Android USB Audio ? ? ?

[MikeRivers]

I got a press release yesterday from IK Multimedia for a vocal processor app for Android, but more interesting to me in the same press release was their digital microphone for Android. Apparently the newest version of the Android OS, Lollipop, provides support for USB class compliant audio hardware.

 

"iRig Mic HD-A is the first digital microphone compatible with all Samsung devices running Samsung Professional Audio as well as other devices running the just released Android 5 "Lollipop" operating system thanks to its new USB audio support."

 

I did some Googling and couldn't really find out much about the audio capabilities of the new OS, but apparently it's for real, at least on Android devices that can support it. I spend about half an hour on the phone last night with tech support idiots at Samsung trying to find out if my tablet would support Lollipop and USB audio with zero results beyond "If there's an OS upgrade available, you'll get a notification on your device."

 

It appears that there's a Samsung SDK that allows developers to do just about anything you'd want (or could legitimately expect to use) on a mobile device, but not being a developer, I don't know how excited to get about this:

 

http://djworx.com/samsung-profession...io-sdk-galaxy/

 

 

A couple of years back I had a chat at the AES with some folks who had developed a USB audio driver for Android OS, but it had to be compiled into the OS, so it's not user-installable. They said they were working with Samsung to get it added to their version, but didn't get very far. I did run across an app from Audio Evolution that provided USB support, but only within the app - it isn't a general driver that can be used with any hardware and other audio app but it looks like it might work on my Andrioid 4.0 devices:

 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...eamsd.aemobile

 

Does anybody but me care? Personallly, I'm going to be following techristian's Windows Tablet experiements. That looks like it opens a lot of doors right now.