Ik Multimedia - iRig

[IK_Support]

What about Android?!

Not yet, but we are considering any really valid platforms.

Shipping in Europe starts tomorrow apparently and the 7th in the US! Can't wait to hear what people think.

[IK_Support]

And now the shipping starts... Check out the pics added: http://bit.ly/cDLmSi

[IK_Support]

People are receiving them already - first "unboxing" video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voCI-VS_mvw

[IK_Support]

This one pretty much closes the latency question up: New video - Richard Fortus of Guns N' Roses says "the most interesting thing to happen to the iPhone yet": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfMGZ2tx2TE

[IK_Support]

iRig is arriving to folks all over now! Here's a first user demo video, right after it arrived: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnOUQNm2zQA

[gastric]

I have no doubt the actual hardware/software combo is totally usable. But how EASY is it to play along with the music already on my iPod Touch? Right now I use a Pandora for my amp sim and headphone amp, and feed it music from my iPod or computer (or whatever, really). It'd be super awesome to just use this on my iPod instead.

[Psychedelic Cowboy]

If you do decide to release for Android I'll buy in a second. It looks great!

[IK_Support]

I have no doubt the actual hardware/software combo is totally usable. But how EASY is it to play along with the music already on my iPod Touch? Right now I use a Pandora for my amp sim and headphone amp, and feed it music from my iPod or computer (or whatever, really). It'd be super awesome to just use this on my iPod instead.

You have to import the songs from your computer due to the fact that the iPod plays at a huge 1024 samples and we are 128 or 256 depending on the setting. We'd have to run at 1024 and you'd have unbearable latency if you wanted to play along with what's already on your device. I believe all the third-party playback/streaming also introduce this same latency.

[IK_Support]

Here's a new video of Jon Herington, Steely Dan guitarist, playing a few of their classic tunes through AmpliTube iRig and getting some surprisingly convincing tones: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4D2IVZlwz0

[shanecgriffo]

got mine.. very low latency, sounds nice (a tiny bit of noise but not bad at all when you're playing)
some extra bits would be nice tho.. eq pedal, (7 or 10 band) a compressor pedal, an orange amp and jazz chorus amp and maybe a model of a small(10w?) vintage valve amp. Pretty fun tho as is!

-cool video too (steely dan)

[gastric]

Just picked up an iRig and Amplitube free for my wife to use with her bass guitar as she loves her iPod Touch to death and her current Line6 software based practice setup is annoying to use as it kills the internal sound card and disconnects her computer speakers. I was going to buy a used Korg Pandora which would let her feed bass and her iPod and sum them to headphones but this seemed like an even better, not to mention cheaper, solution.

I'm home right now and she's not so I'm testing it with my bass guitar and my iPhone 3GS running OS4. She has an iPod Touch 32GB.

Note I have not yet purchased any additional paid add-ons, I'm only using Amplitube FREE.

Here are some comments based on my first 30 minutes of playing with this.

* Biggest issue - It is much too difficult to play along with MP3s. For starters, you can only play along with MP3 if you have computers and your phone all on the same WIFI network. I do, but I'd think some users wouldn't and you're eliminating their ability to play with MP3. I don't want to understand the technical issues, I just want it to be easy. You should be able to fully access the music on my device and import them within Amplitube without an external tools necessary. I'm an iDiot with an iPhone, this should be be silly, stupid easy. The lengthy "expanding" process that occurs the first time you play a song within Amplitube is annoying, but I can deal with that.
* There should be a way to purchase ALL add-ons in an inexpensive bundle. If there is, I didn't see this offered directly within the Amplitube iPhone app. I only saw each effect/amp offered individually. I haven't checked the iTunes store yet, but I'd hope there's a way to just buy EVERYTHING offered in one fell swoop.
* There should be a clean amp provided with the free version. I am initially trying this with my bass and it's fairly unusable due to the distortion applied even with low gain on the free LEAD amp. I have to have Gain set to 2 or less to kill the high frequency noise and bring the bass into a more audible spectrum. However, Gain = 2 also kills nearly all of the instrument volume, even with Volume = 10 and headphone volume all the way up. I can still hear my bass, it's just not particularly loud now.
* There is a LOT of background noise that I have not been able to get rid of. Plug no instrument into the iRig at all and you can hear a lot of "unstable" mid/low frequency noise. The Noise Filter effect does an excellent job of removing the high end hiss but not this mid/low frequency noise.
* Interacting with the app often causes the sound to break up and sometimes background noises are amplified during this time. For example, have a song playing, then click between Song and Tools. I was on FX1 playing with the free distortion, clicked Add Amp/FX, and there was ear crunching static blasted through my headphones for a second or two.
* Sometimes there's just random bouts of much louder noise. I'm sitting here, instrument with volume all the way down, iPhone just sitting on my desk with Amplitube on, and occasionally I'll get a few seconds of really loud noise in my headphones.
* If you want to hear some REALLY loud noise, click Tools and turn on the Tuner. It's almost unbearably loud and obnoxious. At this time I have no instrument cable plugged into the iRig and the amp's main volume is set to the absolute minimum. Unsure why engaging the tuner has this effect on the noise floor. Testing this further, I unplugged my iRig and plugged headphones straight into the iPhone and couldn't hear this same thing, so that leads me to believe the iRig is adding the noise I'm hearing. Playing just a song, no instrument connected to iRig, then turning on the tuner significantly boosts the song's volume. Odd stuff related to the tuner. Note the tuner itself works well.
* I'm not sure how I did this, but at some point from bopping around the app I managed to get Amplitube so it wouldn't apply any of the FX. I'd select an effects in any of the blocks, toggle the bypass, the effect would never be applied even though visually the bypass was off (effect on). I had to restart Amplitube to get them to work again.

Note I tend to focus on the BAD things more than the GOOD.

In the extremely near future I'll try this on my wife's iPod Touch and buy the bass add-on so I can see how it really performs with bass guitar. I also plan on getting Peterson's iStrobotuner for use with setting up intonation and will use the iRig with that.

I'm hopeful this is just V1 of the Amplitube app and it'll improve in the future.

[IK_Support]

regarding the import of MP3s... without getting too techy, we could import directly from the device but then we would have to make it an iOS 4 only app. That wasn't going to sit well unfortunately.

There shouldn't be some huge noise floor increase with the tuner engaged and the other noise issues that I know of or have experienced. Might want to drop a note to http://bit.ly/irigsupport on that one.

Good suggestion on the clean amp, and thank you for the honest opinion. Much appreciated. Oh, and that problem with the FX should probably be reported too. Seems like that shouldn't happen at all.

Thanks!

Also, the iPad native version of AmpliTube is in the App Store now too for those with iPad. Here's a cool "picture-in-picture" video that creates a looped-style piece, done with AmpliTube iRig (on iPhone): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laPaZiqmPrM

Also, check out Dave Matthews Band bassist Stefan Lessard showing off iRig (getting some convincing DMB tones out of iRig) and also showing off his live rig using Mac Minis and AmpliTube/Ampeg SVX! http://bit.ly/ny1pre

[jmtaylor22]

I kind of agree on the noise as well, it is pretty noisy overall. I tried it on my IPhone 3G and an Ipod Touch and there is a lot of hiss/white noise at least with my adapter.

Maybe we just got bad adapters I don't know, but to me the signal to noise ratio is off, I wonder if they need (like most amp sims) the ability to adjust input/output volume for the app as a whole.

My two main complaints is that the guitar is not all that loud, especially in relation to the background noise. I have to turn the headphone volume on full with my headphones, and get white noise that is probably 1/3 to 1/2 as loud as the guitar.

My guitars are pretty low output in terms of pickup output (telecasters), in Amplitube 3 that is not a problem as my interface adjusts the input volume, I wonder if that missing piece is the issue unless you have higher output pickups.

[IK_Support]

Noise is inherent to the input jack on the device and we've minimized a lot via hardware.

I missed the item about all items in a bundle is that we do have that - AmpliTube Full

Another tip for the breaking up while interacting with the app please also do the following:
Rreboot the phone
Put it in Airplane mode
Use if fully charged or connected to the charger

[gastric]

Yes, I see LE and Full in the iTunes store. However, you should make that available within the actual free app as well. Currently it only shows you one-off add-ons such as stomps and amps. Market the LE and Full in there, too, if possible. Just my suggestion.

[IK_Support]

Yes, I see LE and Full in the iTunes store. However, you should make that available within the actual free app as well. Currently it only shows you one-off add-ons such as stomps and amps. Market the LE and Full in there, too, if possible. Just my suggestion.

Good point, especially since Full is the most economically feasible option to get it all! Thank you.

[shanecgriffo]

i'm pretty sure i was getting quite a bit of noise when not in airplane mode so make sure to flick the switch!
also where i first tried it they had some decorative tiny x-mas type lights that were blinking on and off and
these were causing a lot of interference, had to switch them off!, so look for possible interfering things too

[IK_Support]

i'm pretty sure i was getting quite a bit of noise when not in airplane mode so make sure to flick the switch!
also where i first tried it they had some decorative tiny x-mas type lights that were blinking on and off and
these were causing a lot of interference, had to switch them off!, so look for possible interfering things too

Airplane Mode for sure (plus you won't be bothered with those annoying phone calls while you are trying to play). Also, if you can have a good bit (or full) charge and play without being connected to a charger, which is especially prone to interference when charging via USB on a computer, it will help too.

[Guitar_Hero]

Hope they will also release the Android version!

[residentour]

I will buy if a Symbian S60v5 version comes (not everyone uses iphone). IK Support do you have plans for that version or others?

[IK_Support]

I will buy if a Symbian S60v5 version comes (not everyone uses iphone). IK Support do you have plans for that version or others?

We look at all viable platforms but to be 100% honest we'd look to Android next if anything. There's no coding still, we look at the platform/hardware and the market at this point.

1.0.1 AmpliTube For iPhone update is available

- general reliability improvements
- improved usability with cycling gear selection
- iPhone 4 compatible

Also, please update and update reviews/ratings (or review/rate if you have not already done so: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/amplitub ... 24000?mt=8

[blessthefall]

Can I use the iRig as a line in for my computer? or does it only work with the iphone/ipad?

[AZMully]

You can do line out to your computer.

I have found when using other than headphones, the volume seems to be much lower for some reason. Having the iphone volume all the way up, I find I still have to crank the volume on my stereo/computer very high. Can't figure out why.

[gastric]

I finally got around to revisiting this. I purchased the $19.99 full version of Amplitube on my wife's iPod Touch, installed the iRig, plugged in my bass, and.... I'm not very impressed.

Using the bass amp, amp volume on Max, iPod volume on Max, and gain on 6 or so, the volume output is very low. It's just barely loud enough to be usable. And the sound is not very clean, it distorts fairly easily possibly because I have to run the gain on 6 just to get an audible signal. Crank the gain higher and it's pushed into permanent overdrive . The sound itself, not counting the distortion/overdrive seems decent. But I cannot get a loud yet clean sound out of the iPod Touch and Amplitube.

I do have an active ESP guitar, but have not had time to test it to see if guitar fares any better.

On the plus side I did not hear any of the previously mentioned static/hiss/crackly noises I reported using the free version of the app on my iPhone 3G. I have not had time to try the suggestion of putting the iPhone in airplane mode, though I personally wouldn't want to do that anyway. It's my PHONE and needs to be on to work as a PHONE.

At some point in the near future I'll try to get some recording of the iPod and Amplutube compared with a Pandora 4 as well as my Mesa Titan amp I personally play through.

My wife hasn't actually tried this yet so I haven't heard her comments. But she sounded extremely displeased when I described the general process of having to specifically upload songs to the iPod from her computer VS the app simply pulling from the music already on her iPod. If that is a feature you can enable with OS4 then I would STRONGLY suggest doing so. Besides being extremely inconvenient, which goes against everything the iPhone/iPod is designed for, it's simply mind boggling that there's already 8+GB of music on my device yet you cannot access it.

Note that using the software and saving presets seems easy enough to me. But the quality/clarify of the audio seems seriously lacking.

[IK_Support]

Can I use the iRig as a line in for my computer? or does it only work with the iphone/ipad?

You can use it as an alternate HI-Z/line interface if you have a MacBook produced after late 2008 or the newest iMac/Mac Mini where you can plug earbuds w/ microphone into the headphones output.

If you plug iRig there, it is recognized as external microphone by software (like AmpliTube 3)
- with the same latency settings offered by CoreAudio - and can be used as an affordable alternative to a USB interface for guitar, bass or other HI-Z or line out instruments.