More Audiophile iPad Play! As External Display

iPad as External Display
My last article covered the numerous ways to use the iPad as a remote control: apps like PlugPlayer, SqueezePad, and iMediaControl let you take charge of Squeezebox or DLNA network audio devices and do a much better job than a typical physical remote. Even things like Blu-ray players often have their own iPad apps. But the possibilities don't end there. We can even use the iPad to control a desktop or laptop PC. Or a Mac of course, if that's your preference. This could come in handy in a number of ways---most commonly something like a small form factor PC or Mac Mini with no display, serving up music to an external DAC via USB.

The traditional method for this sort of thing is by using a Virtual Network Connection app. There are free options such as Mocha VNC lite or paid options like Remoter. These are powerful apps that can be confusing to the casual user, and they have many more options than we might be interested in if we just want to control audio playback.

The best option I've found that keeps things simple yet is powerful enough to do what I need is Air Display. It's not really a VNC app though it can accomplish many of the same things. The main focus of Air Display is its ability to act as a desktop extender for your existing screen. It works just like having two real monitors---drag your mouse to the border of your actual screen and it will then jump over to the iPad. You can drag icons over there, or configure programs to run in that area. As seen in the picture above, I have Foobar2000 running on my PC, and have it positioned onto the iPad portion of my desktop space. My main screen is then free for doing "real work", or just browsing InnerFidelity.

Aside from acting as a desktop extender, Air Display also enables control of the programs running on its real estate. Mousing is simulated by dragging and tapping with a finger, and a virtual keyboard handles whatever other input might be needed. It isn't the type of thing you'd want to do complex tasks with but controlling a media player is easily accomplished. It has enough precision to handle things like drag and drop playlists and the screen refresh is fast enough for visualizations to look presentable. Just don't expect to play first person shooters with it. I find this app especially useful with my smaller laptop---it really adds a useful chunk of space where I can position windows without having to tab back and forth on the main screen.

Comments

one more thing worth mentioning

Submitted by br777 on April 27, 2012 - 7:32pm.

Obviously not all audiophiles are musicians, or vise-verse, but one more major music related reason to buy an ipad is the fact that there are an enormous amount of professional audio creation apps available.

Very true

Submitted by John Grandberg on April 28, 2012 - 12:45pm.

It's not something I use my iPad for, but there are quite a few apps and things related to music production. I imagine most home studio situations would get a lot of use out of the device that way. Thanks for bringing it up!

I'm all for paying a little

Submitted by Willakan on April 28, 2012 - 12:36am.

I'm all for paying a little extra for cable durability, but $120 before shipping seems a little excessive!

Perspective

Submitted by John Grandberg on April 28, 2012 - 12:46pm.

It all comes down to your philosophy on the matter. I'm sure we can find some audiophiles out there who would scoff at "merely" paying $120. Do what works best for you.

John, great, detailed

Submitted by mward on April 28, 2012 - 3:49am.

John, great, detailed writeup, but I take issue with your assessment of the new iPad as an incremental update. Admittedly, the new iPad is all about the new display, but in a product that is defined by its display, such a drastic improvement should not be written off as incremental. The iPad 2 had a display with the pixel count of a monitor from a decade ago; the new iPad has a display that has more pixels than a 1080p HDTV.

I've found the difference remarkable. If that doesn't count as something more than an incremental improvement, I'd be interested to know what Apple needs to add to go beyond an incremental update.

Although personally I'd love to see the USB port have enough power to drive a headphone amp/DAC

The iPad will power the Pico

Submitted by Justin@HeadAmp on April 28, 2012 - 9:08am.

The iPad will power the Pico DAC/Amp w/ the camera connection kit

It's complicated....

Submitted by John Grandberg on April 28, 2012 - 12:49pm.

I guess I was expecting the quad core CPU that was rumored to be coming with the new model. A display update is great.... Yet at the same time I never felt the iPad 2 display lacking. So it's one of those things. At this point I admit that it will be exceedingly difficult for Apple to EVER come up with something that is really game changing, revolutionary instead of just evolutionary. And if they do there is a risk that half the people won't even like it,since the old way is so ingrained. In any case I appreciate your perspective.

Limited Memory

Submitted by PredatorZ on May 8, 2012 - 4:22pm.

I really like the Ipads for what they are, but see the small memory as a major drawback, 16 to 64 Gigs( and the premium apple charges for memory and no SD slots is a crime, IMHO) is a tiny fraction of my lossless files and I wouldn't use it for serious listening for that reason alone, I love my Ipod classic and 160 Gigs of storage, sure it wont do the fancy EQ, but I enjoy my music as is, sure some recordings have messed up production and might benefit from some EQ. For me if I get to caught up in the gadgets I tend to loose the connection to the music, I love to get lost in the listening for hours, sometimes ignorance is bliss. For travel and when I need video access, I use an MSI Netbook with 500 Gig Drive, sure it isnt as slick as the apple gadgets, but really gets the job done, and with Win7 on all my devices, homegroup makes moving files around a breeze.

True

Submitted by John Grandberg on May 8, 2012 - 10:42pm.

I wouldn't recommend buying an iPad with the intent of strictly using it as a dedicated music server only. You're right - simply not enough built-in space for that. A netbook, or a Squeezebox Touch, or any number of other devices are better suited. Yet there are ways around this - Home Sharing and UPnP are two methods of storing your library elsewhere and accessing through the iPad.

My point is merely this - plenty of people have an iPad already. Why not learn to make the most of it?

Nailed It

Submitted by PredatorZ on May 8, 2012 - 11:11pm.

No Truer words have ever been spoken, surely part of the fun is squeezing everything you can out of your devices potential,

Cheers

Comment and a Question

Submitted by SeanNY on May 9, 2012 - 3:11pm.

Comment:

I agree with all of your points, especially on getting the most out of a device many of us already own.

My iPad is basically the world's-best remote control, for a Mac mini connected (via asychronous USB) to my home stereo. I use "Remote" to control iTunes on my Mini, and a 1.5TB drive connected to the Mini ensures I never run short of space for my uncompressed music.

If I want to listen to music on MOG or Pandora, I use Splashtop remote to control those programs, which are located on the Mini. the advantage of this is that my Mini is ethernet connected to Fios, so I don't get the dropouts I was sometimes getting when I streamed the music from the iPad. Also, MOG is cheaper on a desktop than on a mobile device.

I also put an Airport Express behind my stereo, which is connected by toslink cable. Whenever I watch a video on my iPad, I switch the stereo DAC input from USB to TOS and listen to the video through my stereo.

Question:

Considering the quality of the DAC inside the iPad, can you really hear the difference between, say 320kbps files and lossless, or high resolution? I can hear the difference on my stereo, but not on the iPad using the headphone output. Can you hear it with the Line-Out cables?

Put another way, at what point does the sound quality of the iPad DAC become the weak link in the chain?

Hi fellow iPad power user

Submitted by John Grandberg on May 12, 2012 - 9:38am.

Great comment! I really like Splashtop as well. I hadn't used it much until recently so I didn't include it in the article. Now that I've got more experience with it, I highly recommend it.

Good point about getting the cheaper $5/month version of MOG by using that method.

As for your question:

Opinions about SQ will obviously differ from person to person. In my view, the iPad DAC sounds pretty stinking good. They use a Cirrus Logic embedded solution (CS42L63 to be exact) which is surely better than what you'll find in the average soundcard, CD, or DVD player. Is it audiophile grade? Depends on your definition I guess. But if you Google "iPad RMAA" you can see some real world examples of how well it performs.

In my case, I've honestly never sat down and done a specific test of 320k, FLAC, and hi-res material on the iPad. I mostly use the FLAC playback apps because that's the format I store my library in, so it saves me a conversion. It's worth noting that hi-res material will generally be recorded and mixed exceedingly well, often superior to their redbook siblings. So even if the iPad is a bottleneck for hearing the improvement based on sample rate, it will likely still sound better for that reason.

iTunes Functionality

Submitted by The Federalist on September 14, 2012 - 10:34am.

John, I've been using the CCK with my ipad for a few months and rip all my cd's to Apple lossless format but dont think i am making the best use of itunes for some reason... are there other places you can buy higher quality music that can be stored in an itunes... that actually has a decent library of modern music... i.e. not HD Tracks? also when you buy an AAC file from itunes is there any point to converting it to lossless format

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