CATHDE Get early access

Two products. One price. No asterisks.

Player is free — every format, forever. Designer is a perpetual license: buy it once for $149, or pay it off over six months. Either way you own it outright.

Start here — free, forever
Cathode Player
Real amps. Real knobs. Not snapshots.
Freeforever
  • Play any shared amp design
  • Every knob is real — no snapshots
  • Standalone + VST/AU · macOS, Windows & Linux
  • Loads what the community shares
  • Free forever
Notify me at launch
Cathode Designer · Two doors

Never rented. Every payment
path ends in ownership.

Two ways in. Both open the same full Designer, and both leave you owning it outright — no clock you have to keep feeding.

Not for sale yet — this is what's coming
Door one · Own it outright
Buy it once, keep it for good.
$149perpetual · yours for good
free minor updates · major upgrades ~50% off
Try Designer free for 30 days. Everything you build is yours — forever.

When the 30 days end, every design you made stays playable in Player — permanently. Editing picks back up the moment you buy. Your work is never taken away.

Get founding-window access
Door two · Pay over time
A payment plan that ends.
6 paymentsthen it's yours
$198 total · known upfront · pause or resume anytime
Spread it across 6 payments.

You know the full total before the first payment. Pause for as long as you'd like between payments, resume when you're ready. The last payment is the last one; then the license is simply yours.

Notify me about installments
Same Designer behind both doors · same license at the end · pay $149 once, or $198 over six months
The 5-year pledge

Nobody in audio puts the number in writing. We do.

Every license includes at least 5 years of compatibility updates from your purchase date — new macOS, Windows and Linux releases, current versions of major DAW hosts, security and critical fixes. Free. Never subscription-gated. Best effort after that. Buy within 90 days of a new major version and the upgrade is free.

Five years is measured from the day you buy — not from launch
Buy on day one
covered years 1–5
+5 yrs
Buy in year four
covered years 4–9
+5 yrs
A year-four buyer gets the same full five years as a day-one buyer. The clock starts when your money does.

Compatibility and critical fixes — not new features. If a platform vendor removes an architecture outright, best effort applies.

What "perpetual" means here

The license, in plain language.

Updates

Minor updates are free for the version you bought. Major versions are optional paid upgrades at roughly 50% off — skip any you don't want; yours keeps working.

Machines

Three machines at once, with self-serve deactivation in your account — swap a laptop at 2 a.m. without emailing anyone.

Transfers

Licenses are transferable. Sell it, gift it, will it to your kid with the good ears — it's yours.

Discounts

One founding window at launch — 25% off, 90 days, never repeated. No fake sales, no coupon-cadence games. The price you see is the price.

Offline

Activate once, then it runs offline — no login to play, no hard cutoff. It re-checks quietly when you're online so machine swaps and transfers take effect; if our servers ever vanish, it keeps working.

More questions — offline use, refunds, what happens if we get hit by a bus? The FAQ answers all of it.

Neither is for sale yet.

Get on the list — it's also how you get the founding discount.