Audio editing for iPad: what the hardware can do and the software cannot

A modern iPad has more processing power than the computers most professional records were made on. Audio is not demanding in the way video is, and an iPad will handle many tracks with effects without complaint.

The screen is also a genuine advantage over a phone. A waveform on a ten-inch display is workable in a way it is not on a phone, and a pencil or a trackpad gives you real precision.

So when iPad audio editing is frustrating, it is almost never the machine. It is how files move around and what a given app decided to include.

GarageBand is free and surprisingly complete on iPad: multitrack recording, volume automation, fades, effects, and a touch interface that suits the screen better than the Mac version suits a trackpad.

Create an Audio Recorder track, then use the loop browser to import from Files or iCloud Drive. Turn off the metronome and set regions not to follow tempo before you do anything with speech.

The same gaps as the Mac version apply: no noise reduction, and deleting a section leaves a gap you close by dragging.

Export through the share button, choosing Song and then a format. GarageBand's own project files do not open anywhere except GarageBand.

Logic Pro for iPad is a subscription and a genuinely professional digital audio workstation: unlimited tracks, a full mixer, proper plugin routing, and the same engine as the Mac version.

It is aimed at music production. For someone making music on an iPad it is excellent value. For someone editing a weekly interview, most of what you are paying for is irrelevant.

The subscription model also means the tool stops working when you stop paying, which is a different commitment from a one-off purchase.

There are also several good third-party audio editors on iPad, generally one-off purchases, that do trimming, effects and multitrack work without the music-production weight.

iPadOS has no shared file system in the way a computer does. Each app has its own storage, and the Files app is the bridge between them.

In practice this means saving to Files at every step, and using the share sheet to move between apps. It works, and it adds friction to a workflow that on a computer would be dragging a file into a window.

An external drive over USB-C does appear in Files on recent iPads, which helps a great deal when moving large recordings around.

Build the habit of saving every intermediate version into a Files folder for the project. Hunting for an export inside an app you have since closed is the most common way to lose work here.

Safari on iPad can upload a file to a web tool and download the result, which sidesteps the app-storage problem completely. Anything in Files can go straight into a browser editor.

For spoken audio this is often the best route on an iPad, because the browser tools that transcribe and let you edit by deleting text avoid fine waveform work entirely, which is exactly the thing a touchscreen is worst at.

It also works with a keyboard and trackpad attached, at which point the iPad is functionally a laptop for this purpose.

Hilite works this way and we make it, so weigh that as you like. The general point holds for any browser-based editor.