IK Multimedia iRig and AmpliTube iPhone app Back in the days when I was lugging around a beefy Peavey Centurion Mark III bass-amp head, if you had told me that someday I'd be gigging with my phone I would have slowly backed away, thinking that you were either dangerously high or simply deranged. But now, with my iPhone and IK Multimedia's AmpliTube iRig, that phone- …
A drummer. Bass players have to know *both* the time sig AND the the key they're playing in. It's basic, and will probably be out of tune but is more than banging tunelessly on objects. Add a bit of orchestral foot-pedal action a la, say, Adam Clayton, and you start to approach actual talent.
A drummer is somebody who hangs out with a bass player.
In a similar vein:
So the band go backstage before a big gig and they find their bassist beating the crap out of a roadie. They pry him off.
What's with you?" demands the lead guitarist.
"He's a wanker!" replies the bassist.
"Alright," says the vocalist, "but what's he done?"
"He's de-tuned one of the strings on my bass!" yells the bassist. "And he won't fucking tell me which one!"
Standard Disclaimer: I play bass.
What do you call a van driver that hangs around with musicians?
A drummer.
--
A budding young drummer goes into a music store:
" I'm a drummer and I wanna join a Heavy Metal band. What do you recommend so that the lads take me seriously?"
"Well, the old Bedford CF is a perennial favourite, but to really make 'em take notice you want a Transit."
The pain of getting files from a computer onto an iWhatever such that they can be accessed by a particular app is a familiar issue, common to every app that needs to do that. Apple's security sandboxing, combined with the fact that there is no built in wired way to get data from computer to device means every app has to either roll their own wireless connection to a custom server on the host, or, as people are increasingly begining to do, use cloud storage such as Dropbox. Its completely insane, and one of the main barriers to serious apps on the platform, though it looks like Apple is slowly beginning to cotton to this with the iPad, and is beginning to make some provision for it.
Hopefully later iOS revisions will improve matters. In the meantime, this isn't something to really hold against any given app, since its Apple's fault, not the app's developers.
I can't imagine taking a small, delicate effects box made of glass on stage with me. When they were designing the input jack thingy, they should have gone further and enclosed the phone in a gig-proof case, protecting the screen and the 3.5mm plug that's itching to come out at the worst possible moment. If this was properly gig-hardened then I'd definitely go for it.
So what we have is a low cost Audio Interface plus FX; the kind of thing that Line6 used to do really well before they stopped supporting OSX (their kit still doesn't run on Snow Leopard afaik).
Which is fantastic news.
Now, how do I get it into my Mac? Presumably it's sitting on the iPhone in digitised format already, so I don't want to go through the DAC/ADC pain of using the audio output from headphones.
Can I just sync the iPhone & grab it? Ideally in clean as well as FX-added versions.
And is there a version that takes an XLR cable rather than a guitar jack..?
I use my Line6 TonePort KB37 just fine with Snow Leopard.
Looking forward to trying the iRig out and see if I can use the cloud to get any decent files to my DAW of choice.
I am going to try a mini jack to XLR adaptor and try my luck - you never know.
For what it is and what it costs, it seems to offer decent value, whether I would gig with it - hmmm that will have to depend on the venue.
Anyone seriously proposing to take that on stage needs a reality check. This will happen on about your third or fourth gig (the first couple, you'll be extra-careful with everything) when you move a little too far away. Your jack lead pulls on this gadget, which detaches the mini-jack out to the amp or PA, with an audience-deafening and speaker-damaging POP! It then pulls the iPhone onto the floor, smashes the screen and damages the socket, leaving you unable to do anything with it. Or you get halfway through your last set and the iPhone runs out of power. Or you forget to turn off calling, or the calendar decides to let you know about something, and your audience is greeted with 1kW of ringtone.
Don't get me wrong, it's a neat toy. But it's got no place on a stage. Its place is exactly where IK say it belongs, which is as a headphone amp on steroids.
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