More, granular — less random. That’s the pitch from Fractiv, a new sampling granular instrument and effect from Sync Audio. Just when you thought you couldn’t squeeze more ideas out of granular sound, they’ve got some smart ideas, including a more playable, precise interface, and grain-based modulation. Mac, Windows, and Linux. Here’s a first look.
You know the usual granular routine: you layer a bunch of dense processing, and out comes a dense fog of sound. Or you try to dial in an amount of randomness for more tonal effects. That’s great for textures, but it’s rare to find a granular effect where you feel like you have really direct control over the sound apart from some knobs and maybe tempo sync. That chaos can be part of the appeal, but it does make it feel like you’re stabbing around in the dark to find a sound.
So I’m intrigued by what Sync Audio are doing with this one. And I think it’s not an accident that there are some game audio folks associated with this.
It looks like this could be ideal for the crunchy, plastic sounds in vogue in both game soundtracks and bleeding-edge productions. So, yes, this isn’t new, per se, but they have some clever ideas for their take on the formula, namely:
- A KAOSS-style Grain Pad for X/Y manipulation (and everything is MIDI assignable with MIDI learn, so you can rig this to something you can play)
- Multiple granular playback modes: one-shot, loop, ping-pong, forward, and reverse.
- Grain-based modulation — so modulation is directly linked to each grain cycle, adding some animation possibilities that get lost in the clouds with a lot of other grain effects.
- A rich modulation system — three modulators, tons of shapes and destinations, host sync as desired, etc.
- Easy audio input: drag-and-drop audio or sample from input
- Shift and slice effects that can automate details of sound warping on the fly
It’s a simple thing, but just wiring up that X/Y pad to grain size and position at once, plus a “link” mode for setting LFO frequency based on grain size, is already a smart approach. Could you do this with a little work in your own patching or with a bunch of automation or control assignments? Sure! But it’s great to see an integrated design with this in mind already.
Oh and just adding some dynamic processing in there is smart; that’s a constant issue with granular stuff.
AAX, AU, VST3, standalone (yeah!); macOS, Windows, and Linux. A 7-day trial version is available. There’s an intro of $79 (off the regular $129).
I’m really excited to try this one, because I have a problem, which is a deep addiction to this stuff. Stay tuned.
More videos. (Wait, “we’re going to gaslight these samples?” That can’t be right. “You’re mono, I tell you!”)
Here’s the money video — FL Studio’s Edison plus Fractiv! (Actually I could just listen to the vocal weirdness and skip the rest of the track!)