Zeeon synth 4+

To my ears, the fidelity of this analog emulation goes beyond everything else on iOS, including the Moog apps (all of which I own). The many levels of tasty saturation and analog idiosyncrasies, those filters, the upsampled modulation, the gain staging and headroom, the effects -all exemplary. I have nothing against the minilogue-like aesthetic and the simplicity of the layout either, very well thought out and ergonomic.

However, it does feel a little bit like 90% of the developer's effort went into the sound engine itself, and the rest of the synth's infrastructure -like the sequencer or MIDI- was sort of an afterthought. Most reviews here are riddled with feature requests and I can't help but add to that pile. I'm trying to use animoog's expressive keyboard, but Zeeon doesn't respond to velocity or polyphonic aftertouch coming from it, only channel pressure, which is the one bummer for me about this synth. I wish at some point it would fully support MPE (like exactly the moment I can afford an MPE controller haha), but for now I'd be happy if it responded to velocity and poly pressure coming from IAA MIDI.

It’s good, it really is.

Firstly, let me just get one thing off my chest: The UI is just plain awful. In standalone mode the skeuomorphic design of the synth controls don’t match the flat design of the keyboard and sequencer. It looks like a cut and shut. I don’t blame the dev for this as I’m guessing the standalone version is just an AUv3 wrapper for the AU synth. Fair enough. However, the 3D aspect on the knob controls is too much on the iPad. It’s so extreme that they just don’t line up with their respective markers. The iPhone version is much clearer as there is no left/right aspect in the UI.

Onto the far more important question of sound and what this synth can do; It just sounds awesome! This thing is capable of fat booming basses, soaring cinematic pads and everything in between. Only the Moog apps are in the same league. The fact that it is so efficient in terms of demand on the processor makes this a real workhorse synth app and an essential for any iOS musician.

...and it is awesome. From purely a how-it-sounds perspective, it is very very good, BUT...it needs work in other departments.

For example, I can't find any way of midi-learning for my external controller, dunno where the Audiobus bits and bobs are and some of the presets labelling leaves a lot to be desired; some of them state they're a pad sound when clearly they're not etc.

The arpeggisequencer thing is very good, but you need to be able to save your sequences with your sound preset, or separately, preferably. Can't do that right now, or so it seems.

One trick is to be able to run your finger along the strip and select all of the steps at once and change them simultaneously, which is great for drones and ambience etc. But you can't select just a couple at a time to change just those, which would be really nice. At the moment it's either just the one or all of them. More than one sequence would be great as well...hell, why stop there, please can we have a fully-functioning song mode?

All of the above are just my suggestions and do not detract from just how good this synth sounds. It could have all of the bells and whistles and still sound sh!t, but this, to my ears, is delicious. Worth every penny and I know the dev will listen to our suggestions, so I'm in this for the long game.

In short, it's an instabuy.