NAMM 2012: Great though many of them are, iPad music making apps are currently viewed as things to be used alongside most musicians' main recording setups rather than instead of them. However, this perception might have to be revised with the announcement of Wave Machine Labs' Auria DAW.
Click here for a gallery of Auria screenshots
This is a 48-track iPad music production app (audio only, it would seem) that, providing you have a suitable USB audio interface, enables you to record up to 24 tracks at once. There's multitrack editing, AAF support (so that you can move session files to your main DAW) and, perhaps most interestingly - and in the developer's words - VST plug-in support.
Before you fall off your chair, you should note that plug-ins have to be put through some kind of iOS wrapper and then paid for as in-app purchases. So, you won't just be able to transfer your plug-in collection to your iPad (and we're talking effects rather than instruments here.
This is exciting news nonetheless: Auria comes with a PSP Audioware vintage-inspired channel strip on every channel, while a convolution reverb, stereo chorus and delay, classicVerb and pitch processor will also be bundled.
Plug-ins by PSP Audioware Overloud and Fabfilter will be available as in-app purchases, and Wave Machine Labs is trying to develop the VST standard across the iOS platform.
Suffice to say, a lot of people will very keen to discover if Auria can deliver on its promises - it'll be released in the first quarter of 2012 priced at $50. Plug-ins are set to be available for $10-$20.
Find out more on the Auria website (though it appears to be down at the moment).
