This product is a great idea in theory, but it breaks down in practice. I picked this unit up in hopes of having a very small interface for an iPhone based looping rig with Loopy Pro. However, the unit has issues with latency and crackles sporadically. The sound quality is also sub-par compared to an iRig Pro. I recommend looking elsewhere if you need a small iOS interface.

I bought the device to use my iPad to play tracks during a theater-type holiday show. Since I'm just using it for playback I haven't tried the microphone input. The output sounds fine, especially for a $30 device. All good, so far. But there's a design flaw that you need to be aware of if you intend to handle your phone or iPad when using it.

If you look at the picture of the unit closely, you'll see there's a little plastic ridge thingy (I'm sure this is the technical term) protruding from where the lightning connector is attached. This little ridge worked great on my wife's iPhone because her (normal type of) silicon case was just the right thickness and the access-hole in it was just the right size to accomodate the ridge. I could plug the unit into her phone (with the case on), and the connection was firm AND it snugly pressed against the bottom of her phone case, making the connection reliable.

But if you don't have the perfect-thickness case with the perfect-sized hole for your phone or iPad (I don't), that little ridge is not your friend. It keeps the top sides of the unit from pressing snuggly against the bottom of your iOS device allowing the lightning plug to rock slightly. So if you move your iOS device around at all, the connection shifts around, causing static and dropouts. This is aggravated by the fact that your output cable attaches to just one end of the little unit, making more weight on one side than the other and creating a tendency to sit crooked.

I crafted a fix for this by building up the top edges of the unit with gaff tape to the height of the little ridge, so it would not rock back and forth, and then taped the whole thing onto the iPad just to make it more secure. It worked.

If I'm doing a poor job explaining it, I made a little video showing what the issue is.

For the price, the audio aspect is fine, and you'll have no problems with it, as-is, if you've got the right case or are using it for a device that won't get touched or moved. But the point of iOS devices is kinda to be touched and handled in some way.

If some clever person were to create a little silicone case to go on the unit itself, like a little wrap that's just the perfect thickness with a perfect sized hole for the ridge thingy, that would be a more elegant solution than my gaff tape craft project. I'd pay a few bucks for that. But short of that, we've all got gaff tape around somewhere.

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