Player MIDI Out for use with IAA instruments

Dorico
1

I recently subscribed to Dorico for iPad and for the most part, the experience has exceeded my expectations.

But, much as with Cubasis, the Microsonic library is pretty much unusable. Whilst it’s great that we can use AUv3s with our Players, iPadOS lacks decent orchestral libraries as AUv3’s. The best available options are the multi-sampled orchestral library that comes with AudioLayer and of all things SampleTron (as it has some wonderful orchestral presets with that classic Mellotron sound, which while great, is a little too idiosyncratic as a general orchestral library). The Crudebyte orchestral apps are pretty awful, so I won’t waste any space on them here.

However there is one very usable orchestral library on iOS and that’s Miroslav Philharmonik 2 in Sampletank. Unfortunately, Sampletank isn’t available as an AUv3, it’s only available to use as an IAA.

I’d really love to see a MIDI OUT option (allowing the artist to choose the MIDI channel for both Core and Virtual MIDI) in the Player options as an alternative to making use of the Microsonic library which is bare-bones to say the least. MIDI out would also allow the artist to play external MIDI equipment or even VST’s hosted in e.g. a laptop.

Another option would be for Steinberg to make available for purchase on iOS the HALion Symphonic Orchestra for iOS. I realise this is a 8Gb library but with modern iPad storage, this shouldn’t be an issue. At the end of the day, the customer knows whether they have the storage to run HSO. You can of course so what the competition do and sell Spitfire libraries in-app.

The great thing about the Miroslav library is that it covers most bases well for a circa 2.5GB footprint. If it were possible to streamline the HSO library to have a similar footprint that would definitely widen it’s appeal to the widest audience.

Dorico for iPad could also do more to humanise the playback. I’m aware of the commands you can enter via the Tempo popover but the desktop product goes far further than this.

I’m sure you’ll add functionality over time and maybe even bring the product closer to Dorico Pro (which I’m sure will necessitate a tiered subscription system). There isn’t much technically holding back Dorico for iPad on an M1 iPad Pro, so it would be good to see the Dorico for iPad term exploit this technical capability.

2

How easily that trips off the tongue.

I hope (and imagine) Dorico will make increasingly sophisticated sound sets available in due time (considering other features likely on the iPad roadmap), but I never imagine integrating this with iPad Dorico and iOS is easy.

3

Welcome to the forum, @jonmoore.

Dorico for iPad uses the audio engine from Cubasis, and I’m not sure whether or not it supports IAA (I know it does support Audiobus, but we were advised by the Cubasis team that these days it’s better to focus on AUv3).

Certainly we would love nothing more than to have the power of the HALion platform available to us on the iPad, but it will require not only some work by the Cubasis team to implement support for VST 3 in the audio engine, but also some work by the HALion team to make an iOS-compatible version of HALion. I am hopeful that this is something we’ll see in the not-too-distant future, but it’s not something that is actively being worked on as I type this.

4

@dspreadbury
Thanks for the timely reply. I also own Cubasis 3 and this does support IAA, Core MIDI and Virtual MIDI.

Forgetting IAA (this is indeed a deprecated technology but it still makes up well over 50% of iOS instruments), just having Core MIDI and Virtual MIDI exposed would allow the artist to set up their instruments of choice in AUM (the 300lb gorilla of the ios ‘host’ ecosystem) allowing them far more freedom than they currently have. Even if Audiobus 3 does indeed function, the artist still needs the ability to select a specific MIDI channel for each Player’s instrument.

Dorico may default to a specific MIDI channel per Player based on the hierarchy of the Players, but explicit control would be far more useful. And a quick win as this ability already exists in Cubasis…

5

We’ll certainly think about this for a future update to the iPad version. I’m afraid we won’t have time to work on this in the immediate future because we’re working hard to bring Dorico 4 to completion (which will include a big update to the iPad version too).

3 Likes