Ipad Success with Axe II

M

MikeyB59

Power User
I've been wondering if the Axe II would work with an Ipad after hearing about the boot loader for the software. Here's a brief and very incomplete report from 1/2 hour of experimenting. If you plug the Ipad (with USB adaptor from camera connection kit) into the Axe, it doesn't work. However, I then plugged the Axe into my MBP with the Axe drivers on it and turned on the Axe. Then I unplugged it from the computer and plugged into the Ipad. Voila. Axe as audio interface on the Ipad. It worked great. I could immediately record Axe tracks in Garage Band and monitor through the Axe. Also worked fine in Tc Electronics Voice Jam which made for some really fun looping possibilities.

I then tried to use Midi Remote to see if I could remote control Axe parameters via Ipad. Midi Remote did not recognize the Axe as a midi interface. Wanting to play actual guitar this AM, I left it there, so I'm not sure if midi will work or not. I haven't yet tried midi with and external keyboard into Axe midi or tried other midi programs, so the midi part of testing is very incomplete. It's cool to know there's a way to get audio to work though. There's a lot of very cool programs on the Ipad that will be fun and useful with the Axe. Garage Band is great. Just discovered SampleWiz by Jordan Rudess from Dream Theater. For anyone interested in sample tweaking, this is one of the coolest tools ever. You can do things with samples on it that I've never seen anywhere else.

Mike
 
I'd love for Axe-Edit to be ported to the IPad. Can you give more details on replicating what you did to get the Axe connected to the IPad.
 
Imagine routing input 2 for an output from your mixing board of an aux out of the rest of your band -- instant band practice recording on the ipad!!
 
So what did plugging the axe into your computer before plugging it into the iPad do? Also mbp=master boot partition? I'm very interested in this as a way to track ideas. Thanks for sharing!
 
I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro, and I went master boot record too. Of course that was from years of trying to install Linux to double boot with Windoze and having those early crappy boot loaders totally trash up my MBR (hello recovery disk and fsck -f /mbr).

Ron
 
MacBook pro. Just plugged axe usb into computer that has Mac usb drivers for axe installed and turned on axe. Waited a few seconds. Pulled USB cable out and inserted into camera connection USB plugged into iPad. Works as audio interface. That's it.
 
MikeyB59 said:
MacBook pro. Just plugged axe usb into computer that has Mac usb drivers for axe installed and turned on axe. Waited a few seconds. Pulled USB cable out and inserted into camera connection USB plugged into iPad. Works as audio interface. That's it.
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Do you understand why you can't just bypass your MBP to begin with and just go into the iPad? That seems strange. Does plugging the Axe into the your MBP do something to the Axe to allow it to work with the iPad? Is the iPad connected to your MBP the whole time before you connect the Axe to it? Thanks in advance if any one can answer these questions.
 
Dolphin79 said:
Do you understand why you can't just bypass your MBP to begin with and just go into the iPad? That seems strange. Does plugging the Axe into the your MBP do something to the Axe to allow it to work with the iPad? Is the iPad connected to your MBP the whole time before you connect the Axe to it? Thanks in advance if any one can answer these questions.
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The Axe uses "soft" firmware for its USB implementation. The firmware has to be different to work properly for either a Mac or PC, so the Axe drivers you install on your computer include functionality that silently uploads the firmware for USB when the Axe is plugged into the computer. Every time you power the Axe FX on it will need to have the USB firmware uploaded from the host computer. Once you connect it to a Mac, then it will have the proper core audio compliant USB firmware to communicate with the iPad.
 
If you have to plug the Axe into the MBP before the iPad each time, what is the benefit (besides being f'n awesome) of being able to use it as an audio interface on an iPad? The whole portability factor is ruined by the need for the MBP to be there as well.
 
chapelizod said:
The Axe uses "soft" firmware for its USB implementation. The firmware has to be different to work properly for either a Mac or PC, so the Axe drivers you install on your computer include functionality that silently uploads the firmware for USB when the Axe is plugged into the computer. Every time you power the Axe FX on it will need to have the USB firmware uploaded from the host computer. Once you connect it to a Mac, then it will have the proper core audio compliant USB firmware to communicate with the iPad.
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Thanks for the explanation but that needs to be done every time he wants to use it with the iPad, uploading the firmware to the Axe? The Axe doesn't save the firmware when you shut it down?
 
zackh said:
If you have to plug the Axe into the MBP before the iPad each time, what is the benefit (besides being f'n awesome) of being able to use it as an audio interface on an iPad? The whole portability factor is ruined by the need for the MBP to be there as well.
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The benefit is that you can use it as an interface on you Ipad. You figure out what that is. For me, I have all kinds of software on my Ipad that's not on my computer and the way I control it is very different. Whether having to load the drivers from a computer is too much is again up to you to decide.

One thing I just did is hook the Ipad to the Axe via an all-in-one usb-midi cable. The ones you can get on Amazon for about $7 work fine for me. That will run off an Ipad's internal power. Now, using the "Midi Touch" program I can map any midi-able tweakable thing from the Ipad to the Axe. So for example with an x/y pad on the Ipad I could map the drive and master of an amp to it and tweak the all the gain variations with one finger. Or delay time and level on an x/y pad or any of a number of more exotic possibilities. That's all without even worrying about whether you have another computer around. I'm not positive, but I think midi from an MFC 101 on the ethernet port and midi from the midi input can both be received, so you could use the Ipad to augment the foot controller in an infinite number of interesting ways.

Mike
 
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MikeyB59 said:
Yes, you have to upload from computer every time you want use the audio interface piece.
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Thanks a lot Mikey and many thanks for the iPad tips. I have an iPad2 which I love and now I'm waiting to get the Axe II - I can't wait. Enjoy your iPad/Axe setup...very cool stuff.
 
Would it be possible to capture the data stream from the boot loader, and then use Midi Memo Recorder to send it to the Axe 2?
 
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