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ipad as a sampler


hogger

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I'm seeing sampler apps coming out for ipad, and I'm considering finally jumping on the ipad bandwagon.

 

The main thing I use samplers for is playing back rhodes sounds. I've got an Akai S6000 loaded up with scarbee. It works great, but it's huge, very heavy, and limited to 256MB of RAM.

 

I've got a Fantom XR loaded up with scarbee rhodes, it's small, light, but its load times are terrible. It takes several minutes to load up 100MB or so from a CF card.

 

So, what I'm wanting is something small, ipad+alesis IO dock would be great. I want something that handles lots of RAM, loads fast, and can handle multiple samples with multiple velocity zones. I'm thinking that garageband on ipad with ESX24 samples would do exactly that.

 

Anyone here doing this - loading up huge multisamples into garageband on an ipad, playing them from a controller, midi'd up via an alesis IO dock?

 

It seems like it could really be a killer sampler, or sample playback at least. I'm having a really hard time figuring out exactly what that setup would be capable of though, sample-wise. Not sure how much editing I could do, how much RAM worth of samples it would pull up, etc...

 

Here are the products and links I've found that have me very intrigued:

 

http://www.macprovideo.com/hub/garageband-ilife-2/record-and-edit-your-own-samples-in-garageband-for-ipad

 

http://www.redmatica.com/Redmatica/The_Redmatica_Applications.html

 

http://www.vintageroadkeys.com/Vintage_Road_iSampled_Sampler_App_for_IphoneIpad/p794146_3786653.aspx

 

http://neosoulkeys.com/ipad/ (not available yet, but apparently neosoul is packaging up their rhodes into a 600MB ipad app)

 

Thanks for any help! For what it's worth, I have access to an apple computer, but I mainly use windows and linux. I'm hoping any solution won't require too much apple hardware, other than the ipad.

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I've not the the sampler stuff with the iPad (yet) but I have messed about with playback etc using my kb as a controller for some of the apps.

My kb has a usb mid out so I just sed the Camera Connection kit to hook the kb up to the ipad.

For output I just run run a cable with a mini jack from the earphone output on the iPad and to my mixer. so far that's been fine.

 

Works fine. I had some issues with the Pocket Organ C3B3 app, was not receiving midi but I rebooted the ipad, started that app first and it's been fine since then.

 

Only real down side of using the camera connection kit is that the connector to the ipad is pretty small and it does not really hold the connector in place very solidly, it can easly get dislodged. I guess that's one advantage of the IO dock, the physical connection is more secure. The other being that you can run multiple inputs/outputs at the same time.

I've heard of people having 'hiss' problems with the io dock with iOS 5 but I believe there's a software update that fixes it (or at least helps) and I think they are still working to resolve the issue further (based on what I read on various forums).

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About that C3B3, I can't find any decent demos of it on the internet. I see plenty of youtubes where someone is dinking around with it, but nothing where somebody is actually making it sound like a jazz b3.

 

I use a roland VK8 for all my organs, but I'd love to quit carting it around, and just midi to an ipad with drawbars on the screen. I'd sure like to hear the thing in action first though.

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The gospel musicians guys are behind the neosoul rhodes I believe, and they've got an ipad version forthcoming. The more I research, it's looking like maybe all I need is an ipad, an alesis IO dock, and maybe a chicken systems translator to get my Akai S6000 samples ported over to ESX24 format. From there, it's just a matter of loading them into garageband on the ipad.

 

So, with a mere $750 or so, I'll have me an ipad-based sample player/rompler.

 

I went ahead and downloaded the C3B3 app onto my wife's old iphone 3GS just to try it out, and best I can tell it's pretty good. The drawbars work well, the percussion sounds right, it doesn't percuss (?) when there's already a key held (big complaint with most rompler organs), the leslie sounds ok. I think I could get a lot of use out of it. I am wondering how well an ipad would switch back and forth between garageband with a huge rhodes patch, and standalone apps like C3B3 and animoog. I figure it's probably pretty quick, but if anybody here has experience doing such things, I'd love to hear how it works out.

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I've not played with GB much but I'd agree that the organ might have the edge over the c3b3 one but the c3b3 app is still pretty cool.

 

Re the ipad and switching apps. When you 'close' an app on the ipad it does not actually close, it goes into the background. This is good and bad.

 

To switch between them you must press the button (at the bottom of the device) twice. This brings up a 'task bar' from where you can either close apps down or select it to bring it to the front (just hitting the icon the desktop to start it again does the same thing) so you only really need to use the task bar to close apps down.

 

The good.

 

You can run multiple apps all receiving midi say and have them ALL play, I like having animoog going in the background and the c3b3 in the front (c3b3 does not seem to receive midi if it's in the background, other apps seems ok).

Switching between apps is in general pretty quick. Main button to send current app to the background then hit the icon on the screen for the app you want, if it's already runing it will just come to the front again. Helps to have all the apps you want to switch on one screen so you don't have to scroll to get to them.

 

The bad.

 

Unless you use the task bar to end them, apps are always running. This means that if they are listening for midi, they might play when you think you have shut them down because really, they are just in the background. Can be annoying when you forget about an app running. Putting the ipad into sleep mode does not end them either so next time you fire it up, if anything was running it's still there. Can get slightly annoying when you get unexpected sounds from something in the back ground.

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Ok, I went ahead and bought an Alesis IO Dock, and after playing around with various samplers for a couple of hours I have a few opinions to share that might be helpful to anyone else wanting to use the ipad as a sample player.

 

- The Alesis IO Dock is great. Everything I hoped it would be.

 

- Ipad Garageband has some good some sounds, but the polyphony sucks. The rhodes, for instance, yields only 7 notes of polyphony. Absolutely won't work. Its b3 sounds really good though, and is very controllable. I think I can get some use out of it. I don't think I'm going to be carting my Roland VK7 to gigs anymore.

 

- Bismark works very well as a sample player. It's basically just a soundfont player, and soundfonts are fairly easy to create. I make a scaled-down Scarbee Rhodes (every black key, only four velocities, no looping though), 220MB or so, and it pulls up in seconds in Bismark, and plays just perfectly. I did have to change Bismark from 22khz playback to 44khz; not sure why it defaults to 44. Also, Bismark has a built-in http server so it's very easy to transfer your soundfont files to it.

 

- The c3b3 app isn't a very good b3. It seemed fine when I was dinking around with it on an iphone, but via a real keyboard and into a good sound system it just doesn't cut it for me. The ADSR seems to have too long a release, and the keyclicks are a little too clicky. I like the Garageband b3 much more.

 

There's no layering capability in Bismark as far as I can tell, so any layers would need to be sampled that way. Some may find this as a show stopper, it doesn't really bother me though. All I ever play is rhodes, organs, acoustic piano, and an occasional lead sound.

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Yeah, C3B3 is crappy, but its also pretty old. If I remember correctly its made for 1-2nd gen iPhones. ORGAN+ might be better, but I haven't tried it, because Garage Bands organ seems to fill my needs perfectly.(still waiting IK iRig to arrive, so I can really try it). Also, most really good stuff works with iPhone 3GS. Can't wait to see what they are able to do with iPhone 4S/iPad 2.

 

I hope someone would make audio/midi interface for iPhone too, as I'm still waiting to get iPad(3). Could that IO dock work with iPhone in any way...sure would look ugly, but it would work so beautifully. Or Akai 49?

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There's no layering capability in Bismark as far as I can tell, so any layers would need to be sampled that way. Some may find this as a show stopper, it doesn't really bother me though. All I ever play is rhodes, organs, acoustic piano, and an occasional lead sound.

 

Lack of layering wouldn't really bother me, because it would not be my only sound source anyway. I'd probably pick keyboards with their own sounds to use as controllers for any rig I'd have anyway

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I gigged with the ipad last weekend and thought I'd share the results here.

 

I had settled on using the garageband B3, and Bismark loaded up with 220MB of Scarbee Rhodes. It's not the full Scarbee, but it's enough to be better than any synth's rhodes I've ever played - better than Nord, Korg SV1, Roland SRX12. It sounded great and loaded almost instantly on the ipad2.

 

First I used all the above in a practice session with the band via a Juno Stage midi'd into the Alesis IO Dock. The midi latency was pretty noticeable, and I experienced a LOT of hung/stuck midi notes. I was worried that it just wasn't going to work out. I persisted though, researched a little, and found that newer firmware for the IO Dock supposedly improved the latency issues and completely fixed the hung notes.

 

So off to the gig I took it. I put the IO Dock on a music stand at a 90

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Great info there!

 

I wonder how much the Alesis may have contributed to problems... it would have been interesting to try running the Juno Stage into it via the Camera Connection Kit (whether via straight USB if that would work, or with a standard MIDI interface).

 

By default, your sustain pedal should have worked to switch Leslie speed in garageband. Unfortunately, it's not a toggle... it's hold for fast, release for slow, but it's better than aiming for the screen, as you discovered.

 

Did you have Bismark and Garageband running simultaneously? I was concerned that IOS' limited multitasking might not have been up to the task of real-time MIDI To both foreground and background apps... that's pretty impressive if that worked. And do you have the original iPad or the iPad 2?

 

Did you have garageband set to only respond to a particular MIDI channel? I was looking to see if there was a way to do that, but didn't find it in my brief attempt.

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Alesis IO Dock. The midi latency was pretty noticeable, and I experienced a LOT of hung/stuck midi notes.

 

 

Did you update the IO Dock firmware? I've seen reports of similar issues from other IO Dock users - the fix is in the firmware update.

 

Also, Neo Soul Keys was just released.

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Did you have garageband set to only respond to a particular MIDI channel? I was looking to see if there was a way to do that, but didn't find it in my brief attempt.

I didn't mess with any midi settings in garageband, so it's doing whatever it does by default upon install.

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Just checked out the neo soul rhodes video, here:

 

[video=youtube;X333aGew8xw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X333aGew8xw

 

Sounds great, but it's packaged into garageband. That makes me worry about the polyphony. The garageband rhodes delivers all of SEVEN notes of polyphony. Never any more than that, and that's pretty much useless for me. No holding the sustain pedal down and gliding down the keys from the top down; it's very unnatural. Unless the neosoul guys have done something magical, his rhodes will suffer the same limitations.

 

For the record - Bismark polyphony playing soundfonts is much more than seven notes, or perhaps it's engineered smarter than garageband - smart enough to keep playing the longer-sustaining notes and shut off the ones that have already died way down. I can do the sustained glide down on Bismark and not hear it cutting notes off, unlike garageband's rhodes.

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Sounds great, but it's packaged into garageband. That makes me worry about the polyphony. The garageband rhodes delivers all of SEVEN notes of polyphony. Never any more than that, and that's pretty much useless for me. No holding the sustain pedal down and gliding down the keys from the top down; it's very unnatural. Unless the neosoul guys have done something magical, his rhodes will suffer the same limitations.


For the record - Bismark polyphony playing soundfonts is much more than seven notes, or perhaps it's engineered smarter than garageband - smart enough to keep playing the longer-sustaining notes and shut off the ones that have already died way down. I can do the sustained glide down on Bismark and not hear it cutting notes off, unlike garageband's rhodes.

 

 

Really sounds good!

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Sounds great, but it's packaged into garageband. That makes me worry about the polyphony. The garageband rhodes delivers all of SEVEN notes of polyphony. Never any more than that, and that's pretty much useless for me. No holding the sustain pedal down and gliding down the keys from the top down; it's very unnatural. Unless the neosoul guys have done something magical, his rhodes will suffer the same limitations.


For the record - Bismark polyphony playing soundfonts is much more than seven notes, or perhaps it's engineered smarter than garageband - smart enough to keep playing the longer-sustaining notes and shut off the ones that have already died way down. I can do the sustained glide down on Bismark and not hear it cutting notes off, unlike garageband's rhodes.

 

 

Wow! Nice sounds!

 

Garage band is a bit more workstationish, than performance oriented instrument, and they might be worried about polyphony per track and fixed the amount of notes each instrument can play. Now that some of those instruments have proven to be gig-worthy, I wish they could make a performance mode or something, where you don't need so many tracks and liberate the full polyphony for couple of layers to eat.

 

As its also a home friendly app, perhaps they could also step into Casio's toes and conquer functions from arranger areas too. There's already transposition function, but thats not quite real time yet.

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