MG3 was made from the beginning with iOS and touch screens in mind, and I’m excited that iOS and desktop versions can now follow along, with very little development overhead.
Almost identical to the Mac version!
Runs both as a host for plugins and as a plugin inside hosts.
Free for now! (this was supposed to dump into your chimney, two weeks ago)
Limitations:
Newer iPad (circa 2021) required for now. Older devices may be supported later, as we optimise CPU usage.
While it should run stable in terms of audio/midi, the graphical side still needs work.
Modules will automatically be tiled to best fit the screen area.
On iPhones the UI is too small at the moment.
(maybe possible to use iPhone + USB-C hub + external monitor + mouse in gaming mode?)
Plugins inside plugins: When using something like AUM to host MG3 as a AUv3 plugin, you cannot host other AUv3s inside MG3. (MG3 is a capable host on its own).
MG2 patch import is only partially working.
On iOS, MG3 overwrites MG2, but will not mess with your patches, should you go back to MG2.
Currently, no HEX pickup extension (anybody had success with a multichannel interface or mixer on iOS?)
Currently, missing file based plugins, such as IRs, sfz, tunings, etc.
Glad to see you are getting there! I really want to use iOS, but it must be with the Hex input. Be great if someone could figure out a way to make an iOS driver for the GP-10. I wonder if the USB Box Dutti67, Markus Duttlinger, is building will be iOS compatible???
Yes, the idea and planning is that it will also work for iOS. There are “tweaks” for hooking up the GP-10 to iOS devices but they all include raspberry Pi PCBs. It might work but is definitely not the ideal gigging setup.
My first impressions on MG3-Ipad are excellent!
For these first tests, I use an Ipad-Pro M4.
I connect my QuadCortex which has a “Class Compliant” audio interface.
For the latency test, I get, as on Mac, an average value of 40ms at 48KHz/buffer=128.
With the three channels well filled (see the screenshot below), the tracking and dynamic tracking seem really excellent to me… It may be subjective if the algorithms are identical…
What is sure is that with MG3-Ipad, compared to AUM, the implementation is very simple and fast to test the different instruments installed in the Ipad.
The MG3-Hex option on Ipad would, obviously, be ideal for a latency reduced by half, but the GM-800 is not “Class-Compliant”. Implementation is still possible with copying the USB signals from the GM-800 to a compatible interface (eg: Fireface-UCX), but, in my opinion, too complex in a “Live” use context.
Ideally, the MG3 Standard with polyphonic tracking should be further developed and optimally support all features of the current MG3HEX (6x monophonic tracking), so that special technology can be completely dispensed with
MG3 has no way of recognizing which string generated which sound. With MG3-Hex, you can easily generate open-tunings, for example. Midi note recognition is, I think, much simpler in monophonic than in polyphonic, so you should always have a big advantage, in terms of latency, to use MG3-Hex mode.
Another subject, I did some tests with a small “Katana-go” interface, which is “class compliant”, directly plugged into the Ipad, and everything works wonderfully well!
Which makes it a minimalist setup, to practice midi guitar while traveling with a minimum of equipment.
Hi xtian82, at the moment this is the case with the advantages for MG3HEX, but in the future it would be quite conceivable to make these advantages available in MG3 as well. What a (trained) ear can hear, a recognition algorithm should also be able to do at some point…
It’s great that you’re sharing your experiences with the Katana:Go, I wouldn’t have thought it would work so well!
The MOTU website says the UltraLite-mk5 is USB audio class compliant, giving you plug-and-play compatibility with iPad and other Apple iOS devices. So if you have a breakout cable or breakout box for your 13 pin guitars, you can feed that into an ipad. That would be excellent for a live Hex setup! (although I’d still prefer a driver for my GP-10 rather than a separate interface). My current iPad is not new enough to run the BetaMG3, so I’ll wait until I see the Hex version before I buy a new iPad.
@JamO : do you have any plans to support AUv3 MIDI plugins on IOS? And on MacOs?
These plugins are supported by AUM, so we can use them with MG3 in plugin mode.
I’m thinking in particular of advanced “arpegiator” plugins, such as “StepPolyArp”, which has just been upgraded to version 5.
I think I paid for midi guitar iOS a second time somehow when I downloaded the mg3 beta. I already owned mg2 iOS and didn’t expect to be charged again. Is this an error or did I pay for something new?