Audiaire – the latest corporate venture by industry veteran Sharooz Raoofi (founder of Sample Magic, Attack Magazine and Sounds to Sample) – got in touch with us to announce the release of Zone, a powerful and versatile synth plugin.
Wait, you’re saying the world doesn’t really need another virtual synth? I hear you, but let’s give Zone a chance, it looks like it has more than a few tricks up its sleeves.
What is Zone?
Zone is a two-oscillator virtual synth in VST, AU and AAX formats. The analogue modelled oscillators boast all the staple subtractive waveforms, as well as 147 special single-cycle waves, plus the ability to import your own, and are accompanied by separate Sub and Noise oscillators.
A selection of edgy oscillator modulation styles includes Jupiter-8-style Exponential FM, AM and ring mod, and no less than eight distortion types; while up to seven unison voices can be dialed in and spread out for huge stereo sounds.
https://vimeo.com/283746370
The beating heart of Zone
The beating heart of Zone, however, is its powerful Parameter Sequencer, which turns the whole instrument into a sound design powerhouse of infinite capability by effortlessly enabling step sequencing of any and all controls – simply drag a knob onto a lane to make the assignment, then sequence it directly from the front panel.
Numerous ‘lane’ and ‘global’ preset sequences are onboard, as is a randomise function for generating unique new shapes at a click; and there’s no limit to the number of lanes that can be active, each one running to its own independent host-synced clock across up to 32 steps. Note sequencing is also catered to, of course, with lanes for Pitch, Velocity and Gate time.
Add to that multiple filter modes at up to 48dB/octave roll-off; four insert FX with a choice of 20 FX modules (delay, reverb, chorus, flanger, phaser, compression, distortion, etc); two LFOs and two envelopes; an extensive eight-slot modulation matrix; eight drag-and-drop-assigned Macro knobs; a three-band EQ; a scalable one-window GUI and more than 400 categorised presets, and you have an ambitious virtual synth that who knows, might even end up in our best of 2018 list…
Pricing and Availability
You can buy Zone for an introductory price of 99 GBP / 119 Euro / 139 USD from Audiaire. Zone is also available to Rent to Own via Splice for 9.99 USD a month. A trial version is available.
