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What is Baby Audio’s Magic Switch?
Magic Switch is a free VST, AU and AAX chorus plugin for Mac and PC, developed by Baby Audio. It’s based on the “Magic” parameter in our award-winning Super VHS plugin. Magic Switch strips the Super VHS “Magic” feature into its own free plugin to give you instant, dreamy 1980s Juno Chorus vibes.
In the below we’ll go through some of the typical questions about chorus effects to get you more familiar with Magic Switch.
What is a chorus effect in music?
Chorus is one of the original cheat codes for making music sound thicker and richer. In fact, it goes all the way back to the classical ages. The effect occurs when the same sound is played back in multiple “instances” that each have slightly different time and pitch variations. Imagine a string ensemble: Each musician could play the same notes, but it would be virtually impossible for their timing and pitch to be 100% identical all the time. The resulting pitch/time variations are perceived by our human ears as making the music sound richer and deeper. (And quite frankly it is as there’s more information for our ears to process).
The metaphor of the ‘string ensemble’ is actually not so far off when we talk electronic chorus effects. In Korg’s Polysix synthesizer, the built-in chorus option is simply called “Ensemble”.
What is a chorus plugin?
A chorus effect, whether in plugin, pedal or hardware form is an attempt to simulate the ensemble effect of several musicians playing the same notes with subtle variations. This is done by taking a signal and mixing it with one or more copies of itself, which differ in pitch and time. Typically, these differences will be created by an LFO that modulates the copies relative to the original audio source.
A stereo chorus keeps the pitch and time differences separated between the left and right channel. This makes the stereo image feel wide and magical. Magic Switch does this quite well (hence the name).
The chorus FX parameters explained:
All chorus effects will share some of the same parameters, but there’s a difference in whether or not these parameters are exposed to the user. In the case of Magic Switch, we’ve set the parameters exactly how we feel they need to be to give you that wide and dreamy 1980s sound with the click of a button. You could call this a curated approach.
On the other hand, if you’re using stock audio plugins, you’ll probably be given a bunch of parameters to play around with yourself. These are going to vary from plugin to plugin and DAW to DAW – but let’s explore some of the most common features:
Rate / Speed: This sets the frequency of the low frequency oscillator that’s modulating the signal to create a chorus effect. It sounds a bit complicated, but think of it as the speed at which things go in and out of pitch. For a dreamy effect, you might want something slower and more subtle. A higher rate will sound dizzier, which can work well for more radical sound design.
Depth / Intensity: Controls the frequency range of the pitch modulation created by the chorus effect. Or in simpler words, this feature sets how much ‘out of tune’ your chorused signal is going to get when it goes out of tune. (It does, remember that’s what a chorus is).
Width: Controls the chorus width from mono to stereo or anywhere in between.
Feedback: This is a less common parameter in chorus VSTs, but you’ll sometimes find it in better equipped plugins. It adds a chorus signal back into itself in a feedback loop. This can give you some very intense sounds if that’s your thing.
Dry / Wet: Use this control if you want less of the chorus effect blended in with your dry original. In Magic Switch, this parameter is useful as the effect can be quite colorful otherwise.
What is a Juno Chorus?
The “Juno Chorus” refers to the on-board chorus effect in Roland’s Juno-series of synthesizers from the 1980s (such as the Juno-106 and Juno-60). The Juno Chorus was a one-button chorus effect that could only be either engaged or disengaged, but not fine-tuned by the user. (Hint: It was usually engaged!). To give some variation, Roland equipped the Junos with two effects, chorus 1 and 2, which offered different levels of intensity.
The Juno Chorus was created by a set of Bucket Brigade Delays (BBD), which gave it its distinct analog character. We’ll explain this concept another time as it almost warrants its own blog post.
So what’s so magical about the Juno Chorus?
Well, frankly, it was just incredibly well tuned by the legendary company that had already developed the famous Dimension D and Boss CE-2 chorus effects. The Juno Chorus was engineered by Roland - to perfection - to complement the character of the Junos’ Saw and Square oscillators. As with anything in audio, it’s all about doing things that vibe with each other, and the Juno Chorus vibed with the synth that hosted it in a way that almost ended up defining the sound of an era.
In fact, we’d argue that the Juno Chorus was as much an achievement by Roland in sound design as in engineering. This is what inspired us to create our own ‘sound design engineered’ one-button chorus effect in the form of Magic Switch.
Magic Switch is not meant to be a Juno chorus emulation. Instead, it’s meant to be an ideal chorus effect for this day and age of digital music production – where tracks are cleaner than ever and often in need of some character and soul. As a result, you’ll find Magic Switch to be darker and more detuned than the Juno Chorus. This is how we think a one-button chorus VST should sound today!
The one and only Juno-106. Some people say it’s not as ‘meaty’ in the low-end as the Juno-6 or Juno-60 – but to our ears it’s synth perfection.
Is Magic Switch the best free chorus plugin?
Magic Switch is our best attempt at designing the perfect free chorus plugin. One that’s simple enough to not obstruct your workflow – and lush enough to elevate your tracks. Why don’t you try it out and see how you like it? It’ll cost you absolutely nothing!
Written by Baby Audio founder Caspar Bock.
Update May 2023. Thanks to Bedroom Producer’s Blog for naming Magic Switch among the best free chorus plugins: LINK