Thank you for all your suggestions and tips and tricks! I now know a lot more than I did before about how the iPad handles audio and MIDI. You're right, it's pretty insane to be worrying about all this in 2012, but for those of us who would sync our 4-track tape recorders up to a Mac running Opcode or whatever in the 1990s (usually with a MIDI interface that cost almost as much as an iPad does now), it's kind of fun in way to recapture that whole "this would be cool to do... but will it work? It will!" spirit.

And thanks to devs like yourself and others who are actively engaging the userbase, it may not be too long before we're at a point where we won't have to ask if it'll work or not anymore, because it just will

I tried some combinations of Apps on an iPhone 4S.

So far it seems that the BM2 audioengine is always taking over the others, resulting in noise in the ST output.

Arctic Keys work perfectly with ST, until I open BM2. Same with Thumbja and Soundprism Pro.

Note that Alchemy is absolutely not able to do whatever with ST, it just crash...

I was able to control ST on the iPad 2 with BM2 on the iPhone, over wi-fi through MidiBridge, it's not what I was looking for but it clearly show that it is not a MIDI problem at all.

Thanks for doing all this legwork... maybe SampleTank's issues aren't so MIDI-related as I thought. Maybe the addition of a "high" audio buffer latency setting would help?

Maybe...
I think they aren't the only ones wo have to work on this, some companies achieve to write Apps wich perfectly intergrate in iOS, and take benefits of the last improvements, others don't.
It never was a big deal to make iOS Apps communicate with the outside world but I really believe that the future of iOS music is in the ability to only work on the device itself, this is the real challenge and the new market, still waiting for a leader. IOS device are far more than just controllers or sketchpads.
Today we are just slowed by devs that are not seeing or willing to see that.
Come on, it's really not a big deal to implement (correctly and userfriendy of course ) VirtualMidi or a decent synchronisable audio recorder.

The (maybe) forthcoming Audiobus feature IS a bigdeal, but dealing correctly with MIDI on iOS??? We shouldn't have to ask for that, are we talking about "pro" Apps or not?
They can charge me 1 or 2$ more if they want

But I know that it's "still early, I'm confident in the future and smile

I agree with that! It can be fun to be a "pioneer" but sometimes you just want things to work. I can say, though, that IK seem genuinely committed to improving their iOS products. They were a leader in that area and I think it was only recently that they just got passed-by (feature wise, their apps really have no equal in sound quality -- based on my limited experience) by some of the smaller, more nimble devs (I'm blown away by ThumbJam for example). I think with just a little time, they will catch up again. SampleTank is a good, solid product now, but someday soon with just a few tweaks it'll be a great, KILLER product.

If there is an alleged issue with the way SampleTank deals with MIDI (it is pretty standard being a Core MIDI app and all, after all) please report it to support and they will verify what is a bug, and gather what is a feature request. This too is pretty standard in getting bugs fixed and features implemented. So please do so. You may also be contacted by Obi but the best way to get things happening is to report them to support.

Yes, maybe I'll do that, maybe...

Because thinking about it, what am I gonna say to them?

That they should implement Virtual Midi, which would automatically resolve 99% of our issues?
Come on! How coudn't they know that!

That they should test their App with the most used Apps in the prosumer segment before putting it on the maket?
That would be insulting!

I hope that I'm wrong but when I see the iRig MIDI ad each time I start ST I think that for IK SampleTank is more a mean to sell more accessories than anything else. not sure they are interessted in making it fully usable for an internal use on tne device.
Again I hope I'm wrong, ST has no rival in sound quality but that's it.

It could be so much more and it's so obvious...

I think part of the issue too is that we're kind of in uncharted territories here in terms of how we expect iOS applications to interact. For what is advertised, SampleTank delivers 100%: you can use your external midi controllers to play it, you can play it via the virtual tappy keyboard, and you can record 4 parts within the application. It all works very well.

I can appreciate from a developer's standpoint that it would be a little frustrating to have the expectation goalposts moved on you the way they have been: now people expect to have their sequencers and synths play nice, where that might not have been the expectation a year ago.

So for what it says it does, it does well, which would make this not a support issue. This is more of a feature-request issue(and Obik is doing a great job documenting those!!!): the expectations as to how we'll use the product have changed and it's exciting to think about the ways SampleTank will adapt and grow to meet those ever-evolving expectations.

No, we're committed to making it a great app not just sell more accessories. Why is Virtual MIDI a problem solver when we're using the accepted standard Core MIDI? Does that show a problem with SampleTank or other apps or general music/MIDI on iOS? I'm still not seeing a list of clear issues with SampleTank here, but again reporting these issues to Tech Support would be the best way to get change... if indeed these are problems with an app that follows Core MIDI standards? If we are not doing so, support needs to know.

What you would say is this: What exactly the problem is that you are having. Go from there.

EDIT - Obi has reached out to many via PM so please get back to him, J.C., with the particulars and we'll get your requests in the hopper. We are aware of some obvious ones but more "votes" for them makes them even more obvious...

It's not an issue. It's a lack of feature.
To answer that ST support CoreMIDI is not enough.

CoreMIDI is made to communicate outside the device, it just thanks some genius guys like Audeonic that we can do the trick to have CoreMidi to communicate with some other Apps on the device.

Would you implement the now world famous VirtualMidi feature would you make ST able to communicate with all the major players of this industry without all the hassles we are facing.

Oh, you didn't know that??

I'm also not sure at this point how many of these difficulties (not issues, per se) are due to incompatible audio engines -- or rather, audio engines competing for the same limited resources on the iPad -- between the DAW and other audio programs (it's not just SampleTank). Maybe they're not MIDI issues at all.

I saw that iZotope just published an ebook on iOS audio programming. I wish I was an engineer so I understood it, but it looked like there might be some good info in there. http://www.idesignsound.com/development-izotope-ios-audio-pr ogramming-guide/

Hello Peter,

I have replied to Obi's PM (I was one of the lucky recipients) and outlined that someone on the IK dev team needs to (ahem) get in tune to what us OMAC devs are doing. SampleTank's virtual/wifi CoreMIDI implementation needs a little bit of enhancement. Not that I should be complaining as I have sold a few MidiBridge copies because of its shortcomings, so no hurry fixing it!

The audio engine issue would also be solved if IK was involved with OMAC since that's another area we collaborate on.

In any case, I have sent on a bit of good (I hope) information to Obi to pass on to the IK dev team. Thanks Peter and Obi for opening up some communication channels.

I answered him too.

Thanks.

See, now, THIS is why I *LOVE* KVR! Devs working together to make things better for us users. Thank you Audeonic and IK -- your response over the past few days has been terrific. Based on Audeonic's repsonse and troubleshooting walkthroughs, even if I didn't need MidiBridge and didn't own it, I'd be buying it now just on general principle (but I think everyone needs it because it's an awesome product and I already do own it, so I guess I'll need to buy something else you make ). And the fact that IK is willing to contact us directly to ask what we want is pretty impressive as well (even to 10+ year IK customer like myself). This (hopeful!) collaboration has given me a lot more confidence in the IK product line as well.

Hooray for KVR!