Recording on the iPad, a newbie question

[Osiris]

A mate of mine has approached me with a view to do some writing and recording together and he wants to use the iPad as a portable entry level recording tool.  He uses GarageBand, Cubasis and a couple of other apps for drums and guitar amp sims. He's lent me his old iPad so that I can jot down some bass lines and rhythms, the plan being to share ideas between us so the other can work on their parts in their own time. I'll be using my Zoom B3 as a recording interface.

This is all new ground for me, the last time I did any recording was around 20 years ago on an old Marantz cassette based portastudio, so we're looking to keep things simple for now before possibly investing and upgrading at a later date if things work out.

It looks like I need to buy the Apple Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter, which costs a whopping £39, which I personally think is a lot of money for what is basically a no frills cable. There are cheaper non-Apple versions of the cable on eBay for a far more palatable sum of £10 or so. Has anyone used one? Are they just as good as the official cable or are they a waste of money? Does anyone know of any alternative cables etc that would fit the bill?

[sticker]

No experience of the specific lead you refer to but I once bought a cheaper "Chinese" iRig from Ebay which was so noisy upon arriving that it was for all intents and purposes useless ... make of that what you will .

[TorturedSaints]

Are you certain that the B3 will work with the iPad?  I had a quick google and it looked as though some people hadn't managed to make it work.   I haven't used the cheap Camera Adaptors, but you can get Focusrite iTrack solos second hand for around that sort of money, although possibly not the latest version with lightning.  

[SubsonicSimpleton]

The official Usb 3 dongle linked in the OP can be bought cheaper from PC World (£30 IIRC) but not every branch stocks it. Do make sure that you check what you are buying carefully, as PC world staff are pretty clueless and it took them 3 attempts to give me the correct device.

It works with any class compliant usb device according to apple,  I can confirm that the zoom B3 works fine (I have both the B3 and this adapter).  There are however a couple of important caveats;

Firstly ipads are restricted to a very low power output on the USB bus, so any USB device needs to be either powered by it's own power supply, or you need to use a powered usb hub between the ipad and usb device.

Secondly although ipads do some things very well, file transfer definately isn't one of them, so if you want to transfer stems to/from the ipad, be prepared for having to mess about with complicated workarounds.

[linear]

3 hours ago, SubsonicSimpleton said:

Firstly ipads are restricted to a very low power output on the USB bus, so any USB device needs to be either powered by it's own power supply, or you need to use a powered usb hub between the ipad and usb device.

Is this the case even with a power supply connected to the lightning connector on the adapter?

[SubsonicSimpleton]

Yes as far as I am aware - I looked into this in some depth a while back, and IOS restricts the outgoing current to a very low level to prolong battery life, as far as I'm aware it isn't possible to hack this limit (and probably not that smart even if it was possible due to the flimsy nature of the lightning port and low power output of standard ipad chargers).

[jposega]

Get something like an Apogee Jam or Line 6 Sonic Port instead of trying to use a USB converter. There’s no guarantee the iPad will see the B3 as an input source over USB, but it’ll work just like with an amp if you get an iOS audio interface.

[linear]

10 hours ago, SubsonicSimpleton said:

Yes as far as I am aware - I looked into this in some depth a while back, and IOS restricts the outgoing current to a very low level to prolong battery life, as far as I'm aware it isn't possible to hack this limit (and probably not that smart even if it was possible due to the flimsy nature of the lightning port and low power output of standard ipad chargers).

Thanks for confirming this.  I have a USB hub, but I was vainly hoping this new version of the adapter might pass through power from a power supply connected to the lightning connector.  The blurb from Apple softly implies that it does, but reviews suggested it does not.  Thinking about it now, I guess it couldn't do that and supply sufficient current to charge the iPad at the same time.

So, I think I'll go with a cheapie version off Amazon, and just return it if it doesn't work with my devices.

 

[Osiris]

Thank for the the information so far folks. 

It's proving more difficult to share files between us than we thought (although this may well be down to ignorance of what we are doing) so at the minute the current plan is that I carry on recording ideas on my PC using the Zoom as an interface into Audacity and send him these as m4a files. He's then working out guitar parts and we're recording on his iPad as his interface (can't remember exactly what it is) works just fine with it. 

[lowdown]

I know the OP mentioned that it is cables that he is after. But, upping you budget makes things a lot easier.

One of my boys uses a Behringer iStudio (It works a treat).

He then just uploads audio files (and Midi files) to Dropbox for someone else to pick up/download. These days, recording on an iPad couldn't be any easier. Plus there are plenty of free storage sites to upload files and share (even Google Drive)

iStudio £75. (Includes Midi and Video functions as well). 

https://www.gear4music.com/Recording-and-Computers/Behringer-iStudio-iS202-iPad-Mixer-Dock/PPD?origin=product-ads&utm_campaign=PLA+Shop+-+Behringer&utm_medium=vertical_search&network=google&adgroup=1+-+Product+Level+-+Behringer&merchant_id=1279443&product_id=33313d1&product_country=GB&product_partition_id=111959152399&gclid=CjwKCAiAqbvTBRAPEiwANEkyCO2GB7RZUZMlbBMicYEG5TibrB65QRB_LpfO-1gDsMOlUnIod-wscRoCeykQAvD_BwE

 

And of course (mentioned below), Audioshare & AudioCopyfor native sharing between Apps on your iPad and Cloud storage.

Edited January 29, 2018 by lowdown

[dannybuoy]

Look into an app called AudioShare. I don't know it that well but I downloaded it ages ago and it helps to share audio files between apps or to and from cloud storage!