Apogee and Apple's bromance continues to benefit us lowly consumers in the form of their newest iOS/OS X interface, the Jam. It's of slender form, looks the part and we're happy to report that it's accurately priced.
The Jam is aimed at guitarists with a single ¼" input, clip, power and status LED, volume control with 40dB of gain and a bespoke connector to either a 30-pin iDevice connection or USB for Mac. We tried it with GarageBand for iPad - it worked first time, no questions asked.
With most lower-priced interfaces, latency is frequently an issue, something guitarists are not as forgiving of as more technical folk. Thankfully the Jam reels it in to a very slight delay - nothing that will incur any frustration.
The Jam did clip a little easily - it was hard to get the volume right so hard strumming and picking were both within the dynamic range we wanted. But when we found it, the sound quality was excellent - it was as if the Jam wasn't there at all.
A treat to use, and a no-brainer for guitarists looking to maximise the value of their iPad.
