iPassion

Now, this is one of those ideas that are floating around, waiting for someone to grab them and implement them into a great application.
It is since the iPhone/iPod Touch initially came out that I have been playing with this idea, and finally two developers got to it

before I could even discuss the concept with Dane.

These two guys are Far Out Labs with ProRemote and Silicon Studios, with their iTouchMidi suite of iPhone apps.

Far Out Labs built a single app which allows transport control, mixing and more in ProTools, and supports to some degree Apple Logic. It is a fairly young app and a really promising one. With a price tag of 100 euros for the full app (up to 32 tracks) and a 30 euros for the light version (up to 8 tracks), this app is targeted to professional users.

The interface looks usable form the screenshots, but lacks some of the iPhone elegance. But this is not the reason the Italian community did not positively receive this app — judging from the comments in the iTunes app store, it looks to me people expect developers to work for pure peanuts.

Silicon Studios created a whole suite of iTouchMidi apps. Each app is specialized in one task:

• iTM MCU is a midi control surface with transport control and faders (panning and EQ knobs are missing);
• iTM Matrix is a 4×4 or 8×8 table with touch-sensitive “pads”, like a drum machine or M-Audio Trigger Finger;
• iTM Keys is a virtual keyboard with pitch bend control (but is missing modulation control) — great add-on to your home Roland or Yamaha piano;
• iTM XYPad is a midi trackpad that you can use to control different parameters, such as filters, effects, faders, pans (the use of this one is still a little cloudy to me);

Each app has a price tag of 4,99 euros. Much more affordable, yet much less elegant and complete then ProRemote. The cool thing is that iTM suite already supports both Logic Express and GarageBand, in addition to a bunch of other DAW applications, and no MIDI setup is required (so stop wasting your time trying to see your iPod Touch through OS X midi setup utility like I did!).

On top of all this, Silicon Studios made the smart move and also released a free app, named iTM MidiLab, which features a really rough and stripped down version of XYPad, Keys and Matrix for you to play with.

All in all, definitely worth to check out!

Official site: Your iPhone is not a toy! iTouchMidi turns it into a hi tech midi controller