Magnetar 1.1 Review: The Filter Finally Shows Its Teeth
Nerve Audio's Magnetar is one of those synths that found its niche early. It's a polyphonic drone and sound-sculpture box built around a Polivoks filter, going for 69 € at launch (down from 109 €). The 1.1 update that landed this week feels like the point where it fully grows into the concept.
The headline is the Polivoks filter rework. The filter was always the selling point, but now it feels more alive and bites a lot harder when you push resonance into it. Then there's FX feedback: you can route the last effect's output back into the first from the FX ORDER screen, and the loop itself has an analog-resonator character. Warm and dense at low settings, singing and screaming at the top. Reorder the chain and you get a completely different beast, so it's a real sound-design tool, not a gimmick.
Two smaller fixes I appreciated: shift-clicking the OUTPUT knob enables auto gain, which pulls the level down if you go over 0 dB without squashing anything the way a limiter would. And Sequencer 2 finally locks tight to host tempo, with HOST SYNC behavior that no longer kills the sequencer or the MSEGs when you turn it off.
If you own it, 1.1 is a no-brainer. If you don't, the demo runs free until you activate a license, so there's no excuse not to poke at it.
Product page: https://nerve-audio.com
1.1 downloads (direct):