Teenage Engineering’s awesome, pocket-size OP-Z synth can now record and use samples. Thanks to a massive software update, it can now sample live audio in through its mic, or via its USB-C port. And yes, if you hook it up to an iPhone or iPad via USB, it shows up as a standard audio interface: You can record from, and send audio to, the OP-Z in lossless digital quality.

Today we’re going to check out these new features. A few limitations prove annoying, but Apple users should feel accustomed to that by now.

Here’s some pretty big news for iOS musicians: AudioKit’s Digital D1 synth is now an Audio Unit. What? That means that, instead of running as a standalone app, you can now run it as a plugin inside your music app of choice. It also means you can run more than one copy, putting one instance on each track of GarageBand, for instance.

And what makes D1 more interesting than other synths for iOS? A few things. One, it’s open source and built by volunteers. Another is that it looks and sounds amazing. And finally, it’s totally ’80s, giving you the synth sounds of pop music’s best decade. Radical.

Did you ever wonder how a synthesizer works? It’s all just “electronic noise,” right? Well, yes, it totally is. But if you’d like to know a bit more than that, Berlin-based Ableton will teach you. The electronic music giant launched a website that puts a synthesizer inside your browser, and uses it to teach you exactly how a synth works.

The synth simulator works great in Mobile Safari, too, but if you use Google’s Chrome, you can hook up an actual keyboard to your Mac and use it to play. That’s thanks to Chrome’s support for Web MIDI, which Safari doesn’t offer.

Let’s have a quick look at this cool teaching tool.

This week, we make our music more magical with FabFilters on iOS, edit multiple streams of 4K video with Lumafusion 2, stay private with Guardian Firewall, and ridicule Microsoft’s Office to-do app, which has finally been released on the Mac.

The Synclavier is a digital synthesizer from the early 1980s. Synclavier Go! is an iPad app that mimics the classic synth. But this post isn’t about those. It’s about the Synclavier Knob, an accessory for the app.

The Synclavier Knob is a single knob on a mounting plate the size of an iPad mini. That’s it. Oh, and it costs $399.

If you’re an iOS-using musician, then AUM is an utterly essential app. It’s an audio mixer, but that description hides its power. AUM does let you mix the audio from various apps, but it also hosts audio units (like plugins), routes audio between them, records those channels, and more.

This week, AUM got a huge update, adding a whole bunch of great new features.

A new music app release from Klevgrand is always something to get excited about. And a new guitar amp simulation app? Almost as rare as an in-the-wild sighting of an AirPower mat. Combine both, at an introductory price of just $10, and you have a pretty special day. The app is called Stark, and it’s also the first Audio Unit amp sim for iOS.

This week we mangle music with Enso, the amazing new audio looper for iPad, and chop up images with Hyperspektiv 2.0. Plus we showcase a new music player app and a big update to our favorite writing app.

Thanks to digital technology, creativity is not bound by one medium. Music, video, visualizations and other elements are all fair creative game. It’s even possible to create in the moment with these materials, if you’ve got the right tools.

The Mixvibes DJ Software Bundle includes three powerful tools for creating music and visual performances in real time — and you can get all of them at a massive 75 percent discount.

Enso looper is a big, big deal for iOS musicians. In principle, it works like any other looper app or hardware looper: You play music into it, and then that music is looped over and over, forming a backing track for more playing.

But Enso is hot, hot, hot for two reasons. One is the amount of control you have over the looping. The other is that it is an Audio Unit, which means that it can be used inside other apps, like GarageBand and AudioBus.