Magerit LANIAKEA: Cosmic oscillator that explores a universe of sound
4,9 / 5,0 | 
LANIAKEA is about interpolated wavetables, analogue waves and additive oscillators, resonators and strings, all spilling into an epic cluster of cosmic sound. Is that enough tone for one Eurorack module?
LANIAKEA
It could be a bit of a stretch to conflate the billions of stars within the Laniakea Supercluster with the sonic capabilities of a modular VCO but let’s go with it. The idea is that Laniakea (the oscillator) wants to explore all possible sound textures. To do that it contains several internal sound generators including wavetables, additive oscillators and a resonator. The website keeps mentioning an “analog oscillator”. I’m pretty sure they are referring to analogue-style waveforms that are available in a wavetable along with a load of other possibilities.
The Shape control smoothly interpolates through the wavetables to find different tones. The Color knob can then apply a lowpass filter, wavefolder or an overdrive. To push the sound into more cosmic proportions, you can twist the Cluster knob to generate up to 8 companion waves. You can ride these out in unison or manipulate them into chords or chaos.
You can feed it all into the resonator to apply different timbres, including plastics, tubes, bells and strings. An Exciter input lets you trigger the resonator and generate new particles. It’s essentially a low pass gate with configurable decay and filtering.
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There are additional interesting functions like Orbits which enable extra parameters, or Space! which is like a master macro controller that moves the sound from simple to complex by piling on the harmonics.
There’s a lot to explore with Laniakea. I’m enjoying the cosmic references and spaced-out concepts, even if it can’t quite capture the sound possibilities of a billion stars. The short demo video sounds fabulous, but I’d like to see a bit more detail on how the sound’s being produced. Hopefully, that will come. It’s available now for €220 ex VAT.
- Magerit website.
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