"I can just plug my guitar straight into my phone's headphone jack using an adaptor, why do I need this?" Well, yes, you can just hook your guitar up to your device's headphone jack using something like IK's own iRig adaptor. "But wait a second, Mark!" I hear you cry. The iRig UA works in conjunction with the AmpliTube UA app to deliver some decent guitar tones by emulating the effects of valve overdrive and distortion in software, manipulating the guitar signal into something that resembles what you might hear from a classic guitar amp. The device itself is a small, lightweight, and unassuming bus-powered silver box that hooks up to any device sporting Android 4.2 or higher and supporting host mode/USB OTG (if you don't know if your phone supports host mode, you'll probably need an app to find out). One of the few devices to take advantage of the SDK was IK Multimedia's iRig HD-A, released towards the tail end of last year along with a special version of the company's AmpliTube software on the Samsung Galaxy Store.Ĭlearly, a more widely accessible solution was needed. The emphasis there is very much on "a wide range." Samsung did develop the Professional Audio SDK, which added high-performance audio processing and a USB MIDI driver to Android, but it only works on Samsung phones and tablets. Limited or not, class-compliant support means that third parties can finally build audio interfaces for Android that work with a wide range of devices. Suffice it to say, most audio interfaces have some issues working with the OS. The folks over at ExtremeSD, which makes its own custom audio driver for Android, have a good list of what does and doesn't work with Android's class-compliant driver. Only towards the tail end of last year did Google introduce class-compliant support for USB audio interfaces in Android 5.0, but even that had some hefty stipulations attached to it to dramatically limit compatibility. Part of the reason it's taken so long for devices like the iRig UA to hit Android is due to a lack of interest from Google itself high-quality audio simply hasn't been a priority. Ars will have a deep dive looking at the process of guitar modelling, including interviews with some of the industry's biggest names, up in the next few months. There are numerous ways to model guitar amplifiers, but for the most part companies like IK Multimedia and Positive Grid study the schematics of an amplifier, and try to recreate the behaviour of each individual component, backing up that process with convolution and impulse response modelling. Valve amplifiers are particularly difficult to recreate in software, however, because of the non-linear way in which valves amplify the guitar signal and how the different components in in the amp interact with each other to produce a particular tone. In the guitar world, digital modelling mostly revolves around recreating classic tube-powered amplifiers and solid-state effect pedals. What is digital modelling?Digital modelling is the process of recreating an analogue device's behaviour entirely within software using either a general purpose CPU or dedicated digital signal processing (DSP) hardware. While guitar amplifier modelling has come a long way over the last few years, unfortunately the iRig UA is still a few steps behind. It's the sort of thing that, when I first started playing guitar many moons ago, I'd have absolutely gone nuts over.Ĭhild-like excitement aside though, I'm not entirely convinced by the sounds on offer. It lets you plug in a guitar and start bashing out riffs without the need for a hulking Marshall stack or expensive dedicated modelling hardware like an Axe-Fx. The iRig UA is a £80 ($99) audio interface and software solution for Android 4.2 and higher devices. Thankfully, IK Multimedia-a company known for its AmpliTube modelling software on the desktop and iOS-has stepped in to fill this gap on Android. There are limitations of course-needing an iPad being a large one-but multiple third-party vendors now built audio interfaces specifically for use with iPhones as well. Class-compliant support for USB audio interfaces (essentially an external sound card) has long been baked into iOS via the USB camera connection kit for iPad, meaning that a wide range of audio devices can be used with that platform's plethora of musical apps. If, like me, you're an Android-toting guitar player or musician, options for getting high-quality audio in or out of your smartphone or tablet have been rather limited.
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