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.
Simple wired ipad midi out to PC
So I purchased a couple of midi apps on the AppStore and thought it would be simple to send midi to my PC, turns out I'm going to have to spend more money to get this setup to work. I don't care about midi in to an ipad or controlling my ipad with a keyboard or other device. I just want to send some arpeggiated midi signals to my PC.
Everywhere I have read recommends using either a yamaha imx1, irig midi, line 6 mobilizer or apparently a USB-to-lightning cable, the problem is that the first 3 require another adapter from 30 pin to lightning, and the apple USB to lightning requires another USB to USB cable..... Also, how does this even do anything? Its going from lightning to USB to PC, with or without the adapter, so what's the difference, and if there is a difference then is there a PC software bridge of some sort.... I don't even mind bodging together a few cables, I just don't want to spend another lump of money on something that might not be necessary.
Tl;dr I need the simplest and cheapest way to get midi out from ipad to PC. Any help would be greatly appreciated thank you.
Specs:
IPad mini retina
I5 4370k running win 7
Komplete audio 6
Maschine 2.1.0 & mikro mk1
Ian
Comments
As a first step, I'd try rtpMIDI:
http://www.tobias-erichsen.de/software/rtpmidi.html
This will give you a WiFi MIDI connection between the iPad and your PC, and it might be fast enough. WiFi can have some latency and jitter, but it works for quite a few people (and it's free).
If the latency is too much for your needs, I'd suggest:
Apple Camera Connection kit (to get the USB connector)
2x cheap-o USB-to-MIDI cables (about $5 each on Amazon)
2x MIDI DIN female-to-female adapters (probably about $5 as well).
I've had good luck with the inexpensive USB MIDI cables. It's kind of a kludge, but it works.
If you were going to a Mac, I'd recommend something else….
And one other thought -- a bit of a higher price point, but the iConnectMIDI boxes look pretty darned sweet.
Re WiFi - latency is better if you run an ad-hoc hosted on your PC rather than use your house WiFi. Hook the PC to the house router using an Ethernet cable instead if you need both. Windows can handle both at once.
Curious - if you want to run arps from the iPad to the PC, but are not interested in feeding MIDI into the iPad, how are you keying the Arp?
I'm betting that once you get this baby into your workflow you'll find its uses growing. If you get to view it as an outboard processor (which it is very good at) then as @secretbasedesign suggests, an iConnectMIDI2+ makes that work a treat.
Hey thank you for your suggestions, sorry the reply took so long. I went with rptmidi and for a while this worked but the lag was annoying after a while. I went out and bought an apple camera connection kit which was on offer and whilst all my midi controllers connect to my Ipad and work fine, I can't get midi to my PC, is where a software midi router for USB connections? I can't get input our output from my daw
Other than the iCOnnectMIDI products I dont know of a direct connection using only USB. But you could buy a $6 HDE DIN - USB adapter for your iPad hub and plug its DIN ends into your PC MIDI interface.