Recording - October 2011 - 74

B Y M I K E M E T L AY

As our readers are probably well aware by now, the Apple iPad is springing up in many studios in a variety of roles. There are “apps” for just about everything a recording musician could want to do: virtual instruments, music recorders, loop playback and sequencing studios, tuners, effects processors, and more. There are a lot of possibilities, all waiting for you to plug in your iPad and get started...

Alesis iO Dock
...oh, wait a second. Plug in your iPad? And just how do you do that, anyhow? The problem A great deal of the iPad’s appeal lies in the fact that it’s streamlined and uncomplicated; you just grab it and go. As a result, there isn’t room (nor, among most iPad users, is there a strong desire) for a lot of connections on it. There’s the 30-pin dock connector, a 1/8" TRRS headphone/ microphone jack, and that’s about it. (You can do some device control over Wi-Fi, but that’s a topic for another article.) Now let’s consider all the things you might want to do with your iPad in a conventional studio situation.... You might want to process audio from a guitar through a stompbox emulator, which requires a high-impedance guitar input. If you’re recording other forms of audio, you will need some form of audio interface and/or mic preamp, so you can hook up mics or line-level sources, and condenser mics will need phantom power. To hear your music, you’ll need highquality audio outputs, either to a pair of headphones or to monitors... but it would be best if you could run both at once, with independent level controls so you can cue audio over headphones with the speakers turned down. Zero-latency monitoring is a must when you’re tracking, and a footswitch to help control your apps might be handy. Many virtual-instrument apps are quite playable from the iPad’s touchscreen, but if you really want to play conventional instruments convincingly, you should have a proper keyboard hooked up, which means a MIDI In port (and a MIDI Out too, for sequencing external sound modules).
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RECORDING OCTOBER 2011

Instant music studio—just add iPad
iPad, but it comes with a snap-in insert that neatly resizes it for the slimmer iPad 2. There are two audio inputs on XLR–1/4" TRS combination jacks, one of which can be switched to handle Hi-Z sources, with individual gain pots and global phantom power switching; two 1/4" outputs for a pair of monitors and one for headphones, each with its own level pot; switchable zero-latency monitoring; a 1/4" TRS jack for a single or dual footswitch; 5-pin MIDI In and Out plus a USB connector for MIDI (not audio) transfer to a computer; an RCA composite video output jack; and a jack for an external wall-wart power supply. Phew! That’s a lot of connectivity in a very small space. It’s light, portable, and uses high-quality connectors and switches. But how well does it work? The results As is often the case with iOS, the answer to that question is: as well, or as poorly, as the connections are implemented in any given app. The iO Dock is compliant with the CoreMIDI and CoreAudio protocols inside iOS, and any app that uses those protocols should recognize the iO Dock instantly. You might have to tweak some settings (to choose which input you’re recording from, for example), but that should be all you’ll need to fuss with. If your app doesn’t yet support CoreAudio

Since a lot of computers make use of USB to move MIDI data, a USB connection would be a good thing to have. If there’s a visual element to any of your work (say, a tuner your clients need to see easily, or a video playback to go with music you’re working on), the iPad’s screen could be mirrored on a larger video monitor. Oh, and since you don’t want to have your iPad drop dead in mid-session, you should be able to charge it while you work! That’s a lot of I/O. Some devices will handle part if not all of the load: there are guitar I/O devices that use the TRRS jack (with varying degrees of reliability when it comes to clean output vs. feedback and crosstalk), and it’s possible—if not 100% predictable!—to attach a USB audio or MIDI interface to the iPad using Apple’s Camera Connection Kit, which converts the dock connector into a USB port. But what if you just want to be able to do everything at once with no fuss... preferably with one click of a connector... and just have it all work? The solution That’s where the iO Dock comes in. You slide the iPad into this tabletop device’s cradle and engage its dock connector, and it breaks out everything I’ve mentioned onto dedicated ports on its rear and side panels. The iO Dock’s cradle is sized for the original

Recording - October 2011

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