Integrating an iPad into DAW workflow

[mbncp]

You just need to wait, sorry was just dreaming loud.
Last time I tried airplay it was closer to 3000 msec.

[AaronCotton]

ewwww

3 SECONDS ... lol

I think I will be able to use a powered hub to charge and connect to the interface simultaneously because I'm using the iPad 4 with the lighting connector which is supposedly compatible with USB charging spec 1.1.

I'm getting this and will let you know the outcome:

http://amzn.com/B005P2BY5I

[mbncp]

Didn't know you could charge the ipad 4 with a hub using the CCK, my io dock has a hard time charging my ipad3 and the irig midi has a hard time charging a mini.

Still, in my situation (3 ipads, 3 mini) it wouldn't help much, would still need a good audio/midi interface for each of them and connect them to the motu via analog, as dealing with so many drivers may become a nightmare.

[T-CM11]

These aren't out yet, but lots of people are pretty excited about this, and the iConnect4

http://www.iconnectivity.com/iConnectMIDI2plus

MIDI, audio, can charge iPad....

But combining this with an existing audio interface will probably add latency (no idea how much).

My Alesis IO Dock isn't perfect, but I think it's one of the best solutions out there...

[fedtho]

These aren't out yet, but lots of people are pretty excited about this, and the iConnect4

http://www.iconnectivity.com/iConnectMIDI2plus

MIDI, audio, can charge iPad....

But combining this with an existing audio interface will probably add latency (no idea how much).

I'm guessing most of us have checked out the iConnectMIDI2+/4+ 's specs by now, but it's stated clearly that it does act like a direct audio interface.
No latency (none worth mentionnning anyway) I believe: it's digital streaming.

The way I understand it, it's pretty much a no-brainer (feature-wise AND bang-for-buck-wise) for using any iOS device as an audio source inside your DAW.

If anyone has tried it out hands-on, please give us feedback!!!

[mbncp]

It doesn't add extra latency but you still have the iPad latency + the pc latency.

With a good audio card on the pc you can have very small buffers if you're not doing a lot of processing.
It's not really the D/A converters that add latency, but the minimal audio buffer your system can handle.

Also how is the sync made, is it the iPad that gets synced to the pc or the other way around ?
If there is no sync you will need an extra buffer just to make sure that a buffer is always ready and even then if the two clocks are not exactly at the same speed once in a while you will miss a buffer or one to many, no a big deal if it happens once an hour or have an extensive use of glitchbreaks

[fedtho]

Hm, good thing you're setting things straight.

I have been working with the same audio interface and also used nothing but software synths for so long I'm a little rusty about latency!

I haven't tried playing a synth on the iPad through MIDI yet; I do know about buffers needing to be small to achieve low latency, but never had to deal with synching problems either... (it's MIDI synch you're talkign about, right...?)

So I have no idea about iConnect2+'s ability to generate or receive a synching clock signal.
The subject is addressed neither in the firm's own description nor in the various comments I've read so far on the product.

It would certainly be good to have more info... and/or a hands-on review of that thing.

[mbncp]

I wasn't speaking about midi clock, that's something different, though the idea is the same.

When you want to mix 2 or more digital audio sources it's important that the 2 clock run at the same speed. These clocks are not atomic clocks (it may come one day), which means that over time they will drift.
If one is running at 44099 and the other at 44101 hz, after 2 minutes there will already be a 128 samples away, so even if you had an extra buffer ( total = 256 samples in this case), you may hear a little glitch, crack or whatever every 2 minutes. I once made an asio driver to connect 2 cheap soundcards without sync, and it was every 3 seconds I had crackles, even an old cuckoo clock was more precise than that.

That's why, audio cards that can handle spdif, adat,.. always ask you which is the leader, you have also devices called world clock that will sync different audio devices.

In this case I don't know as we probably have a 2 way stream, a pc could sync these devices, but as I have no idea how core audio works, ... I'm asking

[schnapsglas]

Using V-Control and V-Window using Bonjour services along with other things (Lemur, etc.) I have almost no latency. I think wifi is the way to go.

I'm thinking of adding a 5GHz access point just for this use, so everything is nice and safe.

[mbncp]

We were speaking about audio latency, but I would love to have low audio and midi latency over wifi.

I'm on a 5ghz network and my midi latency is about 10 msec total ( to mba and back), using the live routing in nmidi network setup.
Same result if I'm using an ad-hoc connection.

Doing similar test the other day I got 3-4 msec using an irig midi or a mobilizer II, a bit more with an idock (8-9) and both were pretty much jitter free too, though this is just sending a single event.

I would be interested to hear what other people get over wifi, is it possible to get close to these 3-4 msec ?

The test I'm doing is simple, sending a single note every bar and get it back from cubasis, reading both results in midivision.