Audio MIDI Connect: A Look at the Instrument to MIDI Converter for iOS

If you’re like me, the existence of an app like Audio MIDI Connect is a dream come true. This app allows you to take your instrument signal and convert it to Midi and send it over Wifi!

The implications are pretty cool, because this means that your instrument of choice can be a midi controller for recording, transcribing and triggering, instead of using a midi keyboard. Wouldn’t we all rather just use our bass?

My immediate thought was, “So this means that I can use my bass to enter notes into Sibelius!?!”? And the answer turned out to be “yes”.

Audio MIDI Connect screen exampleIt does take a few steps to set up, but the tutorials and web links provided are informative and should have you up and running in no time.

There are, however, a few things that can cause you grief:

  1. Note entry certainly won’t be 100% accurate, so you will have to tweak your notation entries
  2. The app can’t track well at high speeds, so you will need to play slowly and carefully (extra fret noises, unintentional harmonics, etc. can all all lead to some crazy notation)
  3. You will want your computer connected directly to your router as there is an inherent lag with wifi, and if the signal needs to travel from phone to router and from router to computer via wifi, it is much less useable

The app’s developer was eager to help me (and really quickly) with his response, which is wonderful, and he offered some very helpful tricks in addition to being open to ideas and suggestions. He is very eager to make the app the best it can be so I have complete confidence that it will only improve markedly as time goes on.

Another very cool feature is that the app can run in the background. This means that you can fire up the app, get it sending your instrument signal as midi, and then launch a synth app and send that effected signal to your computer.

The app worked beautifully with Garageband, ProTools, Sibelius and every other application I tried it with on my computer. The possibilities are endless.

Audio MIDI Connect, by Secret Base Design, is a universal app, available on the App Store for $4.99. The app compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation) and iPad, and it requires iOS 4.2 or later.

I suggest that you watch the tutorial videos to get a better idea of what this app is and how it could serve you.

Here are a few videos to get you started:

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Share your thoughts

  1. How does this compare to the functionality of the GI-20 or the Axon products?

    • That is really cool and it’s just a $4.99 app? The notation feature alone would be killer to use for orchestral arrangements.

  2. Check out the products from Sonuus if you’re interested in this stuff but don’t want to go through iOS. I use the “i2M”, which works pretty good. http://www.sonuus.com