Animoog Z Synthesizer

It’s a genuinely unique synthesis paradigm. It looks alien, but it’s only a wavetable scanner. The special bit is that you get 8 wavetables at once in a crossfading matrix. It’ll take a day or two to really get it in your head that the 3D display is just 3 extra LFOs and a double joystick, but the architecture is surprisingly intuitive and easy to leverage. This might make it more suitable for warm, wavering vintage-style sounds than any other wavetable synth while remaining powerful in more modern applications. Polyphonic modulation is especially strong, and everything between “alive” and “unhinged” is on tap here. It’s not perfect. My main complaints are for limited mod destinations which do not include the amp envelope, and a lack of meaningful labeling/feedback on the vector grid and time functions. A lot of feeling things out, which makes it seem organic but also a little stiff and abstract when banging out intentional ideas. The soft keyboard cannot be hidden, which makes it awkward as a plugin and spoils an overall frictionless interface on small screens. Overall straightforward, impressively practical, fun, and in a subclass of its own.

I don’t know if this might solve the freezing issue that many have experienced lately with AnimoogZ but it has worked for me in regard to the issue and has not, for far, returned. I disabled Apple Intelligence & Siri from learning from the app. You can find this feature in settings, so AnimoogZ is back up to a five star rating, But it would be even better if there were a haptic feature to the AnimoogZ. Keyboards are also percussive instruments and that is something that is missing in Animoog. Haptics would help in providing that feeling. Updated from Except for the keyboard, the controls no longer responds to touch. A few moments after opening the app the controls ie: ENV/LFO, MOD EFFECTS, ORBS, PITCH & MOD WHEELS cannot be used. SCALE ARP ATTACK SUSTAIN DECAY etc cannot be accessed. This is on a 5th gen iPad Pro running iPadOS 18.2.1. Animoog has been a great creation and innovative in its design & growth and the developers have been generous in making it available to the public. I’ve been with them from the very beginning. I just hope this is just a glitch with the latest OS update (works fine on my iPhone 13Pro) and will be corrected in the next update. Update: Still waiting for an update or a fix from the developers concerning the freezing issue the has affected the function of animoog z. It’s been going on for a few months now but there hasn’t been any words regarding it. I’m sure I’m not the only customer that’s been affected.

This app is amazing! The 3d path & orbit modulations seemed like they might be a gimmick at first but they are genuinely useful and it’s a fun way to get really complex wavetable modulations easily. It’s also the type of interface that can only exist on a touchscreen so it’s a very unique instrument that’s different from any hardware synth. There’s a good mixture of being able to drag stuff around and get random crazy noises that you never expected, but it’s also straightforward enough that you can dial in specific sounds if you want to be more methodical. And I like that they didn’t try to add every feature in the world like some software synths do, even though the app is split across 5 screens it actually doesn’t feel too menu-divey, it feels pretty contained and approachable to build patches from scratch. On top of all that, it sounds great. The basic oscillator waves and filter with drive can sound like you’re playing a Moog analog synth, or it can sound super digital and modern.