Photo courtesy of Moog Music

There are plenty of adjectives applied to Moog’s products, but “inexpensive” is rarely among them. The Asheville-based Moog earned its reputation by revolutionizing music and simplifying the process of making sounds; it maintained that reputation by crafting high quality, pro-model equipment — with a price to match.

But the $29.99 tag on the Animoog synthesizer for iPad (and its $9.99 version, optimized for the iPhone) raises the question: With its new budget-friendly synth, has Moog created a timesucking toy or a professional tool?

At first glance, the Animoog is a reminder of old vector synthesis boards like the Korg Wavestation, novel for their ability to morph four separate timbres. Not to be outdone, the Animoog has eight timbres, each being one of almost 60 configurable wave shapes. Each waveshape is assigned to a section of the retro-style oscilloscope CRT, and your position within the eight-timbre sound cloud is denoted by a brightly-colored point which follows a user-specified path and orbit. As your point moves along the screen, Moog’s Anisotropic Synthesis Engine calculates the change in wave shape. It’s a cool idea and in practice makes for textures ranging from powerful to somber.

Another set of features, familiar to any analog synth player, come wrapped around the ASE. This includes, most notably, a collection of analog-style lowpass, highpass, and bandpass filters, including a convincing recreation of the classic Moog 4-pole lowpass filter. You also get an LFO, four configurable modulation routings, and traditional ADSR envelopes for VCA, VCF and modulation amount. These are a powerful set of sound-crafting tools in their own right, and the analog-sounding filters lend a surprisingly warm quality to the sound.

With knobs and buttons all over the place, the interface encourages tinkering. Particularly exciting is the ability to perform some wild sonic shifts in real-time by touching the oscilloscope screen. The touch keyboard follows scales and keys, much like Korg’s touch-pad Kaossilator. Sweeping up and down on each key allows you to set the amount of modulation for each note, ideal for anything from lush Vangelis sweeps to the next Skrillex record. MIDI interfaces are supported as well, so you can treat it like a regular polysynth in a professional setting.

The app also includes tools to fatten the sound, such as an oscillator detune knob, a bitcrusher and an overdrive. The recording notepad is especially well-suited to drones, as its default overdub mode sounds roughly like Frippertronics in a box.

Ultimately, the Animoog is a worthy addition to Moog’s legacy and opens the Moog sound up to a new audience. It would be a steal at a hundred bucks as a VST plugin, and at $29.99 it’s more than worth checking out. —Steve Salevan

Photo courtesy of Moog Music

Perhaps the only persistent problem for those interested in nabbing a Moog synthesizer is the price tag. The instruments produced by the Asheville-based manufacturer are considered the best in the industry, and their cost is set accordingly. One of their synthesizers can easily set you back a few thousand dollars, placing the Moog experience out of the reach of only the most diehard musical explorers.

Moog is changing this reality with a new product that is infinitely more affordable and portable than their other offerings. The Animoog is the first first professional polyphonic synthesizer designed for the iPad and iPhone 4. The newly released app costs a mere $0.99, providing an accessible approximation of the their famed instruments. Seven years after the death of founder Robert Moog, the company he left behind is redefining itself once more. Below, see the description of the Animoog straight from Moog’s website:

“Animoog, powered by Moog’s new Anisotropic Synth Engine (ASE), is the first professional polyphonic synthesizer designed for the iPad and iPhone 4. ASE allows you to dynamically move through an X/Y space of unique timbres to create a constantly evolving and expressive soundscape.
 Animoog captures the vast sonic vocabulary of Moog synthesizers and applies it to the modern touch surface paradigm, enabling you to quickly sculpt incredibly fluid and dynamic sounds that live, breathe, and evolve as you play them.
 Visually captivating and sonically immersive, Animoog brings iPad and iPhone based music production to the next level. Whether you are new to synthesis or a professional, Animoog’s unique user interface gives you the power to easily create a visually vibrant and sonically rich universe. It is the ultimate tool for total creative expression!
 Animoog’s diverse library of timbres is derived from analog waveforms captured from classic Moog oscillators, both vintage and modern, and run through a boutique’s worth of high-end outboard and analog signal processors. These include modular synth panels, Moogerfooger pedals and more.

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- Jordan Lawrence