Retromulator

Retromulator is a multi-core retro hardware emulation app and AUv3 plug-in that brings legendary synthesizer, sampler, and keyboard cores back to life through authentic low-level emulation. Each core runs its actual firmware, physical model, or sample data — delivering the unmistakable character of the hardware that defined electronic music from the early 80s through the 2000s.

— EMULATED CORES —

VIRTUAL ANALOG SYNTHS

Firmware-level chip emulation, enabled with the 56k cores option (requires M1 iPad or iPhone 15 Pro or newer):

• Access Virus A, B and C — Motorola DSP 56300 recreation
• Access Virus TI / TI2 / Snow — Motorola DSP 56300 recreation
• Clavia Nord Lead 2X — Motorola DSP 56300 recreation
• Waldorf microQ — Motorola DSP 56300 recreation
• Waldorf Microwave XT — Motorola DSP 56300 recreation
• Roland JP-8000 and JP-8080 — JE-8086 core by Giulio Zausa

ANALOG SYNTHS

• Oberheim Matrix-1000 — original firmware on an emulated Motorola 6809 board driving six CEM3396 voice models, with ROM banks 2 to 9 from the patch EPROM, a MIDI CC for each of the 96 patch parameters and LFO sync to the host tempo or MIDI clock

FM SYNTHESIS

• Yamaha DX7 — original chip set emulation, based on VDX7 by Charles Chiaccona
• Yamaha OPL3 — Nuked OPL3 cycle-accurate FM by Nuke.YKT

GM / GS SOUND MODULES

• 88emu — Roland SC-88, SC-88VL, SC-88Pro, SC-8850 and SC-55mkII boards, emulation by Giulio Zausa, with GS variation, map and rhythm handling, program and drum kit names read straight from the board ROM, 16-part multitimbral operation, and a Standard MIDI File player with offline rendering to WAV or AAC.

CHIPTUNE

• Commodore 64 SID 6581/8580 — based on reSID. 3-voice polyphony, 8580 chip model with high-quality RESAMPLE, GoatTracker .sng / .ins bank loading (GTS3/4/5, GTI3/4/5) and .sid file import (PSID/RSID), full macro playback engine (wavetable, pulsetable, filtertable, speedtable) and live MIDI control of cutoff (CC 74), resonance (CC 71), pulse width (CC 75), vibrato (CC 1) and pitch bend.
• Ayumi (AY-3-8910 / YM2149) — the PSG behind the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST and MSX. Ayumi emulation by Peter Sovietov with the Ym2149Synth voice engine, 3-voice polyphony, switchable AY / YM engine, .ay patch loading, Factory and User banks, and 11 live CC controls.

ELECTRIC PIANO AND SAMPLER

• Wurlitzer 200A — OpenWurli physical modelling by hal0zer0 (Rust ported to C++ by discoDSP)
• Akai S1000 — SFZero sample engine by Steve Folta, with Bliss Sampler support and resampling engine by discoDSP (SF2 / SFZ / ZBP / ZBB)

— KEY FEATURES —

• Native AUv3 plug-in for AUM, Cubasis, GarageBand, Logic Pro and more
• Standalone app for iPhone and iPad
• Full MIDI control: CC, mod wheel, expression, pitch bend
• 8-point sinc interpolation for sample playback
• Auto-slice drum mapping and global retuning via MIDI
• ROM firmware loading from original hardware
• Background audio, iCloud and Files app integration
• Optimised interpreter compatible with the iOS App Store sandbox