Focusrite Solo 4th Gen. and App on iPad

Gear & Tools Talk đŸ’» Hardware, Software & Recording
1

Hi,

I use the iPad 11 (2025) and the JustinGuitar App. The internal microphones are bad to recognize the tones with the cord perfect lessons, i.e. I must play the G string extremly loud. I use a acoustic guitar with steel strings.

So I bought a Focusrite Solo with external microphone. Any other app recognize the input signal, only the JustinGuitar App shows no signal, also with the tuner there is no input.

How I could use the JustinGuitar App with an external microphone and the Focusrite Interface?

Thanks, Tom

2

Hi, the app not ‘recognising’ chords and strings is a known issue (if you search on the forum, you will find a couple of threads on this topic), and for some reason it hasn’t been resolved yet. This is not related to your iPad or the focusrite.

The easiest workaround is:

  • for tuning, to use another tuning app (there are heaps, for free) or to buy a separate tuner
  • for the chord changes, the old school way: count them yourself.
3

My question was less about detection using the iPad’s microphones more about why the app doesn’t use the Focusrite Interface with the external microphone.

The issue with poor tone detection could be due to the iPad’s internal filters. You can disable these in iOS since iOS 6 by setting the audio to “measurement.” If you don’t do this, the high-pass filter, AGC and noise cancellation remain active.

A external audio interface isn’t a microphone, it’s a line input, also if you have connected an external microphone to the interface. As a line input there are no filtering and noise canceling and an external large-diaphragm microphone with 48V phantom power is much better than the internal microphones.

Anyway, if the app offers audio recognition features, they should work; otherwise, they might as well be omitted entirely.

Greetings, Tom

4

I’ve never seen an app that detects chords accurately. In my experience, they’re always somewhat approximate.

5

This is nice information–thanks.

In the for what it’s worth department, I installed the Justing app on my MacBook Air running Tahoe 26.5 and while the apps works just fine there, it still has the trouble identifying a properly played chord with either the Scarlett Solo 4th gen (piezo pickup and/or mic) or the using built in laptop microphone. Seems to struggle most with open low strings. I just checked again for this email and the challenge persists.

I too had issues with the change recognition on the iPad app and do as @LadyOfTheCastle intoned: I just count the changes myself.

I’ve since rationalized that this issue is actually a good thing:
It forces me to count, which is yet another task for my brain to keep going concurrently with playing, and so, I posit, helps develop more autonomous chord changes.
Don’t know if that’s true or not, but it does sound “truthy”, doesn’t it?

Cheers,
Bruce

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