Thanks to Apple silicon, app developers can now export their iOS apps for Mac users without having to recompile for the desktop environment. That’s why you’re seeing so many former iOS-only apps now showing downloads for MacBooks and Mac desktop computers. I think this is showing to some studio snobs how good a lot of the iOS synths and music apps have been for the last four or five years. If you’re not a snob but just want to work on your big monitor rather than a small screen you now you can unlock a lot of these neat instruments and apps and use them like any other soft synth at your home studio.
Jaroslaw Jacek of BeepStreet is a developer that made a lot of good apps for the iPhone and iPad. Jacek also was really good at designing visually for the small screen of a phone. That was the first thing that set apart Zeeon, an analog modeling synth that he developed originally for iOS. It was clean, structured, it just FELT good to use it. You can’t say that about a bunch of music apps on an iPhone.
Underneath that friendly UI was an a real powerful synth powered by an advanced analog circuit modeling engine. For generating and manipulating sounds, Zeeon has a best-in-class modulation matrix with in oscilloscope for visual output, two low freq oscillators and envelope generators per voice and a fantastic effects unit. To use it right away there are more than 100 presets.
Zeeon was the best and worst kept secret for iOS music producers for many years and now it’s available on Mac, as an AU3 unit and standalone app that uses a polyphonic step sequencer.
The best part about this era of music app developers is that Jaroslaw is just a guy, I never have but you can just email him ideas or problems and I’ve seen it happen that he answers them directly or even adds a feature or fixes a bug based on that. Try emailing Mr. Korg and getting that.
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5 Mag publishes disclaimers with any product we review, indicating whether money or favor exchanged hands. Neither 5 Mag nor the reviewer were paid anything by (and have never spoken to) BeepStreet or any representative for this article, which they were not aware was being published. We don’t make any money if you buy this from them or Apple.
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