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MAGDA devices

The catalogue

Every device that ships built into MAGDA. The FX bank is written in FAUST and compiled to native code; instruments, MIDI processors and the experimental Faust device round it out. Multi-engine devices list their engine names inline.

Dynamics

Compression, limiting, expansion, gating.

Compressor

Compressor device

Compiled Faust compressor with selectable engines.
Clean: feed-forward, peak/RMS detection, soft knee, stereo link, sidechain HPF, external audio sidechain, parallel mix, output safety limiting.
Glue: Brouns FBFF compressor with exposed character controls (Detector Peak/RMS, Style Pre/Post, FBFF blend). No external sidechain.

Multiband Dynamics

Multiband Dynamics device

Native 3-band dynamics processor with independent lower and upper threshold regions per band. Ratios above 1:1 compress toward the active threshold; ratios below 1:1 expand away from it.

Limiter

Limiter device

Compiled Faust stereo lookahead brickwall limiter. Sanfilippo co.limiter_lad_stereo design with 5 ms lookahead, peak-holder and tau-smoothed Attack / Hold / Release envelope. Threshold sets the output ceiling in dB; peaks above it are attenuated with minimal coloration, signal below passes through unchanged. Autogain mode reinterprets Threshold as a drive amount, pushing into the limiter for loudness with automatic make-up. Mix and Output blend and trim.

Gate

Gate device

Compiled Faust stereo gate / downward expander with a linked peak detector. Threshold sets where the gate opens; Ratio shapes the slope; Range bounds the deepest cut. Attack and Release shape the envelope; Mix blends the gated signal back against dry for parallel gating.

EQ & Filter

Tonal shaping, corrective filtering, multi-engine virtual analog filter.

EQ

EQ device

Compiled Faust 8-band parametric equaliser. Per-band Type selects HP, LowShelf, Bell, HighShelf, LP, or Notch. All six filter shapes are instantiated in parallel per band, so Type switching is glitch-free at audio rate. Each band exposes Freq, Gain, Q; Output trims the final sum.

Filter

Filter device

Compiled Faust multimode filter.
SVF: clean 2-pole LP/BP/HP/Notch for precise shaping.
Ladder: classic 4-pole low-pass with driven resonance.
Korg 35: MS-style LP/HP character with sharper analog bite.
Oberheim: SEM-style LP/BP/HP/Notch with broad musical sweeps.
Sallen-Key: smooth 2nd-order LP/BP/HP response.
Diode: resonant 4-pole diode ladder with input drive.
Warning: high resonance can create very loud peaks or self-oscillation. Keep monitoring levels conservative to protect speakers and ears.

Reverb & Delay

Spatial tails, reflections, digital and granular echoes.

Reverb

Reverb device

Compiled Faust reverb with three selectable engines.
Plate: Dattorro diffusion network for studio-plate ambience.
Hall: Zita 8-tap FDN for smooth large-space tails.
Room: Freeverb Schroeder/Moorer network for small-space ambience.

Delay

Delay device

Compiled Faust stereo digital delay with fractional-sample interpolation. Time spans 1 ms to 2 s; Sync locks to musical Division. Feedback recirculates with Tone shaping the regen path. Cross routes feedback across channels for ping-pong patterns.

Grain Delay

Grain Delay device

Compiled Faust granular delay. A feedback delay line is read through a 4-voice Hann-windowed grain bank with 25% overlap. Pitch shifts via per-grain read-offset drift; Spray jitters the per-grain position. Time spans the base delay, locking to musical Division when Sync is on. Feedback recirculates through the grain bank; Mix blends wet against dry.

Modulation

Chorus, flanger, phaser, tremolo, ring mod.

Chorus

Chorus device

Compiled Faust stereo chorus with one to three modulated voices per channel. Voices share a single LFO with per-voice phase offsets for spread. Rate runs free in Hz or locks to tempo Division. Depth, Feedback, Mix and Width complete the controls.

Flanger

Flanger device

Compiled Faust stereo flanger. Short modulated delay per channel (~3 ms +/- 2.5 ms) with a heavy feedback loop for the classic comb-filter sweep. Rate runs free in Hz or locks to tempo Division; Depth, Feedback, Mix and Width round out the controls.

Phaser

Phaser device

Compiled Faust stereo phaser with a sweeping notch comb. Stages selects 2, 4, 6, or 8 notches; all four counts are instantiated in parallel, so switching is glitch-free. Rate and Depth drive the sweep; Feedback intensifies the resonance; Min Hz and Max Hz bound the sweep window. Mix blends wet against dry.

Mod

Mod device

Compiled Faust modulation effect with a shared LFO.
Tremolo: amplitude modulation, equal on both channels.
Vibrato: pitch modulation via short modulated delay.
Autopan: equal-power pan between L and R.
All three mode bodies run in parallel for glitch-free switching. LFO Shape selects Sine, Triangle, Square or Sample-and-hold; Rate runs free in Hz or locks to tempo Division.

Ring Mod

Ring Mod device

Compiled Faust stereo ring modulator. Multiplies the input by an internal carrier from 1 Hz (slow tremolo) to 5 kHz (metallic clang).
Sine: pure tonal carrier, cleanest sideband structure.
Triangle: softer overtone series than square.
Square: rich odd-harmonic spectrum, aggressive sideband stack.
Rate runs free in Hz or locks to tempo Division. Width offsets the carrier phase per channel; Mix blends wet against dry.

Distortion

Saturation, clipping, bitcrushing, texture.

Saturator

Saturator device

Compiled Faust waveshaper with six selectable curves.
Tanh: smooth hyperbolic, the classic warm saturation.
Soft: gentle polynomial knee with a rolled-off top.
Hard: instant clip ceiling for square-edged distortion.
Fold: wavefolder, peaks reflect back for metallic overtones.
Tube: asymmetric curve (1.4x positive, 1.0x negative) for valve-style even harmonics.
Tape: tanh with an odd-order compression term, tape-style headroom.
Drive pushes the input, Bias shifts the operating point, Tone tilts the post-shape EQ, Mix blends dry.

Clipper

Clipper device

Compiled Faust antialiased clipper with five selectable static curves from the aa.* ADAA library.
Hard: brickwall clip ceiling.
Soft: quadratic knee for warmer breakup.
Tanh: hyperbolic tube-style curve.
Hyperbolic: smooth rational saturation.
Sine: sin(atan(x)) for asymmetric, harmonically rich clipping.
All five are instantiated in parallel for glitch-free Mode switching. Drive pushes the input into the curve; Output trims the result.

Bitcrusher

Bitcrusher device

Compiled Faust lo-fi bitcrusher. Rate reduces sample rate via dual sample-and-hold (100 Hz to 48 kHz). Bits applies mid-tread quantization from 1 to 16 bits. Drive shifts the quantization landing point for crunchier or softer attacks. Tone tames aliasing with a post-crush low-pass. Mix and Output blend and trim.

Grit

Grit device

Compiled Faust texture generator. Ring-modulates the input with a tone or filtered-noise carrier for Erosion-style grit.
Noise: shared mono bandpass-filtered noise on both channels.
Wide Noise: decorrelated stereo noise for spatial texture.
Sine: tonal sine carrier at the Frequency knob for metallic ring-mod.
Frequency is the carrier centre (or BPF centre in the noise modes); Width sets the bandpass Q; Amount blends the wet against the dry.

Pitch

Pitch shifting and frequency shifting.

Pitch

Pitch device

Compiled Faust pitch shifter with three selectable engines.
Shifter: single voice, full plus/minus 24 semitones.
Detuner: two voices hard-panned L/R for chorus-style thickening.
Harmonizer: shifted voice summed with dry at a chosen interval.
All three use ef.transpose; transient smear and grain are by design.

Freq Shift

Freq Shift device

Compiled Faust stereo single-sideband frequency shifter. Shifts the entire spectrum by a fixed Hz offset using a Bode design: a Niemitalo Hilbert transformer (~80 dB image rejection) is complex-multiplied with a phasor at the Shift frequency. Unlike a pitch shifter the harmonic ratios are not preserved, producing inharmonic, metallic timbres. Feedback recirculates for resonant artefacts; Spread detunes the channels by up to 25 Hz for chorus-style stereo.

Mix & Utility

Stereo width, gain, polarity, monitoring.

Dimension

Dimension device

Compiled Faust stereo widener with three selectable engines.
Dimension: Roland Dimension D-style anti-phase modulated delays.
Haas: short fixed delay on one channel, classic psychoacoustic cue.
M/S: pure mid-side side-channel gain, no time smear.

Utility

Utility device

Stereo utility stage. Gain trims level; Pan shifts the stereo image; Width adjusts the M/S spread. Mono folds the signal down for compatibility checks; Low Mono sums only the bass below the Low Mono Freq cutoff, tightening sub content while preserving stereo highs. Flip L / Flip R invert per-channel polarity for phase tweaks.

Test Tone

Simple tone generator for calibration, routing checks, and utility signals.

Instruments

Synthesis, sampling, drum chains.

4OSC Synth

Four-oscillator subtractive instrument from Tracktion Engine, with per-oscillator unison, MAGDA's modulation envelopes / LFOs, macro-friendly controls and the standard preset workflow.

Sampler

Single-zone sample playback instrument with amplitude envelope, pitch, start / end positions, and looping. Drop a sample, play across the keyboard.

Drum Grid

Pad-based drum instrument. Each pad holds its own sample plus an effect chain, so kits build up incrementally. The clip view is a step grid; shift-drag stamps repeats with the dedicated repeater cursor.

MIDI

Note generators and processors.

Chord Engine

MIDI processor for chord generation, voicing, and harmonic transforms. Drop into any MIDI chain ahead of an instrument.

Arpeggiator

MIDI arpeggiator for rhythmic note patterns and held-note motion. Pattern, rate, octave range, gate.

Step Sequencer

MIDI step sequencer for pattern-driven notes and rhythmic control. Per-step note, velocity, gate, with shareable patterns.

Experimental

Write your own DSP inside the app.

Faust

Scratchpad for writing your own DSP in FAUST from inside MAGDA. Drop a .dsp file or vibe-code one via the device's AI panel; the model writes the FAUST and the device loads it. Runs through the FAUST interpreter, so CPU is much higher than the built-in devices. A JIT compiler is the plan for the next release.