Time for an iPad Guitar Rig Dock/Kontrol?

Hey!,

Alesis just released their AmpDock Multi-Effects Guitar Processor for iPad. It seems to be the first real option for live situations.

Isn't it time NI put out an iPad Guitar Rig with Kontrol? It cant be too far from possible if they have a Mac version

How many would be interested?

 

Me!

 

NI doesn't even have a company website that works properly on tablets and smart phones so I wouldn't hold my breath for mobile plugins from NI in the near future.

 

Hmmmm

Considering iOS dev has nothing to do with web dev and they already released their first iPad app I wouldn't be so sure.

http://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/products/producer/imaschine/

 

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Digitech have released their solution - the iPB-10

Looks like Native Instruments are playing catchup. Digitech's iPB-10 iPad software is free and the hardware costs a few hundred.

It's getting great reviews too although I hear some of the modelling is a bit out on some pedals.

Also there is some dissapointment the dock doesn't cover the iPad with a protective screen. A bit precarious when gigging live!

http://www.digitech.com/en/products/ipb-10-programmable-pedalboard

Come on NI. Give us a guitar rig for the iPad!

 

and, by the time windows 8 is out they should have an ARM version for PC tablets. might as well start porting now.

 

Please don't. Improve and innovate what you have, don't waste ressources on thinning down your product so it will run on a toy. Why anybody would want to run a reduced version of anything on an iPad rather than it's full version on a MacBook air is beyond me anyway.

 

I'd rather see a hardware rig kontrol that you can load sounds into and just take the pedal and not have to take a laptop or I pad with you.

 

I don't get it why anyone would take a coach toy like the MacBook on stage? Take the money that you'd spend on a Mac and put it into a 19" rack enclosure with industrial grade PC components and you'll get a reliable, good sounding and extremely powerful system that can be upgraded easily if needed. Or if it has to be a notebook then go and buy a roughened one and not a living room toy.

 

Why does it have to be cut down? A full iPad version is very possible. The new iPad has a lot of horses for processing and it's much more portable.
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The reason for the mac over any PC, industrial or other. Windows OS is the week link. The way the sound processing can be interrupted by battery and wifi drivers is terrible and there's nothing to say that windows 8 will be any better.

The reason for the iPad version for me is about cost (about the same as a good PC) isolated processing tech (like the Mac) and portability.

Or course I would take a top valve amp and a couple of good rack effects any time but I'm a small time gig'r who needs to be portable and use devices I already have in the home to keep costs down.

 

You're kidding right? I'm reasonably sure that if I can max out an i5 with 4GB or RAM an oversized cell phone won't be able to handle it either, even if it's made by Apple, if you'll excuse my sarcasm.

 

Well, it's still better then getting raided by viruses and trojans in the mid of a live show because the vendor of the device needs several months to fix even basic security issues. And I've never seen a desktop PC with battery or with Wifi so these points are moot. But plugging a notebook into a wall outlet and turning off the Wifi should be doable by a normal skilled computer user (and maybe even for a Mac user).

Android devices (and those iThings for that matter) have a lot of specialized helper processing units for most of the things that you would normally do with such a device (phone services, graphics display, video decoding, network, bluetooth etc). Additionally, all resources are loaded from flash memory and not from a slow hard disk. That are the reasons why these device feel so smooth to operate. But the CPU itself is designed for efficiency only. It's main purpose is to coordinate the auxiliary chips and to do some basic calculations. It is not designed for pure number crunching but that's what is absolutely needed for amp simulation and effects.

As an example there is a special processor for video decoding in every smart phone or tablet. But this usually only works with H.264 and maybe one or two additional formats. If you try to play back a reasonable sized video with a different codec then this will bring even a shiny new quad core iPad CPU right down to it's knees (if it can handle it at all). This is something that a ten years old PC could do with ease.

 

Hurdles... just hurdles...

rolo69

I can see your ramblings are tainted by a healthy affinity with the good ol' PC which I too have been and continue to be a great fan of ever since I started building them and programming them 20 years ago.

And I already take the time and effort to unplug the battery & turn off wifi, and Bluetooth... and the 3G module... and close as many background processes / services as possible before launching Guitar Rig.

This reduces the pops and clicks caused by Windows inefficient interrupt scheduling to a bare minimum... takes ages and probably wont be enough when V6 of guitar rig is release baring in mind the increased impact on upgrading to V5 from V4 last year.

The facts remain that:
- The newer iPad versions are more than capable of processing live sound on the fly with very low latency... just like a good ol' PC. In fact due to the unique pseudo multitasking design of iOS nearly all resources are dedicated to the app in focus at the time.
- They're portable and convenient to use.

It's worth noting though I did find out today that the Digitech iPB-10 does not leave any processing to the iPad at all. The iPad is simply a control / programming interface and can be unplugged during play. This does make me wonder....

 

It shouldn't. Read Rollo69's post above. It explains it all.

Or compare the bit depth of iRig to the bit depth of the iPB-10 (or any other contemporary effects device): 16bits versus 24bits, which is a 65k step resolution versus 16 Million step resolution.

 

Guitar Rig for iPad

Guitar Rig for iPad

When if ever?