After reading reviews for other products that plug into the headphone jack, I decided to go midrange and buy the apogee jam. I received this today and have gathered first impressions. I will update this review as I draw more conclusions, and the rating may or may not change as a result.
First Impressions:
For 100$, I was expecting an awful lot out of this gadget. I don't have a lot of money for guitar pedal effects and a really nice amp, so the result of that is that my time spent at the amp tweaking the limited settings at my disposal is frustrating. The verdict on the Jam? Nothing! As in it took no time at all, took no difficulty, no tweaking. I plugged the 1/4" cable in and into the Ipad, loaded the free version of ampkit, and I was getting wonderful sound immediately. Those first thirty minutes with this new toy melted away in a flash as I played around with the included distortion pedal on ampkit. Some key features I noted as positives:
Pros:
1) Excellent sound, right out of the box. No batteries to put in, no complicated setup, no install. It just worked straight away!
2) No delay, at least as far as I can tell. This seems to be something people are curious about, and at least so far as I can tell there's not one iota of delay from what I do and what comes out of the speakers. I simply may not be discerning enough, but to me there's no noticeable pause.
3) Sensitivity is solid. I was able to modulate my picking style and achieve big differences in the output. For some reason I was expecting the digital out to be muddy. It may have been a silly thought, but it's definitely solid in terms of its adjustment to you.
4) On-the-fly gain adjustment works very well, and I love that it gives you a readout of the noise level on the device itself. It allows you to easily get to a good spot.
Cons:
1) Cost. Obviously this isn't that much for a good guitar input. You could easily spend a lot more for fancier gadgets; however, 100$ is nothing to sneeze at when you play as a hobby. It's definitely worth it since it's no hassle compared to what I have read about other products
That's my list of cons I know for sure so far. There are other issues that I worry about that cannot be ascertained in a first impression. I intend to update these at another time.
Potential cons:
1) Output to a larger speaker. The Jam itself has no way to route your output sound to a larger speaker, and I am not certain that a good solution is going to pop up just yet. If I want to find a backing track on youtube on my laptop and get the guitar and track to my headphones, I'm not sure I'll be able to. I expect there is a reasonable solution for this, though
2) Durability. I have read other stories about the unit failing. Mine was not DoA, but that's about all I can tell so far. It seems like it will hold up to shock. It doesn't feel cheap to me, and it has no little parts to lose (like a battery flap, for example). Time will tell if this guy goes the distance
All that said, I am elated with my purchase and give it a tentative five-star rating. I intend to play with it a lot more, and at this stage I am not quite sure which of the several guitar apps I should lay down my money on. Ampkit seems really good so far with its free effects and amp, so I may go with that.
UPDATE, 12-17-2011
After several months of use, I feel confident in updating my review a bit for those who want some more information! The device has not given me one iota of trouble so far. I can now add some more annoyances to the short list.
CONS:
1) Not being able to charge the iPad at the same time while using the Jam has caused a few situations where I had to put down the guitar after several hours of fooling around with recording and whatnot. I know! Who says I should take a break, right?! This has not been a major issue, in reality, but it is a potential one if you are away from somewhere where you can charge up.
2) The digital connection locks tightly into the port, which is good (it's not going to get ripped out of there), but it gets to feeling a little flimsy and makes me nervous about damaging the cable head itself or the port to the iPad. If you're careful, no issue should ever pop up, but there's that distant possibility.
All in all, any quibbles I have are minor and should not deter you from considering this purchase. This device along with a few key apps have rendered the Vox AC30 miniamp I bought entirely obsolete. The apps play a big role in this, for sure. I'll talk about my setup briefly, as well.
Ampkit and garage band are both awesome for their own reasons. Ampkit has such a breadth of interesting sounds and presets and customization on your output that it's a must. The problem is that you lack the smart instruments and the ability to record in an organized way. Garage band's guitar sounds and interface are a little more annoying to deal with (needing to set the instrument monitoring and the tracklength every time is annoying). Specifically, the guitar sounds feel somewhat limiting and more difficult to customize. They are nice, but I like Ampkit a lot more. The multitrack recording and smart instruments make garage band indispensable for actual generation of musical ideas! Therefore, I wish I could port my ampkit output sound into garageband. Too bad!
All in all, the apogee jam is confirmed as an excellent amp input. Never once have I had a malfunction of the device or any popping or noise that was not setting related. No issue of detection or anything. No batteries for the device, no hassle. The price is the biggest deterrent, but if all the other iPad interfaces have such nasty trouble, then it's best to save your money and grab a good one at the first shot, and the Apogee Jam is definitely a good one!
How about my Potential cons section from before? Let's see...
1) Ipad can use an aux. cable to output to a larger speaker without hassle. I can import backing tracks into iTunes no problem. It's a little more annoying than booting up youtube and flying, but it's not bad. You can also enable multitasking in the garageband app that will allow you to open up other programs while still getting guitar output, so potential con #1 was not a concern.
2) Durability. No troubles on my end. No failure at all. I have been pretty gentle with it, but it has seen its share of slogging around in by guitar bag. Solid device!
What more can I say? I'd buy another if this one broke or got lost without a second thought. There is no better alternative so far as I can tell without being exorbitantly expensive.