Tapas and I are both iPad enthusiasts so when he called me from Namm last night to fill me in on his latest 'Namm Gear' discovery of the day, he was really excited to tell me about Alesis' new:

Studio Dock

The Alesis StudioDock's a universal docking station which allows you to connect all of your audio gear to any iTunes music app installed on the iPad.

Sweetwater is selling it for: $199.00

I can see the possibilities of having that large screen for a DAW interface! This intrigues me because I have been looking at Ipad. Anyone know cheapest place to buy one or is every vendor the same?

Yep this one is on my shopping list. I sent you an email with this Scott, but you obviously saw it before I did

Dennis

Bill, Apple and all it's associated retailers pretty much stick to list price. I've noticed at times Walmart will discount by $10 off list, but thats about it. You may want to wait until iPad is introduced, I'm sure there'll be plenty of 1st gen iPads on Craigslist or Ebay. The rumor is an April release date.

The Alesis deck looks to be one great add on for the iPad!

I dont think this would do anything Serious since it doesnt have that
kind of Power...and other things too, the iPad is so limited to be
used as some kind of DAW runner, prolly nothing, lacks everything.

Don't be so sure. The iPad probably has more CPU horsepower than the last generation of keyboard you were using.

It's things like this that perhaps get our hopes set too high. It's somewhat unlikely that the iPad has enough horsepower to generate 128 voices with multiple high quality effects with NO dropouts, run a sequencer and do a full arranger mode and run a live vocal transposer. Maybe in ten years...

But I'll tell you what... If anyone can take the open concept to fruition, Apple have deep enough pockets to do it! Trouble is, all the current players are also-rans, who can't afford to create the integrated soundsets and styles that we expect from a TOTL closed arranger. Maybe Apple can afford to take a swing at it..?

Many modern VSTi's can bring even a decent tower or hot laptop to its' knees, and only get a few notes of polyphony from it. Be quite a while before the iPad has enough juice to go the distance.

The best leveraging of a thing like the iPad is to stick completely to MIDI. I would not be surprised if this has enough juice to run a soft arranger and a Karma module at the same time, as long as it wasn't being asked to generate the sounds, too. Hook it to an existing WS, it could be VERY powerful. But It's going to be a while before this thing as a standalone unit is going to be any better than what we can currently get out of a decent laptop, and nobody has shown me to my satisfaction even one of THOSE being a decent alternative to a hardware arranger...

Diki, very true. And those saying that thats what the iPad is about are totally wrong in my view.

It IS an very very good "control" surface, and this is what the pro-apps address.

When used only as a midi controller, the iPad is terrific. I, like Diki, cannot see any day when the architecture of teh iPad will allow any more thant that.

BUT, that is already plenty enough!!!!!

I will also be setting up my iPad with the new Groove XR Rack as well.. Another great combo I think.

Dennis

No-one asked it to do that. But I don't think it will be anywhere close to ten years off before it can run a soft arranger.

Possibly by using something naff like Quicktime Instruments, or something like that, but let's face it, even a MODERN TOTL laptop has some pretty severe issues running a complete soft arranger and sounds, effects and everything else we expect in a hardware arranger, to the quality of something like the T4 or PA3.

Otherwise, we'd all be using them!