at the expense of a clunkier project experience since you can't state save and recall other ipads, to my knowledge. For me, it feels like when I use my hardware, but without the fun of hardware. If you play on screen, this is usually better for playing surface area.

Using a sequencer on a second iPad has the same project challenge, and doesn't save cpu given how lean midi apps are. But since I prefer keyboard to a screen, I've focused on sequencing with the other ipads. It's been lots of fun playing live with this setup since it's so easy to tweak sequences and sounds and the same time since they're in separate screens.

I await the day when multiple devices can be used in the same AUM project!

Good idea. Have a multichannel audio interface bring all iPads' audio into one AUM session and sync them via LINK.
Luckily, the older iPads still have headphones jacks with good audio quality.

BroCoast

I use 3.

I tend to use them all separately into my interface or mixer and sync’d via Link.

The good thing about using Link is it makes it really easy to line up all the audio after the fact. I only send midi to hardware instruments from the master iPad. It gets too messy afterwards.

I also find Bluetooth midi unusable. It did however seem to be ok for just clock.

MisplacedDevelopment

@MFBT said:

Offboarding instruments to to a second ipad that pipes the audio into ipad one is a good way to save cpu at the expense of a clunkier project experience since you can't state save and recall other ipads, to my knowledge. For me, it feels like when I use my hardware, but without the fun of hardware. If you play on screen, this is usually better for playing surface area.

I have been doing this as part of my audio-only workflow for jamming ideas, though not mainly for CPU reasons. I basically throw away any expectation of state saving outside of my Loopy session and simply note down either on paper, or in Goodnotes, an abbreviated patch name, e.g. GB:HZ:XX:YY would be GrooveBox, Horizon, pack XX, preset YY. The audio goes into Loopy donuts with one patch per donut colour/column so I only need to make n notes per project, where n is the number of tracks in the jam. If you aren’t a preset monkey like me then this becomes slightly more complicated as you would need to save your user presets somewhere. With this setup I can simply open whatever sound source I like without messing around with hosts and routing things and I find this lets me focus more on the music. If I could be bothered to type more then I could even have a SessionNotes plugin running in my Loopy session to save this info with the project.

I was running this setup with my Scarlett or iRig HD2, but recently found a smaller footprint solution with this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00IRVQ0F8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I haven’t given it a full workout yet but it cuts down the footprint considerably if you get appropriate length 3.5mm cables. I went for the USB A version so it could plug into the iPad AV adapter and let me charge the iPad at the same time.

Audio out of the ‘instrument’ iPad goes via https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0828C7M83/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 . Again, this has a separate USB C port for charging, so both iPads can be run off juice if needed.

I also have an iPhone 6s which has the headphone port. Since I am only running one thing at a time then this works surprisingly well as an instrument device, especially if paired with my nanoKey. Also has the advantage of not needing the dongle.