I’ve been using IK Multimedia’s AmpliTube and iRig on my iPad for several months and I must say… the honeymoon is far from over. In fact, I see a marriage lasting into it’s “Golden Years”.

For those who are not yet on board, the iRig is a hardware adapter and Amplitube is an App for the iPad (and iPhone). The iRig adapter allows you to plug your guitar into your iPad, process it through the Amplitube App and listen to the output. The iPad serves as your amp.

You can download a free version of the AmpliTube software to test it out. The free version comes with one amp, one speaker cab, a delay pedal, a noise filter and a distortion pedal. Certainly enough to get you started and to see if this truly portable “Rig” is for you.

I was immediately impressed by the quality of the tone out of my iPad. The effects behaved as expected when making adjustments, as did the amps and mics.

You can also upload audio tracks to AmpliTube to play along with (a good site for backing tracks is NewBackingTracks.com).

All in all, it’s a combination that transforms an iPad into a virtual guitar recording studio.

Check out this video:

•  
•