With the release of iPad, musicians want to connect audio devices to iPad. Most of the music device didn’t suit best with iPad. Thanks to Alesis that has released the iO Dock for iPad.

It could be used in many possible ways. Quality and weight of iO Dock can be the first reason for its impression in front of users. It looks solid in terms of quality and has plastic feel on touch. Alesis provides a tray with Dock for every iPad user. This tray locks the iPad in order to make whole setup quite stable. iO Dock firmly holds the iPad; it has rubber feet at the bottom that provide solid mounting on the floor, so that you can use it well while working on iPad. Alesis Dock charges the iPad via XLR connectors that can be used for guitar or line input. There is a second input point available that has a switch to choose between Mic, and Guitar. Other connectors on the back side of the Dock contains one switch socket, Video socket and an anchor post that can be used to secure cable in connections.

A direct switch available on the Alesis Dock allows monitoring of inputs via hardware or headphone outputs that has independent volume control. If you look at the left side of the Dock, you will find two MIDI connectors and a kind of USB socket that can be used for the connecting it to the computer in order to playback MIDI information. If you go for this Dock, you would also love to use type A USB socket that can be used to connect USB based keyboard without any need to attaching the Dock to the computer.

Performance wise, Alesis Dock works flawlessly with every single socket giving access to outputs and inputs as per requirement. However one microphone preamplifier circuit is a bit noisy but that happens with most of the audio devices of this quality. The revealing point is that iPad has stereo audio inputs available using which one can connect two microphones and this stereo input can be transformed into voice recording instrument. You can use this feature of iPad to work with applications like Twisted Wave Audio Editor, Garage Band but the only factor that could affect is the requirement for power in order to use this voice recording feature.

In order to reveal the features of Alesis Dock, take your iPad and mount it with Alesis Dock that acts as an audio/MIDI interface and you will get to know a very good reason for owing iPad due to its mobility. In return you will get fully loaded 2 input and 2 output DAW having MIDI functionality that you can use with MIDI supporting applications.

In my opinion, using iPad with Dock is the best suitable combination for using iPad live and of course presence of dock with iPad will make a lot of sense due to the features that both of them can deliver together.