Magellan Updated With Artificial Intelligence, Audiobus Effects Processing

Yonac Magellan software synth for the iPad

Yonac has released a major update to Magellan, its software synthesizer for iOS.

The update includes intelligent preset generation, two new effects, configurable FX signal flow, user-friendly additions to the preset system and more. The update also opens up Magellan as an FX processor you can use with Audiobus.

“Some synthesizers have a random preset feature that haphazardly chooses sound parameters, which mostly produces unusable sounds,” explains chief engineer Jim Yonac. “Instead, we use artificial intelligence to generate unique and usable patches for Magellan.”

Magellan’s new SPAWN feature uses a balance of expert knowledge and well-informed randomization to generate presets in a given category or combination of categories, selecting something in the order of 180 parameters in a mutually compatible manner. SPAWN settings allow the user to choose among or mix bass, lead, pad, or “weird” sounds, with an option to also generate an arp. The “Surprise Me” feature transfers tonality decisions to the system.

Here’s what’s new in Magellan 2.1:

  • Smart Preset Aggregation with Windowed raNdomization (SPAWN)
    • Uses specially designed artifical intelligence algorithms to generate new presets on-the-fly
    • Makes decisions based on the user-specified tonality parameters, such as Bass, Lead, Pad or “Weird”
    • Algorithms intelligently decide and generate over 100 synth-related parameter and over 80 fx-related parameters
    • Generate arp patterns in any chosen scale, or in a random scale
    • Use “Surprise Me” option to give complete control to the system
    • Retains 16 most recent spawns in memory under the dedicated “Recent Spawns” bank
  • Use Magellan as an effects processor in Audiobus connections!
  • Two new free effects,
    • HEXEq: a very powerful and highly configurable 6-channel parametric equalizer with 9 filter types you can choose from for each channel, including shelving, peak, band and more.
    • VC-93 Compressor: a juicy compressor with built in I/O VU meters
  • Change the FX signal flow via easy to use drag-n-drop interface. Allows you to experiment with any possible linear ordering.
  • MIDI inlets for all the new features
  • Master output meter with clipping indicators on the main panel
  • Improved launch procedure
  • Favorite presets bank to collect your preferred presets in a single place. Simply star or unstar a preset to add or remove it from favorites.
  • Recent presets banks
  • Restore Factory Presets option, so you can reinstall factory presets without having to reinstall the whole app
  • Various other improvements

Magellan is $14.99 in the App Store.

If you’ve used Magellan, leave a comment with your thoughts on it!

via Jessie

 

16 thoughts on “Magellan Updated With Artificial Intelligence, Audiobus Effects Processing

  1. w00t! there’s a video of it in action on Yonac’s youtube channel. looks like it’s going to be great as an audiobus effects processor!

    this makes me wish the app store had a paid upgrade system so I could throw a bit more money their way for it. hopefully each update is snagging more and more customers!

    1. why the hate? Look up Magellan Jr. (the iPhone version)

      It is solid. It actually had better Audiobus integration before the iPad version.

        1. ah my bad… often comments phrased in that way suggest a certain level of disdain, in this case I thought you were disappointed in the devs who chose not to make Magellan universal. I just wanted to voice my opinion that Yonac has done a great job on both the iPhone and iPad versions of Magellan and that they are both very capable, if not amazing, iOS synths.

  2. By using it as an effects processor through audiobus, can you pass/gate signal through a key press in Magellan? In other words, can you use it with a side-chain to modulate a carrier signal?

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