Apogee
Very exciting iOS news at Winter NAMM: Apogee has brought their popular audio interfaces to the iPad and iPhone! At the trade show, held in late January in Anaheim, California, the company unveiled iOS-compatible versions of their One (1-in/2-out), Duet (2-in/2-out), and Quartet (4-in/6-out) audio interfaces – as well as an iOS version of their Maestro router/mixer control software for managing the I/O and latency on those interfaces when used under iOS.
The new version of the One for iPad and Mac has a few other nice new additions, such as multiple input options, a new molded rubber base, a die-cast aluminum body, USB 2.0 support, and sample-rate support up to 96kHz. The One can even charge your iPad when you’re connected. Apogee’s Duet for iPad and Mac has also been significantly updated.
If you already own a Quartet, your interface can be updated for iOS support. A new firmware download and install is required for your device, and you’ll need to buy a 30-pin iOS cable for your interface. But that’s it – and if you bought your Apogee interface after January 1, 2013, you qualify for a free cable.
With the free Maestro iOS app, you can control the input selection, Soft Limit, preamp gain, phantom power, polarity (Duet and Quartet only), and group selection (Duet and Quartet only) – as well as view input meters on your iPad or iPhone. All three interfaces require either a 30-pin Apple Camera Connection Kit or, for a new iPad, a Lightning-connector-to-30-pin adapter.
The list of compatible audio interfaces for iOS devices continues to grow, and these three additions from Apogee bring even more parity between what’s available for computers and what’s available for iOS devices.
Steinberg
Speaking of exciting news, the first major DAW manufacturer has launched a version of their software for iOS! (I guess you could argue that Apple was the first with Garageband, but I don’t consider that a version of Logic; I consider it a different app.) Steinberg’s Cubasis offers audio and MIDI recording and editing, built-in effects, a powerful mixer, and much more. With an iPad 4 or an iPad mini, you can get up to 64 tracks of audio.
Each track can have up to three insert effects, and there are also three send effects per track. MIDI tracks can be used to drive the virtual instruments that come in Cubasis, or you can route to external instruments – there are even a piano-roll editor, a quantize function, and other MIDI editing features.
Once you’re finished with your project, you can bounce down to a stereo mix or export an individual file for each track. You can then choose to e-mail those files to yourself or a collaborator, send them to Dropbox for access on a computer, send the mix to SoundCloud, or use iTunes to transfer the files to your computer – lots of nice options!
If you’re a Cubase or Nuendo user, you’re going to feel right at home with Cubasis. The look and feel are similar – you may even find that Cubasis is faster to get around on than your DAW software.