Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
(Surprised) thumbs up for SampleTank
So I went ahead and bought SampleTank during the IK sale and have to say I'm very impressed with the sounds. I thought I was getting what would probably be a pale imitation of the do-it-all VSTs for desktop with maybe a few useful sounds, but I think they absolutely hold their own to what I get from Dimension Pro and Kontakt (the 2 I mainly use in Sonar on my desktop). I also got the Pro expansion pack, Sonic Synth Mobile, and the "All Sounds" pack, which for some reason I didn't have to pay $25 for (?!), and I think they sound fantastic. So, one person's opinion only, but if anyone's been not buying SampleTank because they're expecting underwhelming, generic knock offs of better desktop VSTs, my opinion has been greatly changed.
BTW, if anyone knows why I got the "All sounds pack" for free, please let me know. Not complaining. 
Comments
It's a pretty useful workhorse, and indeed some of the sounds are great. American Acoustic is my favourite pack, but many of the others are also well worth it.
I'm not sure how you got "all sounds" for free, but congrats mate.
I've always been a supporter of Sampletank basically for all the reasons you've listed above and then some, even purchasing a new iRig keyboard just to get the sounds only unlockable by buying a piece of kit from IK.
I'm also going on record as saying I got most of the expansion packs (except the loop-based Electronika series for now) and find the investment highly worth it! The sheer palette of sounds one gets is enormous! Miroslav 1 and 2 both will give you more than everything you'll need to score orchestral music with.
The only two very minor drawbacks of Sampletank are no state saving in AB, and no multiple outs yet. I wrote IK about this, and they replied that they told the developers, so we shall see what happens. (If you feel motivated to do so, you too can write IK. Maybe more than one customer voice can make them realise that multiple outs, AB state saving, and hell, maybe an AU wrapper can all make iOS Sampletank that much better of a musical experience.
) However, these two drawbacks are so small compared to how great the app is, you don't even notice that much.
Fair comment. State saving would probably up my radar/interest/use...
I think the All sounds pack is for purchase only in the SampleTank FREE app and already included in the SampleTank (not free) app and I'm guessing you have the latter.
Unfortunately, that is NOT the case.
I got it free(the paid version) quite a while back and personally dont really care for it. I prefer synths over this sort of sample tanks for synthy sounds and there are apps for pretty much all other type of sounds this offers.
I see. Should have checked first. There's an Upgrade to SampleTank and an All Sound Packs in the SampleTank FREE and those look like two separate purchases.
@firejan82, I considered that, but I only paid $10 for SampleTank and the All Sounds Pack is $25, so that wouldn't make sense for anyone to buy SampleTank Free and then pay $25 to get the sounds they could've gotten for $10. When I hit the All Sounds Pack icon within SampleTank to purchase it, it suddenly showed up as "installed". I verified that I have all the sounds that the IK website says are in the pack. Strange, since they never even seemed to download. The idea that they downloaded with the main app installation is the only one I can figure, but, weird. I'll take it!
@richardyot, American Acoustic is HIGH on my list. The demos I listened to on the website were extremely impressive. It's not included in the sale so I'm not in a huge rush, but I'll be picking it up soon I'm sure. Can you fill me in a little bit on the layout of the pack? Do you only get individual string sounds, or are there strums, different articulations, various rhythm patterns, etc? I've always been intrigued by acoustic guitar VSTs, and how at least on the demos it's almost impossible to tell it's not a real, strumming human being. I've just never owned one so I don't know how they work. Thanks for the feedback!
I really like it, the sounds are great and there's many ways to drive it: Guitar Capo, Guitarism, Geo Shred, or MIDI from the piano roll. There's lots of articulations for strums and finger picking, here's a sample using the "soft finger style" one, using one of the MIDI picking patterns from Chordbot:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cv7v8f47u19ohdj/American Acoustic.wav?dl=0
Really helpful, @richardyot, thanks for sharing!
Folks, I'm a bit of a midi simpleton and wonder if its possible to record the drum loops out of sampletank into cubasis as midi patterns? There's some great loops in sampletank but i'm not wild about the sampletank drum samples (i've got the v1 acoustic drums pack and sonik synth). If it were possible to record/export the midi patterns, i reckon I'd get a lot more use out of the app. Thanks for any advice on this one.