Making music on the go on the iPhone or iPad is something unknown for many musicians. The biggest problem in my opinion is that traditional musicians don’t know where to start with creating music on iOS per example. In the next paragraphs, I will try to give you a very short but essential hardware overview of what you need to start making music on iPad. I’m concentrating mainly on the iOS area because I have more competences in this operation system than on Android.
1. The right iPad for mobile audio production
In order to start at all, you need an iPad. If you don’t have one, you have to decide which model you buy. After the Apple has already presented three different iPads this year, you have the choice between the simple iPad and iPad Pro. Main technical difference between the models which is very important in the area of audio is the amount of RAM memory. The normal iPad has 2 GB of RAM in its latest version, the new iPad Pro (10.5 or 12.7 inch) comes with twice as much RAM (4GB of RAM).
If you don’t want to make huge music productions on the iPad, the small normal iPad is sufficient. I used myself the iPad Air 2 for almost three years without further problems with audio apps. You should be careful if you want to use the device longer and for more intensive productions.Then I would certainly recommend one of the Pro versions because more RAM in the mobile audio production is always better for higher quality apps and for the future. Although older devices are cheaper, I advise against them, since they often drive very much at the limit with the CPU and RAM power. If you want to work only with one or two music apps at the same time, older models still work great.
Also, you should be very careful that the devices have a 64 bit architecture (iPad Air or later, and iPad mini 2 or later with 64 bit processors, basically on/after November 2013 released iPads) because many new high-quality music apps will work only with 64 bit iPads. These new apps need significant more power to run fine on the device and will not work on older devices. In short, there are several questions you need to ask yourself before you buy your first iPad
- How much budget I have to spend?
- Do I need an iPad or iPad Pro?
- Which display size is perfect for me?
- Will I play only one or two apps at the same or want to create a big project?
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