Air Music Tech Iona is a new Roland SH-101 Synthesizer emulation for your DAW (macOS, Windows) and MPC standalone.
The MPC and Force standalone groove stations allow loading compatible Synthesizer plugins. Most of them are original concepts, except for one: the Jura plugin, an emulation of the Roland Juno synthesizers. Today, they have a second synth plugin inspired by the same Japanese company.
Air Music Tech has released Iona, a new Roland SH-101 Synthesizer emulation with added features.
Air Music Tech Iona
Yes, there are already a considerable number of quality SH-101 emulations: D16 Group, Softube, TAL, and even an official one from Roland from the Cloud.
Air Music Tech Iona is another SH-101 emulation, but with a key feature none of the others have.
It can be used as a classic VST plugin on macOS and Windows, but can also be loaded into the Akai MPC and Force standalone groove workstations. This makes the whole thing interesting again, at least from this point of view.
Iona features five skins that can be easily changed at the top of the interface. From classic gray, red, or blue to new white and yellow.
On the synthesis side, it’s an emulation of the legendary bassline Synthesizer from 1982. It faithfully recreates the SH-101 engine, with a modeled oscillator section featuring pulse and sawtooth waveforms, sub- and noise sources.
It also features the original VCO pitch range and modulation controls, including PWM. Then, it has a modeled resonant filter with cutoff and resonance controls, and assignable modulation (envelope/LFO) from the same section.
It’s a pity that the filter has not been extended with FM like Behringer did in the MS-1, for a dirtier character.
Talking about modulation. It has a single, multimode envelope and a BPM-syncable LFO with nine waveforms. All the classics, as well as new ones, are on board. Alongside this, you can find portamento and a customizable pitch bender.
Air Music Tech Iona also features a multi-FX section with four programmable effects —Lo-Fi, delay, reverb, and 3-band EQ —that provide immediate sound shaping.
Further, it features a Roland SH-101-inspired step sequencer with up to 128 steps. Unlike the original, it has a graphical editor for detailed programming, new transpose, and shift functions.
The developers ship the plugin with over 100 factory presets.
First Impression
Yes, always this Roland SH-101, as if we didn’t have enough already. Now the next one. From the perspective of MPC and Force users, this news is, however, certainly exciting.
Air Music Tech Iona is available now for an introductory price of $59/59,99€ instead of $ 149/$149,99€ until November 22, 2025.
It runs as a VST, VST3, AU, and AAX plugin on macOS (native Apple Silicon + Intel) and Windows, plus on the MPC and Force standalone hardware.
More information here: Air Music Tech
Available from my partner
I love my MPC