I'm trying to get BandHelper to send program changes to a background app on my iPad. BandHelper indicates some sort of connection (the red icon), but the MIDI icon does not show the app among the MIDI outputs. The puzzling thing is that an earlier version of this same app works flawlessly with BandHelper. The app (BIAS FX 2 Mobile) does accommodate IAA, according to its manual. Am I designating ports incorrectly, possibly? Any help would be appreciated.
I'm not sure what you mean by the "red icon." IAA (inter-app audio) is not related to MIDI. You only need two things to send MIDI to another app: that app needs to support receiving MIDI from other apps, and that app needs to keep running in the background. You don't have to do anything special in BandHelper.
BandHelper sends to all ports by default, so whether the app listens on the default Network Session, or it creates its own virtual port to listen on, BandHelper's messages should reach it.
The other app would only need to create virtual ports and you would only need to select that app's port as the destination if you need to ensure that the MIDI you're sending to it will not be seen by other apps or hardware. Usually this isn't necessary because most MIDI messages include a channel number and you can set up each recipient to listen on a different channel.
Ah. It's a red icon with a microphone in it--it shows up when I scroll through my songs in the set list. When I click on it, my background app comes up.
Okay, that's telling you that another app is accessing the microphone. That shouldn't affect the MIDI functionality. It does confirm for us that the other app is running in the background.