We were pretty impressed with IK Multimedia’s iRig Pads MIDI Groove Controller when it arrived last year, and the company has now taken its offering up a notch with its iRig Pads Editor (free), a Mac application that lets users much more easily customize the MIDI controller for their own personal creative process.
The app features an intuitive single-screen user interface for quickly creating, editing, and transferring scenes to iRig Pads, providing full control over all MIDI messages and a much faster and more convenient way to customize the rig to your own production and performance needs.
MIDI control messages can be easily assigned to any of the pads, knobs, buttons, slider, and even an external pedal or footswitch controller, and the editor provides full support for Note, Program Change, Control Change, MIDI System Real Time, and MIDI Machine Control messages. Users can also easily switch between a note mode designed to assign MIDI channels and notes to transmit and a Toggle mode for triggering loops.
Users can even send two different messages from a single button or pad — great for switching up between presets such as instruments, loop sets, or effects settings. Control Change mode lets users assign MIDI Continuous Controller messages like volume, pan or expression, which can be assigned to parameters on other devices that iRig Pads is controlling, including the ability to transmit variable values.