Developer Taylor Holliday let us know that, after over four years of development, Audulus LLC has released Audulus 4, a massive update to the modular synthesis app for iOS & MacOS.
Audulus 4 offers many new features, is free to try out and now lets you share patches that anyone can play.
“Audulus 4 represents a massive step forward for Audulus, which required a tremendous re-working of the code,” says Holliday. “The user interface is now more pro, while still being immediate and approachable.”
Audulus 4 now lets users build patches using Eurorack-style modules, and features a rebuilt module library to showcase the new features. And you can build your own modules, using the platforms large library of pre-built ‘nodes’.
“Audulus is unique in seamlessly combining Eurorack-style patching with lower level signal graphs.” said Audulus sound designer Jerry Smith. “You can build advanced modules in Audulus, without needing to know programming languages such as C++.”
Here’s what’s new in Audulus 4:
- Full multitouch on iPadOS: Turn on performance mode and interact with multiple controls at once. Create multitouch performance surfaces.
- Custom UI for math expressions.
- Knob colors and icons.
- New UI nodes like sliders and X-Y pads.
- Modules can now be recursively exposed. Build front-panels out of other front panels.
- Improved search experience in the module browser.
- MIDI output via a MIDI Send node.
- Pinch to zoom while dragging a connection or moving a module.
- AUv3 versions on both iPadOS and macOS.
- Canvas Node: Build custom user interfaces using the Lua programming language.
- GLSL Shader node: Make advanced shadertoy-style graphics.
The video at top offers a preview of Audulus 4 on iOS. Here’s a preview of it running on MacOS:
The application is cross-platform and supports iCloud sync between devices. So you can start a patch on your Mac, edit on-the-go with your iPad or iPhone, and then use your patch across all your devices.
Pricing and Availability
Audulus 4 is available now as a free download on the Mac and iPad App Stores. Patch editing is enabled via an in-app purchase upgrade for $19.99 USD.
now that’s some software looking software. good for you Audulus! take pride in yoursoftwareness.
Thanks John! Appreciate the love for the UI, we thought about it for a long time and went through many iterations on it. Papernoise Design was responsible for the update in the look https://www.papernoise.net they’re always fantastic.
Thanks John! We’re very softwarey over here in softwareland 🙂
Shots fired, zMors Modular developer
Haha, I just bought it earlier this morning. Good to see more companies doing iCloud sync. Even more fun on a ginormous screen.
Thank you! Let us know if you need any help 🙂
Time to give it a shot now. Always wanted to but I shy’d away because of the UI. Now it looks closer to Bitwigs Grid which is a very fun interface to navigate.
Recently got Bitwig and am very happy with it.
Aw thanks! I agree it’s looking better than ever. It helps that we have snap-to-grid now as well as precise control over the size of UI elements.
Forgot about this app. Bought it years ago. Maybe have to fire it up.
There’s a lot more in Audulus 4 to discover – if you need any help using it, let us know! 🙂
What an awesome developer!! Nice compromise to allow users to load the various examples, then IAP to unlock editing.
Thank you! So glad others are seeing the wonderful potential in this new and improved open Audulus ecosystem 🙂
Still one of the most beautiful things to look at on a screen anywhere. Happy to see this update!
Thanks for the kind words Johan!
Thank you Johan! We all tried hard to make it as beautiful and user-friendly as possible 🙂 Hope you enjoy!
Requires Ventura on Mac!!! :(. Can’t do without critical audio tools that still aren’t Ventura-ready. Sigh.
But runs on my iPad at least. Looks like a great update.
Yes – we’re using it to get around a bug that’s on Apple’s end. Once they fix that we should be able to broaden the OS requirements. On the other hand, Audulus will always work on the latest OS versions since we stay on top of updating. We don’t want to be the ones keeping people from patching security flaws in their computer.
But yeah, at least you can use it on iPad at the moment! The versions are exactly the same except for UI, so whatever you learn and do will be easily transferrable.
Any plans for a windows version? this looks awesome…
There’s not a date set for a Windows version, but I know Taylor made some design decisions that leave the door open to it!
i cant use it on ipad either, only ios 16 ;(
Sorry! We’ll still be around when you’re able to upgrade though 🙂
Computer-based musicians are notoriously conservative when it comes to operating system.
The ‘why fix it when it’s working?’ saying is very much taken to heart. 97% of iOS updates are for Apple’s own bundled apps with very very little for content creators. The much vaunted Samba updates to their file browser have proved mostly useless with Samba shares being treated very much as a second class citizen. And this situation has not improved over the numerous 15.x updates.
‘Upgrade’ you say? I’ve looked through Apple’s iOS 16 hightlights. There’s absolutely nothing for musicians there (apart from very likely compatability issues with your old favourite apps)
Please don’t feed the needless update beast. We’ve all got old favourite apps that are clinging on.
Anyway, thanks for making it macOS compatible.
Thanks for the reply Sonic! If we could lower the requirements, we would. What we’d have to do, though, is sacrifice functionality, namely, the renderer that shows you what the patch or module looks like. Everything could be in one big long list, but it wouldn’t look nice and wouldn’t be a great user experience. Updating to 16 fixes this because the bug is internal to Apple’s code, not ours. If we can find a way around that, we will lower the requirements.
Audulus will always work with the latest OS because we believe it’s not good practice nor is it safe to stay on old OSes or forgo security updates just because developers can’t keep up with maintenance. It’s a risk/benefit choice you are absolutely free to make for yourself, but we always want to make sure those who care about the security of their devices are never held back from upgrading by Audulus.
We always face a gain/loss fork in the road with every new OS. It used to be that we could trust that new OS’s wouldn’t break older apps, but that is less and less the case. Also, new OS’s drop compatibility with hardware, and often kill workflows. And new OS’s come faster and faster, and so at some point we have to decide.
I’m sympathetic to the developer’s plight, and not-very-sympathetic to Apple’s quest to f**k things up, brick our hardware, and make our lives “better”.
Does Audulus support generating CV signals to modulars via DC coupled interfaces (like Reaktor, Bitwig and Ableton can)
I believe the answer is yes.
https://forum.audulus.com/t/introduction-to-audulus-and-the-expert-sleepers-es-8-dc-coupled-audio-cv-interface/72
MacOS 13.0 or later needed to use the app on Mac
So happy to see that Taylor has pushed on and continued to refine this piece of software.. probably hasn’t gotten the love it deserves but it’s on really solid underpinnings and is likely to play a starring role in the years to come.
Hope more people will adopt this environment alongside VCV, Voltage Modular, etc.. it’s one of the greats.