SA3 Variations generates Splice-style sample variations entirely on your machine. Drop in a one-shot or a loop and it produces a series of musical and timbral variations. Listen through the outputs, then drag the ones you like straight into your DAW. A batch takes around 10 seconds, runs fully on-device, and nothing is ever uploaded.

It ships as a standalone app, a VST3, and an AU plugin.

SA3 Variations plugin interface

Built to live inside a plugin

SA3 Variations is built on Stable Audio 3. To get it running inside a JUCE plugin, I ported the inference code to MLX in C++, with bit-exact outputs against the Python implementation, so it could be embedded directly in the plugin rather than shelling out to a separate Python process.

Variations is just one application of that stack. The same C++ inference pipeline, MLX bindings, and pre-converted models work for any similar plugin you might want to build.

For audio developers

If you’re an audio developer curious about using this kind of approach in your own JUCE project, everything is open source and ready to build on:

  • the C++ inference pipeline
  • the MLX bindings
  • pre-converted models on Hugging Face

Fork it, extend it, and build your own apps on top of SA3 in JUCE.

What’s next

Breaking open the model for some more fine-grained, musically interesting edits.