Apple has no business releasing such a capable recording studio and then giving it away for free. You would usually bypass the freeware, given-away-with-the-device type apps and move onto ones developed by proper music software manufacturers. However, Apple’s Garage Band is an extraordinary piece of work which owes much to the team behind their professional MacOS music software Logic Pro.

From simple beginnings of letting you record a few tracks of audio alongside some cheesy built-in sounds, it has evolved with version 2.2 into a working 32 track recording studio that’s as serious as you want to be. It contains a capable multi-track audio recorder with output level control, monitoring, and multi-effects.

You’ll find presets for vocals that include pitch correction, compression, and reverb plus amp models for guitar and bass. It pulls some effects from Logic Pro like the Visual EQ in a somewhat simplified version. It has a multi-take facility which allows you to loop record multiple takes over the same range in your project and then choose your favorite.

There’s a full MIDI sequencer and editing along with several pretty decent keyboard instruments and a remarkably fun sampler. Version 2.2 brings in the excellent Alchemy synthesizer which, provided you have a recent iPad, can provide some superb synth sounds. Live Loops is another new feature that gives you a page for synchronized loop performance as well as a library of loop sets to buy into. With Remix FX you can go wild with your DJ style sound mangling. Rounding it off is your very own virtual session drummer to add some virtual realism to your beats.

Add to this GarageBand’s support for the AU format which allows you to use third-party effects and instruments directly within the DAW so you are not restricted to the sounds and sculpting Apple provides you with. It’s the whole package, the real deal and it’s free with your iPad.

Street Price: Free
Website: itunes.apple.com
App Store: itunes.apple.com

Apple has finally got around to producing an iPad version of their professional DAW platform, Logic Pro. It’s been a long time coming but it looks like it’s been worth the wait. Apple has gone to a lot of trouble to construct the perfect touch-interface that makes sense on the iPad. You can’t just borrow a desktop app and assume it will fly with touch.

With Logic Pro, you can make beats, play with virtual instruments, record, edit and mix completely within the Apple eco-system. You can get into the virtual keyboard, tap on the trigger pads, or draw expression in with your fingertips. Of course, if you have the Apple Pencil, then you can get down to some really detailed editing.

All the effects tile themselves together like you are browsing for movies. You’re not having to find your way through multiple windows; it’s all there with a swipe. And these are pro-level effects, ported directly from Logic Pro desktop, with a tough-friendly interface.

It comes with an expanding loop and sound library that can inspire and kickstart your creations. Or you can build your own sound collection with the Sample Alchemy feature that will take any sound and turn it into an instrument.

Logic Pro pulls in various elements to build your tracks, like the Step Sequencer, Beat Breaker, Drum Machine Designer and Live Loop clip launcher. You have full console mixing and processing over all your tracks, with sub-mixing and easy bouncing to free up power for more music. You can share your projects between iPad and desktop and even pull in old GarageBand projects for a professional upgrade.

If you want the real deal, then Logic Pro is the answer.

Street Price: $4.99 monthly on subscription
Website: Apple.com
App Store: itunes.apple.com

Audio Evolution takes on the classic DAW look and feature set. It looks right, behaves exactly how you want a DAW to go and can comfortably become your next home studio.

It has multitrack audio recording with nonlinear editing like trimming, moving, cross fading and time stretching. You have control over individual clip volume and fades as well as reverse, loop, normalise and pitch shift. For MIDI sequencing you get a piano roll editor with expressive MPE support. There’s a dedicated drum pattern editor and you can drop in tempo and time signature changes

There are plenty of realtime effects to choose from including chorus, delay, compression, reverb and more plus it has a grid feature where you can arrange effects for all sorts of interesting parallel processing. Audio Evolution comes with the Evolution One virtual instrument that features morphing oscillators, Moog type filtering, ARP, sequencing and lots of modulation. You’ve also got Soundfont support for a wide selection of sounds.

Audio Bus and Inter-app audio effects and instruments are supported meaning that you can use other apps alongside and pull the audio into and out of Audio Evolution Mobile.

Audio Evolution is very comprehensive and offers lot of additional sounds and effects via in-app purchases. It really does give a viable alternative to Garage Band and Cubasis.

Street Price: $9.99
Website: ExtreamSD.com
App Store: itunes.apple.com

Cubasis comes from one of the longest-running DAWs in the game and is probably the best alternative to Logic Pro. Steinberg pretty much invented the idea and introduced real-time plugins and virtual instruments, and Cubase is one of the most popular DAWs on the desktop. On the mobile platform, they have Cubasis, and they are not messing about.

Taking all its cues from the full version of Cubase, Cubasis offers unlimited audio and MIDI tracks with support for up to 24 simultaneous inputs. It has all the editing you’d expect, with real-time pitch and time stretching, a dedicated audio editor and a high-resolution engine.

The mixer has a studio grade channel strip for sonic processing and 17 effects with sidechain support. You can rearrange plugins with a finger, run through presets and fall back to earlier versions via the undo history.

MIDI editing is the best in the business with full automation, program change and aftertouch support. It comes with a load of virtual instruments and a sampler for fabulously authentic sounds. It support Universal apps, Core audo, MIDI, Bluetooth, Ableton Link, Audio Units, Audio Bus and Inter-app audio. It really does have everything.

Cubasis is the most full-featured DAW on iPad and has the best support and ongoing development.

Street Price: $24.99
Website: www.steinberg.net
App Store: itunes.apple.com

FL Studio is fast, funky and full of surprisingly creative tools and functions. It works a bit differently to other DAWs and can offer some alternative approaches to music production.

It’s very loop orientated, but it doesn’t stay there. It’s brilliant at drum programming, and you won’t find a better step sequencer in any other software. FL Studio Mobile flows audio and MIDI into each other like it’s not important to see them as separate things. It makes it easy to mix your parts, rearrange your ideas and reinvent yourself.

FL Studio is stacked full of effects and synthesizers and has highly configurable touch controllers for keyboard or pad-style input. One of the great things is that FL Studio runs on everything. So if you start a project here, you can move it to your desktop to finish or expand.

It has all the support for Audio Bus, Inter-app, MIDI and audio connections, and you can even share songs with other users.

Street Price: $13.99
Website: www.image-line.com
App Store: itunes.apple.com

N-Track Studio used to be a quirky entry-level DAW that existed as Shareware back in the day. However, recent versions and developments have really brought it up to speed in terms of user experience and features. N-Track Studio 9 for iOS is an excellent piece of studio software.

It’s a similar deal to the others where you can record audio and MIDI, arrange and mix, edit and produce. It supports up to 48 inputs for massive live recording projects, all at the highest resolutions. Everything is drag and drop, it’s easy to navigate and has some cool features like a single click mix down and send a song via email.

All the usual audio editing is there, along with a bunch of great effects, including some great guitar amps. The mixer has some advanced routing features to bring external synths and other software directly into the DAW. On the MIDI side, there are some interesting MIDI effects for generating patterns and velocity changes.

There are a number of ways to get into n-track starting with a free version and then going up to a Pro version or subscription version. The higher you go, the more instrument sounds, effects and loop content you get.

Street Price: $14
Website: ntrack.com
App Store: itunes.apple.com

Zenbeats comes in like a massive breath of fresh air. It’s exciting, full of life and interesting ideas that nails the touch-screen approach to music production. It’s available for everything so you can start a beat on your phone and transfer to your desktop for bigger productions. It’s cool, quirky and full of exclusive sounds from Roland.

You have a couple of ways of making music in Zenbeats. On the one hand you can record into the timeline with audio or MIDI to build up tracks and layer sounds. On the other you can dip into the loop arranger and start lopping riffs, sequences and samples to perform tracks in realtime. It has a great drum pattern editor that will have you creating beats in no time.

It comes with some awesome virtual instruments to play either directly through the iPad or via a MIDI controller. These include a drum sampler, synthesizer and multi-layer sample instrument. The ZC1 synth uses Roland’s ZEN-Core engine which is unlockable to offer you hundreds of sounds and effects.

While you can start off with the free version you get a lot more functionality if you throw a few dollars at it.

Street Price: from free
Website: Roland.com
App Store: itunes.apple.com

Bandlab is free and is available on everything. It runs in a browser interface meaning that you can access it from any computer or device at any time. Essentially it’s a 16-track studio with multi-track audio and MIDI sequencing. It’s packed full of synths, sounds and instruments and has a full-on loop launching performance page as well as your usual editing and mixing.

It might not have all the features of some of the other DAWs but it does have over 330 virtual instruments, 180 effects, a sampler with over 15,000 samples, you can mix in video clips, beat match your loops and even have your song mastered.

Bandlab also connects up with other users to bring in collaborations from across the world. There’s a whole community of musicians on here who will remix your tracks if you want them to.

It’s music-making, beats and a social network all rolled into one.

Street Price: free
Website: Bandlab.com
App Store: itunes.apple.com