One of the areas Android has lagged behind its iOS competitor is music apps. Android is getting a boost in that area today though. IK Multimedia has announced they are bringing the AmpliTube app to us. Well, not all of us. If you have a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 or Note Edge, you can download AmpliTube from the Samsung app store right now.
AmpliTube is one of the most popular guitar amp simulator’s on iOS. It lets you plug your guitar or bass right into your phone, using a special iRig HD-A adaptor made just for Android. Then you can play your instrument anytime and get it sounding like a bunch of different effects pedals and stomp boxes. The HD-A adaptor will set you back about $40. The AmpliTube app is $19.99 for the full version, but there are free and LE versions if you don’t need the whole suite. You will need the HD-A as compared to any of the other iOS adaptors. The iOS ones won’t work. We don’t know if that’s a limitation from IK Multimedia, Samsung, or Android itself. For $60, this is not a bad setup to get access to all of the simulated sounds that AmpliTube can bring to your guitar.
One of the issues with Android and music apps like AmpliTube has been audio-in latency that wreaks havoc with the sound going into your Android device. iOS devices don’t suffer from audio-in latency issue. Samsung seems to have found a solution to the problem with something they are calling “Professional Audio”. IK Multimedia says that the Note 4 and Note Edge are “professional audio devices”. Google fixed the audio-in latency with 5.0 Lollipop, but the Note 4 and Note Edge aren’t running Lollipop yet. Samsung must have found their own workaround.
Hopefully IK Multimedia will roll out AmpliTube to other devices soon. Even if they don’t, we should start seeing more music apps and amp simulators in the Play Store once Android 5.0 Lollipop hits the mainstream.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfBxIkdrj78