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me1970

Previously I had been making music just using my iPad, previously I had only used ableton on a pc. But now I want to use my synths from my iPad and use them with ableton, is this possible? Or can I record via iPad and transfer it to my pc, so is any of this possible and if so how?

By the way I’m new here, so hello to everyone!

michael_m

It’s very easy on a Mac, but not quite so straightforward on a PC. I think the answer is yes if you install some third party tools.

Not sure what tools are best for this, but I recall people posting and saying they have had success with certain tools.

Oh, and hello!

Slam_Cut

Hey @me1970 ! Welcome.

I don’t use Abelton, but any DAW should be able to send MIDI out to you iPad. It just a question of the right gear hooked up to get MIDI out to your iPad and audio back to your PC. This can be easier said than done since the iPads have only one port. You need a USB hub for the iPad and probably a small mixer with USB audio out to the PC. It would he super nice to be able to have one cable between PC and iPad, but I don’t think this will work. If I am wrong and anyone knows how to make such a simple connection work, I’d be all ears.

ambrosiajam

Are you trying to use them live, together?

Because otherwise if you export your midi/audio tracks from your iPad you should be able to load them into your computer.

It’s a lot trickier to use midi in a live setting between iPad and computer tho… I usually just plug the audio into an audio interface and mix them… but if you have a decent midi interface and a midi to usb adapter, you’ll can get everything midi sync’d between iPad and computer. the connections can be a bit finicky from my experiences though lol. But it’s possible

ambrosiajam

I think the routing I used was this:

iPad -> lightning to usb adapter -> usb to midi adapter -> midi interface -> computer

I had the iPad controlled by the computer, mostly just for transport controls in this case. The midi channels and devices all need to be on the correct settings, it can either be a total headache or a breeze - but it is a lot easier than it used to be….Also you can do Bluetooth midi, but the latency made this unusable for me when I tried it.

wim

Hey - welcome to the forum! As mentioned, using an iPad in the way you describe is easy with a Mac. With a windows PC it's less straightforward.

I just want to clarify: When you say you want to use audio from your iPad synths with Ableton on the PC, do you mean that you only want to record or import audio into Ableton, or do you mean that you want to control apps on the iPad from Ableton and get their resulting audio output on the PC in Ableton?

The simplest and often most practical use case is to record the audio on your iPad and copy it over to the PC. Here are a few of the easiest ways to go about this, in my personal order of preference:

• Store your files in iCloud on the iPad, then access iCloud Drive from a browser on the PC.
• Use AudioShare, which can provide a simple FTP server to which you can connect from a PC browser to download the files.
• Copy the files to a USB drive attached to the iPad through an Apple USB adapter, then move that drive to the PC
• Set up a windows SMB share from your PC and access it through the files app on the iPad.

Live audio is more trouble to set up, requiring two audio interfaces or a less common type of interface that can route between them. There are software ways to stream over USB, but they involve dealing with lots of latency and can be unreliable. Audio interfaces involve latency too, but less. TBH, unless you require live audio from the iPad it's easier just to save the audio on the iPad and copy it over to the PC.

Live audio plus control from Ableton via MIDI ads another layer of difficulty. If that's what you're after then it's best done using audio interfaces that also fully support midi.