21 thoughts on “Caustic 3 Sneak Preview”

  2. had caustic when i had an android , best music app on the platform by far and would be great on ios
    get on it guys. all in all really good app though

  3. I had downloaded a demo of this for my MyTouch 4G, and it ran surprisingly well on this older device. On the small screen it was not very easy to use, but it was consistent and I didn’t experience any bugs or glitches.

    I don’t know if this new version would run on my device. I’m probably not going to try it– only because I have more than enough stuff to keep me busy for decades.

  4. This is looking really interresting. To bad about the latency issue on Android. So yes as Itchy says, get working on an IOS version 🙂

    1. I think Caustic does an impressive job of allowing you to work around Android’s infamous latency. Because everything is based around patterns & songs, you don’t really need to perform into it.

      As for the toy nature alluded to below:
      1. Firstly, you say “toy” like that’s a bad thing. Come on kids. We all loves our toys or we wouldn’t be here.
      2. As for “seriousness”, for the (what) 8 bucks ?, it’s serious enough. And as a weak old phone user, I’ve thrown away 30 times as many apps as I’ve bought. The truth is, MOST APPS SUCK. So when somebody actually gets it right, there is reason for giving proper credit.
      3. I’m with the crowd that things smartphones, tablets, and Apple, Google, etc. having their hands in everything is GREATLY over-rated. But here we are. All I can do is shield myself from all the BS. But I digress.

      1. It MUST be said that you can play with this app as long as you want for free. When you are “serious” enough to want to export your work, then you pay the 8 bucks. I’d say that’s a pretty sweet deal.

  5. all tablet apps are gimmicks and toys… let’s be real.. you maybe able to get a few sounds out of them.. but they are going to be thin and limited.

    you might be able to have hours of fun and make cheesy little tunes or throw bits and bobs into projects… but let’s be real… you get what you pay for.

    there’s just not enough horsepower to drive high quality tones out of a tablet all by itself… so why bother using one if it’s not for the “cool factor”… gimmick factor or just to satisfy your childhood need to play with gadgets.

    once the tablets become powerful enough to run multiple threads and host complex instruments with oversampling, effects and all the other stuff require for a full lushes sounding tone… they’ll be nothing more then hyped up speak and spells.

    2. Almost nothing you said is correct. There’s as much horsepower in a 4th generation iPad as there was in a dual 1.6ghz G5. Auria on an iPad 4 now outperforms protools LE on that old G5 (more tracks, higher sample rate, etc), and plenty of hit records have been made with much less powerful systems.

      Thor, nave, sunrizer, animoog, wavemapper, etc, etc all have superb sounding synth engines and in the case of imini and Thor are, as I understand it, identical to their desktop versions in terms of the code for the synth engine.

      I mostly work on a desktop, but the iPad has been an invaluable and inspiring tool when I’m travelling, and I know plenty of musicians who are now using tablets as their main writing tool.

      there is no such thing as a toy when it comes to music creation. In the hands of the right person……

      Aside from that, this looks amazing. Dear caustic people, release it for iOS and make some money.

      1. Actually, I’m wrong.

        There’s almost twice as much horsepower in an iPad 4 as there was in a *single* core 1.6 G5.

        And fwiw, iPads (and all iterations of iOS) have supported multithreading.

        1. Try running something that requires large sample libraries?
          Try running something with over sampling?
          Try running something with full Unison?
          Try running something with realistic impulse reverb?
          Try running complex real time fx chains?
          Try not to max out your cpu?

          You’ve got decent apps like Anamoog… but you will never have apps like NI Massive or AbSynth… you know real high quality sounding synths like Sylenth and Nexus 2.

          Things that require real horsepower.

          I guess if you’re making cheesy chip tunes you’re covered.

          1. nope. no cheesy chiptunes here

            when you say “real horsepower” do you mean the power of real horses?

            of course an iPad is not as powerful as a current desktop (although since i used to run absynth on an 800Mhz powerbook G4, and massive on the aforementioned G5, i doubt if it would be impossible to port them in some form to an iPad, especially before “never”)

            and of course, you can’t bung your vienna or play libraries on it

            real impulses? yep, more than possible (in auria). complex fx chains? yep, also possible (auria again, turnado, csgrain, audulus)

            max out my cpu? of course. i’ve never had a cpu i didn’t max out at some point, even if just for the fuck of it. i’ve maxed out quad i7s and 12core xeons with the best of them (mainly for the fuck of it)

            but that’s not the point, really, is it? can you run massive or sylenth on a guitar? does a violin have oversampling (what is it with you and oversampling, anyway?) never stopped anyone with talent writing good music on a guitar or a violin.

            the point is you described tablets as toys

            the point is that an ipad (or an android tablet, increasingly, if this is anything to go by) loaded with apps is a cheap, portable, creative and inspiring tool to make music on. are there compromises to the workflow? maybe, but you can work around them, or work within them. are there things that are not possible except on a multitouch device? yes (animoog’s keyboard, TC-11’s everything). do some of them sound great? yes – see above and a host of others (including alchemy – a direct port of the desktop plugin again, only more expressive because of the touchscreen)

            whether or not something is a toy depends entirely on the person using it and the context in which it is being used.

  6. I know is that on paper, both Android and desktop hardware defecates on iOS.
    I also know that iOS allows me to do things that isn’t possible on any other platform; the stuff I can do is just plain awesome, and the stuff I can’t do narrows my focus and concentrates my time and energy.
    I’m not offended in any way if others think these devices are toys, they’re entitled to their opinion, although I do think it’s a shame that they think that you can’t have fun and be productive with these tools at the same time.
    Maybe there is a lot of music made with these devices that sound amateurish, but ultimately, who cares? most people don’t want to make a living from it, they are just having fun and creating music – which is amazing to me.
    This app does look cool and hopefully more cool apps will come out for Android that prove latency can be much less of an issue.

  7. From my perspective, serious music production on a pad is like trying to knit a sweater through a keyhole. The fact that so many people want things small sets some restrictions on how you can use the device at hand. I can see the value of having a portable quickie means of saving those flights of fancy at the beach, but I’d still have to come home and dump it into my DAW to turn it into a finished piece. I’m not yet convinced that the added work and expense are cost-effective. Its getting there with stout apps like this and Sunrizer, but as colorful as it all is, the main thing I’m waiting to see is a more common standard of uses somewhere between games and full-blown DAWs. It still seems a bit like a solution looking for a problem. I wince when I say that, because Roland impressed me with its iPad editor for the VR-09 & the Alchemy app is a keeper. I’m just a bit itchy, waiting to see what pads are really the best at delivering, beyond reproducing things from larger platforms.

  8. to those complaining about latency, you have probably never used or experienced a pattern based step sequencing music production experience, which is why your midi controller seems so important. pressing the play button on the transport and waiting .2 seconds doesn’t annoy me that much but yeah if i was using a midi keyboard triggering a note it might, but that isn’t really pattern programming, which is what the sequencer appears to encourage.

  10. Have tried a few synth apps on my Galaxy Nexus and have noticed a click or glitch as the voice numbers increase or are more complex. Not sure if it is just my phone, but any other audio playback is fine, or if it is the app/OS or some other variable. Synthtones for instance works fineuntil the fourth or fifth voice is added, then things get a bit glitchy. Caustic 2 is great but has similar issues with the complexity of the voices. Not just the on board speaker, line out has the same issue. CircleSynth seems to work fine. Still considering my next move re a mobile soft synth platform.

  12. Looks exciting! I have been using Caustic for a couple of years now, and even though I now use an ipad instead of an Android tablet, I still use Caustic 2 on my Android phone from time to time.

    I hope they do come out with an ipad version this time around.

    I have not found any synth apps for the ipad that are as good as Caustic.

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