Caustic Virtual Studio Comes To iOS

caustic-ios-iphone-ipad

Caustic – a software virtual studio – has made the leap from Android to iOS.

Caustic 3 lets you create a custom studio rack by adding up to 14 machines from a choice of:

  • Subsynth – Virtual analog subtractive synthesizer
  • PCMSynth – Multi-sample wave synthesizer
  • BassLine – 303-like monosynth
  • BeatBox – 8-channel sampling drum machine
  • PadSynth – Harmonic table pad synthesizer
  • 8BitSynth – 8bit equation solver synthesizer
  • Modular – Fully configurable and routable synthesizer
  • Organ – Tonewheel organ with rotary speaker
  • Vocoder – 8-band harmonic vocoder
  • FMSynth – DX-style 3-operator fm synthesizer


The app also includes:

  • Effects rack supporting 2 effects per machine (16 effect types).
  • Mixer desk with EQ, panning and global Delay/Reverb effects.
  • Master section with effect slots, parametric EQ and limiter.
  • Song sequencer

Other features:

  • Caustic 3 supports automation recording on most controls and includes powerful editors for modifying automation curves.
  • Users can record their own WAV files for use in the PCMSynth, BeatBox, and Vocoder or import files through iTunes file sharing or the built-in FTP server.
  • Supports all uncompressed WAV files (8-16-24-32bit, any sampling rate).
  • The PCMSynth can also load SoundFont files (.sf2) and FL/Xewton instruments (.instr, .ZIP)
  • Exported songs can be shared using the AudioShare app.
  • Supports CoreMIDI for note and velocity data.
  • See the in-app help section for dozens of informative tutorial videos and full online manual.
  • There is also a FREE (full version) PC version available for download on the product website.

Here’s the official promo:

Here’s the official overview video:

There is an extensive collection of tutorials available for Caustic 3 at their YouTube channel.

Caustic 3 is available for iOS for US $9.99. It’s available for Android in the Google Play store. A free Windows version is also available.

For more info see the Single Cell Software site.

If you’ve used Caustic, leave a comment and let us know what you think of it!

36 thoughts on “Caustic Virtual Studio Comes To iOS”

  1. The best just got better!

    And the free Windows version is just even more icing on the cake.

    I wonder if its possible to import Android songs on IOS and vice-versa.

    1. I have tried a few song creating apps and to my inexperienced mind, caustic 3 is by far the best. The feature set, the UI, the sound, etc all amazing. I am only part way through figuring it all out and it never seems to end as far as the capabilities of the app. The developer is so good. $10 is nothing for an app like Caustic. You can pay that much just for a synth like one if the ones in Caustic. Or even for a sound editor. Caustic has it all and if you want something that you do in another app, go ahead and import it, or connect with audiobus. Wow!!! Caustic is sooo much fun and soooo powerful!!

  3. caustic 2 was the first music app i ever installed on my ten inch tablet and i was amazed and impressed! I have an impressive home studio filled with synth hardware, and i don’t use computers for anything other than uploading music and/or recordings, but my tablet with caustic unstalled is more like a piece of digital synth hardware than a computer so i will have to buy the new upgrade a.s.a.p.

    1. I bought and installed caustic last year. to my amazement, I realized that the upgrade to version 3 is free! enjoy your new tablet studio 😉 I’m not saying caustic is a perfect replacement for any home studio (tablets will never be) but it surely adds a whole new dimension when it comes to experimenting and composing.

  5. A fantastic app. The UI is not as polished as some iOS apps but even saying that seems indecently petty, given the functionality : Great sounding boxes (and a huge variety of synth types) with a cool effects implementation, a neat pattern based sequencer, low CPU usage, and tiny storage footprint.

    That it’s been developed by an indie developer (one guy, I’m led to believe) on a platform that’s pretty hostile to music creation and is only 7 quid is little short of astonishing.

    If they integrate iaa, audiobus, and acp well, this will have come from nowhere on iOS to be one of the apps to beat.

  6. It’s great to see this move over to iOS, but it looks like it is currently handicapped by the limitations of Android.

    I’d love to see the developer catch this up with the state of the art for iOS apps. If they can do that, this could be a hit.

      1. iOS has a robust audio and MIDI implementation, and developers have pushed the platform further with things like AudioBus, ACP, WIST, etc.

        As a result, mature iOS apps interoperate pretty well.

        Caustic developed without a mature music ecosystem, so it doesn’t have the sort of interoperability that people expect nowadays.

        1. Caustic has very robust audio, MIDI maybe not, but I don’t think that not being compatible with a bunch of third party conduits makes it any less great. Nanostudio was developed in the same fashion as Caustic (and is also available for free on Windows).

          I like that you can upload samples directly through FTP without need for Itunes Files Sharing, this is not the kind of interoperability feature you often see in IOS apps.

          1. Why wouldn’t you want your apps to work together? To sequence Animoog and then record it? Or to run Caustic’s synths through third party effects, or run it in sync with other apps?

            I’m not saying that Caustic is not a fine app, but even Reason, which is way more powerful than Caustic, benefited by leaning how to work well with others.

            If it can do that, it will really be a great app!

            1. “Why wouldn’t you want your apps to work together?”

              When did I ever said that? I don’t remind ever saying anything like that. Actually, I’ve been asking for even better interoperability in IOS for years in the form of plugins and access (even limited) to a shared document folder. Audiobus and ACP are not bad, but they are a band-aid on a larger problem (which Apple will hopefully fix someday).

              “Reason, which is way more powerful than Caustic, benefited by leaning how to work well with others.”

              Eh… maybe I don’t get it, but I never found Reason to work that well with others. Even today there is still no way to use standard plugins in Reason, even thought users had been asking for this for so long, so instead Propellerhead created a specific Reason plugin format (Rack Extensions). Also Reason cannot be used as a plugin inside another DAW (like Fruityloops, Renoise and plenty of others), and instead has Rewire, which kinda lets you sync Reason to other DAWS, if that DAW supports Rewire that is.. I like Reason, but its possibly one of the worst offender in term of interoperability.

          2. >>this is not the kind of interoperability feature you often see in IOS apps.<<

            i've seen it in 2009/2010 ios apps – BeatMaker, Jasuto etc.

  7. owning an slow-ass running asus transformer pad, I was amazed by the speed of caustic! the latency of the synths makes it possible to actually play them. yes, I know that this is a normal thing on IOS, but it just prooves that good thoughtful development can result in something great. the synths sound very digital, so don’t expect any miracles. still, this new version is a big step forward with tons of new features. heck, it will take me days to figure out how the new modular synth works. thanks for this!

  10. Good move by the developer – It’s clear Android is never going to be a great platform for musicians, and he was losing revenue by focusing on a platform that’s second rate for musicians.

    1. Obvious troll is obviously trolling.

      Seriously, you must have a lot of knowledge about the developer’s revenue and how much money he has been losing in the last 3 years he spent developing Caustic (and Loopstack) on Android, please enlighten us.

      1. I don’t think he’s trolling. It’s obvious that iOS has been way, way better for musicians than Android over the last few years, and I say this as a 100% Android user. Google paid little attention to the needs of musicians (re latency etc) until very recently and you could see this in the Android development tools too. It has improved, but it will take years to make up the lost ground, same way it took years for Windows to become competitive with Mac for music software because Microsoft did the same thing as Google and gave multimedia compatibility/reliability a low priority.

        Caustic has probably done OK financially since it was the big fish in a small pond (of Android-using musicians) but it would be foolish to ignore the fact that most musicians who use tablets are on the Apple platform.

        1. I agree with everything you say about IOS and Android, but I still think its trolling to make a claim that he was losing revenue just because he has been focusing on Android.

  12. Just bought this, and so far sounds amazing…. The modular synth is awesome… I will have to see how it performs, but so far so good.

  13. Hey everyone, thanks for the warm welcome to iOS, it’s been a pretty stressful couple of days.

    I am a solo, indie dev so this has been a long journey. I quite proud of the new version and while it might not be as pretty as other apps, I think there’s a lot of fun to be had once you start digging in. The modular synth is probably my proudest feature for this release and I already have new components planned. By the way, one thing I won’t do any time soon is to start changing for new synths or components. I hate in-app purchases. Buy my app or don’t, but I’m not going to gouge my existing customers.

    I’m well aware of the lacking iOS features like AudioBus, IAA, ACP etc and I hope to have something to offer there in the next update (3.1). Understand that i’ve had a working iOS build for over a year and had to decide to ship something rather than put it off until _everything_ was perfect. The list of “must-haves” for a music app on iOS grows by the week it seems.

    Android has been a great place to grow and I’m very happy with the support I’ve had over the years from those users and the supportive community that has come out to help grow the app. I’m not abandoning anything, just expanding.

    rock on.

  14. Totally cool. I don’t think the UI is ugly…basic looking, yes. But this is a positive. Sure, it can look all cool with layers of eye-candy, faux coffee stains and cigarette burns, etc. But at the end of the day, without the clutter and distraction of the afore mentioned frivolous crap, this app delivers like few others. Everything just seems to flow in an obvious, intended way. It’s almost like this guy wrote this thing with musicians in mind, musicians who rather work on outputting rather than staring at cool graphics. By the way iOS people (like me), beware and be careful on the singlecell forums. As soon as you start mentioning Audiobus or anything iOS related be prepared for the onslaught. It’s like being on the receiving end on the Synthtopia comment section most of the times. Lions den. Hey, and let’s not forget the 64x over sampling shall we. Or the sigma-alpha conversion for Pete’s sake. Merry Synthmass!

  16. Wow, my first music app! Caustic was the only app I ever bought on android, though I left the ecosystem before three came out. Definitely going to have to power up my old phone and play around, and I’ll probably end up buying it. Anyone willing to weigh in on how the modular aspect compares to Pulse Code’s “Modular”, and/or the 303 to ReBirth (or similar)? The soundfont player is worth the price of admission alone. Is Polyphone considered the best free soundfont editor, or do people prefer something else? And I’ve been looking for a piano-roll sequencer for iOS for a while.

    Maybe I’ll just have to play around with it for a bit on the old phone and on the desktop. Very excited over this (if you couldn’t tell!).

    1. UPDATE: after charging my device, I discovered that google play no longer worked because google has moved their Play servers since I last turned the device on and thus it wouldn’t connect via wifi. Or something. Anyway, I couldn’t update Caustic through that route, so I logged into my Play account on another device and told it to install Caustic, having uninstalled it from the device in order to prevent possible confusion. Clever, right? Well, that failed too since my device still couldn’t talk to the play servers. A prospective fix involved editing the hosts file on the device, but I didn’t want to try that just yet. At this point I was beginning to remember why it was that I abandoned Android in the first place, an emotion compounded by the fact that the phone, overtaxed by all this “turning on” and “using wifi” business, locked up and ceased responding to touch which necessitated a battery pull. However, I still had a trick up my sleeve. Though my iPhone uses a different form factor SIM card, I knew that the pinout was the same and so I inserted it into the SIM slot, which it promptly vanished into entirely. Dismayed though I was at this turn of events, I reinserted the battery and turned the phone on. It was now connected to the network, and as I watched it began to download Caustic. The taste of victory was sweet indeed. Having achieved my goal, I turned the phone back off and, after futilely attempting to remove the SIM card from the oversized slot, dismantled it entirely and pushed the card out from the back. I then reassembled it and turned it back on. Not only did it work, but due to having updated the Play app I could now use it with wifi and so putting an incorrectly-sized SIM in was actually smart and not stupid at all. Anyway, I started up Caustic and was greeted with raucous dubstep styled music and an offer to upgrade to the full version. I swiftly clicked through to do so, having previously paid for the app. But alas! Oh woe! I was met with a message instructing me to “contact the developer if you unlocked Caustic 1.0 using the in-app purchase [which I had] and need to reactivate on this device”.

      Well, I’m going to do that, but man maybe I’ll just play with the desktop version since all I want to do is demo it before buying the iOS port. I still like the app, though, and none of this (except the odd validation issue) was the dev’s fault.

  20. Guys, regardless of what platform you are discovering this app on right now, The Finest Pocket Music Workstation on the Planet just got a whole lot bigger with this version 3 build. Give yourself a little bit of time (like I did two years ago when I first discovered this little gem) and you will start to find yourself hooked…
    The unprecedented flexibility Caustic offers is only limited by your imagination. I am simply amazed at the growing new talent I have seen and help to learn and expand their music knowledge… some users come into the forums with practically ZERO music theory knowledge or training, and within a few weeks, are pumping out tracks that I never expected from someone completely new to the music creation universe.
    It is a pure joy to welcome our new iOS friends to the SCS Community, and the new wave of talent is an awesome addition to an already great forum.
    It only gets better from here, so keep your eyes open….

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *