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I recently finally installed a DAW called Caustic 3 on my Android phone, which move I was putting off for quite a while, for lame reasons. I now consider that t

by aasasd 6y ago

I recently finally installed a DAW called Caustic 3 on my Android phone, which move I was putting off for quite a while, for lame reasons. I now consider that time to be my wasted years. The app is worth its toy price just in shock and awe at how well it works on a phone. It has limitations, but—pshaw!—it's still a ‘workstation’ quite able to punch up to the big boys, only on the phone—meaning I don't have to prop myself up at the table. The demo is fully functional apart from saving files or exporting the song—but it saves the project automatically between sessions. It's mostly for electronic music, with nine synths available apart from the sample-based one. However, with the sample-synth you can record some audio or load a soundfont, or throw samples into the beatbox. There's even an audio editor. But I'm guessing that phone memory might pose a problem for using long audio tracks. The app is made entirely by one guy. Afaik SDL is used for the GUI and input, which leads to not only it being available on iOS too, but also on Windows and Mac (and working in Wine)—where it's completely free. This vid shows the gist of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q86OrU-E7RU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q86OrU-E7RU (and other ones in the channel explain the rest).

panpanna 6y ago
IIRC, caustic was developed by a former game dev, and as such he worked hard to make it efficient and look good on all kinda of devices. For a while it was the most expensive app I had on my phone, and I bought it only to support the developer. There was an iOS port last time I checked, but maybe he decided to pull it?
- aasasd 6y ago
  I guess my writing is a bit convoluted: the app is indeed on iOS, nothing is pulled.
kristiandupont 6y ago
It looks nice but from a quick skim through the video I didn't see anything special that sets it apart from other DAW's. Would you care to elaborate on why it's so special?
- aasasd 6y ago
  Well, for starters afaik ‘other DAWs’ is not a large category on phones, at least on Android. And with how producers love monitors of 30" or more, I'd guess that it's not a realistic option. But no, this toy-looking app, whose knobs practically invite me to fiddle with them, is laid out great for a small screen. (Though not for very fat fingers.) I've come to think that I'll need to pirate FL Studio Mobile just to take a gawk at how its interface feels in practice and to compare, then throw it away. Still, I've seen opinions that Caustic beats FL.
  - tomduncalf 6y ago
    Yeah, I thought Caustic was better to use and sounded better than FL Studio Mobile, in my limited testing!
Joeboy 6y ago
From skimming that video, I don't think that's a DAW, in the normal sense? Can you use it to track guitars, vocals etc?
- aasasd 6y ago
  I don't know if there's a term specifically for DAWs made mostly for production of electronic music. Caustic is not a ‘multitrack recorder’, no. As I mentioned above, you could try laying out tracks in it, but it would be awkward. Now, short recorded samples—that is very possible, the app even has a vocoder.
tomduncalf 6y ago
Caustic does perform well, it's probably the best Android music making app I've seen in terms of both performance and features. That said, compared to what is available on iOS, it's pretty basic (sorry to turn this into iOS vs Android, not my intention but just putting some info out there for people interested in this area). On iPhone and iPad, there are fully fledged DAWs (Cubasis, Auria, Garageband) with many of the features of desktop ones if that's your thing (personally I find this kind of software better suited to mouse, keyboard and large screen); there are "groovebox" apps in a similar space to Caustic but with much more powerful sound engines (e.g. Korg Gadget); and a huge ecosystem of amazing plugin synths and effects which can be wired together using hosts such as AUM (or one of the aforementioned DAWs). While music making on iOS does have limitations compared to desktop (e.g. due to iOS restrictions) and can be frustrating sometimes, if you can find a workflow that works for you, it's incredibly fun and for me provides a great experience somewhere in between "jamming" with physical hardware (a touch screen is preferable to a mouse when tweaking knobs etc), and the flexibility and convenience of using a computer. If anyone is interested in mobile music making, iOS is the platform to go for - a base model iPad will open up a whole world of cheap, fun, awesome-sounding music making. The audio development situation on Android has improved somewhat since they introduced a new API called Oboe, and low latency audio is now possible on modern devices, but there is so much variation from device to device, and in general you can't do anywhere near as much processing compared to even an old iOS device without encountering crackling etc, so it's unlikely IMO that Android will catch up to iOS for music making any time soon (source: I do cross-platform mobile music app development). Mostly this is because iOS is built on top of the foundations of MacOS, which has a long history of pro audio use; and also because the iOS device landscape is much more tightly controlled; but also Apple have made quite a lot of effort to provide foundations for a music making ecosystem on iOS (e.g. Inter-app Audio and AUv3).
- 2mol 6y ago
  Thanks for this detailed reply. It so happens that I just bought an iPad for the purpose of jamming and learning how to use synths, so I'm very excited to try out some of the apps you mentioned. Can you recommend where to start? I.e a particular app that lets you compose, jam, and tweak sounds, or a sampler, or just a particular tutorial.

by aasasd 6y ago

panpanna 6y ago

IIRC, caustic was developed by a former game dev, and as such he worked hard to make it efficient and look good on all kinda of devices. For a while it was the most expensive app I had on my phone, and I bought it only to support the developer. There was an iOS port last time I checked, but maybe he decided to pull it?

aasasd 6y ago
I guess my writing is a bit convoluted: the app is indeed on iOS, nothing is pulled.

kristiandupont 6y ago

It looks nice but from a quick skim through the video I didn't see anything special that sets it apart from other DAW's. Would you care to elaborate on why it's so special?

aasasd 6y ago
Well, for starters afaik ‘other DAWs’ is not a large category on phones, at least on Android. And with how producers love monitors of 30" or more, I'd guess that it's not a realistic option. But no, this toy-looking app, whose knobs practically invite me to fiddle with them, is laid out great for a small screen. (Though not for very fat fingers.) I've come to think that I'll need to pirate FL Studio Mobile just to take a gawk at how its interface feels in practice and to compare, then throw it away. Still, I've seen opinions that Caustic beats FL.
- tomduncalf 6y ago
  Yeah, I thought Caustic was better to use and sounded better than FL Studio Mobile, in my limited testing!

Joeboy 6y ago

From skimming that video, I don't think that's a DAW, in the normal sense? Can you use it to track guitars, vocals etc?

aasasd 6y ago
I don't know if there's a term specifically for DAWs made mostly for production of electronic music. Caustic is not a ‘multitrack recorder’, no. As I mentioned above, you could try laying out tracks in it, but it would be awkward. Now, short recorded samples—that is very possible, the app even has a vocoder.

tomduncalf 6y ago

Caustic does perform well, it's probably the best Android music making app I've seen in terms of both performance and features. That said, compared to what is available on iOS, it's pretty basic (sorry to turn this into iOS vs Android, not my intention but just putting some info out there for people interested in this area). On iPhone and iPad, there are fully fledged DAWs (Cubasis, Auria, Garageband) with many of the features of desktop ones if that's your thing (personally I find this kind of software better suited to mouse, keyboard and large screen); there are "groovebox" apps in a similar space to Caustic but with much more powerful sound engines (e.g. Korg Gadget); and a huge ecosystem of amazing plugin synths and effects which can be wired together using hosts such as AUM (or one of the aforementioned DAWs). While music making on iOS does have limitations compared to desktop (e.g. due to iOS restrictions) and can be frustrating sometimes, if you can find a workflow that works for you, it's incredibly fun and for me provides a great experience somewhere in between "jamming" with physical hardware (a touch screen is preferable to a mouse when tweaking knobs etc), and the flexibility and convenience of using a computer. If anyone is interested in mobile music making, iOS is the platform to go for - a base model iPad will open up a whole world of cheap, fun, awesome-sounding music making. The audio development situation on Android has improved somewhat since they introduced a new API called Oboe, and low latency audio is now possible on modern devices, but there is so much variation from device to device, and in general you can't do anywhere near as much processing compared to even an old iOS device without encountering crackling etc, so it's unlikely IMO that Android will catch up to iOS for music making any time soon (source: I do cross-platform mobile music app development). Mostly this is because iOS is built on top of the foundations of MacOS, which has a long history of pro audio use; and also because the iOS device landscape is much more tightly controlled; but also Apple have made quite a lot of effort to provide foundations for a music making ecosystem on iOS (e.g. Inter-app Audio and AUv3).

2mol 6y ago
Thanks for this detailed reply. It so happens that I just bought an iPad for the purpose of jamming and learning how to use synths, so I'm very excited to try out some of the apps you mentioned. Can you recommend where to start? I.e a particular app that lets you compose, jam, and tweak sounds, or a sampler, or just a particular tutorial.