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FX Chain & Racks

Each track has an FX chain — an ordered list of audio processors applied to the track's signal.

Track Chain

Overview

The FX chain is displayed in the bottom panel when a track or device is selected. Signal flows left to right through the chain.

Note

The chain header provides access to the track tree tree, a hierarchical view of all devices and racks on the track. You can also click the rack button rack to create a new rack in the chain.

The chain can contain:

  • Plugins — VST3, AU, or VST effect and instrument plugins
  • Built-in devices — MAGDA's own processors (see Built-in Devices)
  • Racks — Container devices with nested chains and parallel routing

Working with Devices

  • Drag plugins from the Plugin Browser onto the chain to add them
  • Drag devices to reorder them in the chain
  • Click a device to select it and show its parameters
  • Right-click a device for options: bypass, remove, replace, move to rack
  • Each device has Mod and Macro buttons to toggle the modulation and macro panels
  • Plugin devices have a Learn button that maps a control in the plugin's own UI back to the matching parameter slot — see Plugin Parameters

See Plugin Parameters for per-plugin parameter visibility, custom units and ranges, and AI-assisted classification.

Presets

Three preset systems share the device header:

MAGDA Presets (.mps)

Each device exposes a preset menu in its header. Saving a preset captures everything MAGDA knows about the device — parameter values, plugin state, macros, modulators, sidechain wiring, gain — in a single .mps file.

  • Save Preset — pops a name + category dialog. The selected category becomes a folder under the preset directory.
  • Load Preset — submenu organised by category. Loading replaces the live device's state in place; the device's id, name, and slot in the chain are preserved.
  • The dialog auto-fills the most recently used name and category, so re-saving an iteration takes two clicks.

.mps is portable across MAGDA installations. The format is plugin-aware — loading a preset onto a slot whose plugin id doesn't match is rejected with a one-line error rather than silently overwriting state.

Plugin Disk Presets

When the device is a third-party plugin (VST3 / AU), MAGDA also scans the standard .vstpreset / .aupreset directories on disk and exposes them as a second menu in the header. The native preset format is used directly — your existing factory and user banks are picked up without a copy step.

The legacy "Program N" menu that VST3 plugins like Vital and Serum 2 expose has been retired — those entries resolve to identical state and provided no information. Disk presets are the only source.

Track Chain Presets

The track FX header carries a chain-level preset menu. A track-chain preset captures the entire chain — every device, every nested rack, every modulator binding — for a single track. Useful for stashing a finished mix-bus chain, a vocal chain, or a synth-and-FX combo and dropping it onto a fresh track later.

Racks

Rack

A rack is a container that holds one or more parallel chains. Signal flows into the rack, splits across chains, and mixes back together at the output.

Creating a Rack

  • Click the rack rack button in the chain header
  • Right-click a device and select Move to Rack to wrap it in a new rack

Chains

Each rack contains one or more chains displayed as rows. Each chain has:

  • Volume — Level control for the chain's output
  • Pan — Stereo positioning of the chain
  • Mute (M) / Solo (S) — Mute or solo individual chains
  • Devices — Each chain has its own ordered list of devices

Click the + button next to "Chains" to add a new parallel chain.

Use Cases

  • Parallel processing — Blend dry and wet signals (e.g., parallel compression)
  • Multi-band processing — Split signal into frequency bands with different processing
  • Organized grouping — Keep related devices together in a collapsible container

Rack Controls

  • Volume — Master output level for the entire rack
  • Mod / Macro buttons — Access the rack's own modulation and macro panels
  • Collapse/Expand — Click the rack header to toggle between collapsed and expanded views

Collapsible Devices

Individual devices inside a rack can be collapsed to save space. Click the collapse button on a device to shrink it to a compact header. The rack resizes dynamically as devices are collapsed or expanded. Collapsed states are preserved when the chain rebuilds (e.g. when adding or removing devices).

Post-FX Section

In addition to the main FX chain, every track and the master have a post-FX area — a stage that runs after the main chain and before the track fader. It is the natural home for meters and analyzers, but any effect can live there.

Toggle the post-FX area from the buttons in the track chain header, then drop an Oscilloscope or Spectrum Analyzer, or any effect, into it. The panel opens automatically when a track has post-FX devices.

Note

Each analyzer kind is unique per track in the post-FX area — one Oscilloscope and one Spectrum Analyzer at most — while regular effects can repeat.

Gain Staging

Gain staging trims the output of every device in a chain so the whole chain holds a target headroom, without adjusting each one by hand.

Open it from the gain-staging button in the track chain header, set your target peak (default -12 dBFS), play a representative section of the song, and stop. MAGDA works out the trims:

  • It only attenuates, never boosts.
  • It carries the gain forward down the chain, so later devices see consistent levels.
  • Every fader it moves stays marked so you can see the pass at a glance, until you change it or run another pass.

The whole pass is a single undoable step. An optional AI pass can weigh limiters and saturators in the chain instead of applying a flat target.