Recording - December 2012 - 26

dreaded “The connected USB device requires too much power” message. The iConnectMIDI handles this for you, and allows these devices to work without any intervening computers or powered hubs. On the other hand, if you want to get ultra-connected, you can attach a powered hub to the iConnectMIDI and have up to 8 additional connected USB ports. All of the routing is handled by an iOS app that not only sets up port-to-port connectivity, but also does input and output filtering. It can act as the center of your entire MIDI rig, and I decided to see exactly how well that would work...by creating a sort of “MIDI Octopus”. I had to do it. Attach my powered hub to the iConnectMIDI. Throw every MIDI device I have laying around at it. This includes two keyboards (one very new, one very old), all kinds of bus-powered MIDI devices, two different MIDI-to-CV converters (connected to modular synthesizers), a computer, and an iPad. Open up the PortManager app on the iPad and set up a wild routing system. Were there bumps in the road? Not a single one. The PortManager makes routing as simple as possible, and MIDI-to-computer-to-synth-and-iPad connections all worked flawlessly. Despite the fact that the iConnectMIDI device is accepting and processing MIDI messages, I didn’t find any noticeable latency when running from port-to-port. Running through the computer added a little, but that has more to do with computer software latency than the interface. This is clearly one of the most robust MIDI solutions available, regardless of platform, and its usefulness for the iOS-based musician is quite clear. The iConnectMIDI is highly recommended regardless of the complexity of your system; it just makes problems go away.—Darwin Grosse

Samson Carbon 49 USB MIDI keyboard
$89.99 street; www.samsontech.com

iConnectivity iConnectMIDI
$199; www.iconnectivity.com

When the Editors asked me to try out the iConnectMIDI device, I thought: “Sure, how hard could it be to test out a MIDI interface?” I brought it home, hooked it up to my iPad, started squirting MIDI to my hardware devices and felt pretty proud of myself. It’s built like a little tank, has external power (thereby leaving my iPad’s battery life in good shape) and gives me good feedback through its blinken-lights. At $199 retail, it seemed quite expensive, but I could see something this bullet-proof being useful for touring pros and the like. But the unit has two MIDI ports, and some USB ports on the front, and extra lights – and I just had this feeling that there might be more… So I jumped onto the iConnectivity website, jumped to the product page on the iConnectMIDI, and started sniffing around... and Oh. My. Gosh. This isn’t really a MIDI interface at all. Rather, it is the device that lets everything talk to everything else, and embraces pretty much any kind of device that can speak MIDI. It turns out that those connections on the front will work with iOS devices (through the included cable), or anything able to attach via a USB cable. This means that computers, iPods, iPhones, MIDI keyboards and slider boxes are all in play. In addition to providing a handy way to connect your iPad to MIDI devices, it also ends up being the most convenient way to attach a buspowered USB MIDI keyboard to the iPad. If you’ve ever tried this, you may have gotten the
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I’m featuring the Carbon 49 in this section of the Gift Guide because it’s so obviously iPad-friendly; sure, you can get many other keyboards, including several reviewed elsewhere in this issue, to work with an iPad, but the Carbon 49 is the first full-sized USB MIDI controller keyboard that’s specifically designed with iPad integration in mind. Housed in a lightweight but sturdy plastic chassis, the Carbon 49 features a very playable semi-weighted keyboard; it senses velocity but not aftertouch, but to my fingers it was actually a bit more solid than the action on its big brother the Graphite 49, which I already like a lot. User controls include pitch and mod wheels, dedicated buttons for octave and semitone transpose, and frontpanel slider and rotary encoder.

http://www.samsontech.com http://www.iconnectivity.com

Recording - December 2012

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