Fruity Granulizer

Fruity Granulizer is a generator plugin that utilizes the granular synthesis technology. The source material for the Granulizer is a wave sample loaded by the user. Granular synthesis splits a wave sample into many small pieces (grains) that are looped/played-back according to the settings of the generator. The length and spacing of the grains can also be altered to achieve different tonal effects.

Granular synthesis can be used to stretch a wave without altering its pitch or create interesting and complex audio effects. As all of the parameters are automatable, you can even start with normal playback and then morph to complete audio chaos.

Parameters

Grains Section

Attack wheel (ATT) - Sets the attack and decay length of each grain (i.e. fade in/fade out time). The time is added (twice - fade in and fade out) to the length of the grain.

Grain Hold wheel (HOLD) - Specifies the length of each grain.

Grain Spacing wheel (G.SP) - Controls the grain spacing in playback. Turn to right for greater spacing between played grains (slower playback). Turn to left for smaller spacing (faster playback).

Wave Spacing wheel (W.SP) - This parameter controls the amount of grains generated from the wave sample. This value ranges from -300% to 300%. Small values means more grains generated for the wave (smaller wave spacing). Using negative values for this property results in reversed playback of the grains (note that it is the grain playback order that's reversed, not the sound contained in each separate grain).

NOTE: If you want to achieve normal playback, set both Grain Spacing and Wave Spacing to 100%.

Effects Section

Stereo Separation wheel (PAN) - The more you turn it to right, the more even grains are panned to right, and odd ones panned to left. To disable the effect, turn the wheel maximum to left.

Effect Depth wheel (FX.D) - This setting determines the amplitude of the LFO applied to the wave spacing value. Turn to right to increase the amplitude. To turn the LFO off, turn the wheel maximum to left.

Effect Speed wheel (FX.S) - This wheel determines the speed of the LFO applied to the wave spacing value. Turning to right makes the LFO faster, while turning it to left makes it slower.

Randomness wheel (RAND) - Applies randomness to grain playback. Turn the wheel to right to increase the effect. To disable the effect, turn it maximum to left.

Transients Section

The Granulizer plugin is aware of transients (either autodetected or processed from the sample if slices were loaded). When a grain crosses a transient, it's aligned to it & is set a new user-defined length. This gives better quality when stretching certain material, like drum-loops.

Hold - Sets the length or transient grains.
Switch - OFF: Transients are disabled; USE REGIONS: Uses the slices loaded from the sample, if any; DETECT - Autodetects transients, even if slice/region info is available in the sample.

Time Section

Loop switch - When turned on, the wave loops.

Hold switch - While pressed, the playing position won't change. It has the same effect as if the wave spacing setting is set to 0% for a moment.

Key To - Maps keys to several different properties: Key to pitch: maps keys to pitch (default); Key to percent: keys from C5 to C7 correspond to 0%-100% start position for the sample. For example, to start the sample from the middle, trigger C6 key; Key to step: keys C5 & above offset the sample start with a step (C6 offsets 12 steps, C7 - 24, etc.); Key to transient: keys C5 & above trigger the sample starting from a specific slice.

Sample Start wheel (START) - This wheel sets the position in the sample used when playing starts. When turned maximum to left, the sample starts playing from the beginning. Turn the wheel to right to start playing offset inside the sample.

Notes & Tips

Time stretching in the Sampler Settings is different to the Channel Sampler as tempo changes can be performed live without altering pitch, See the video tutorial

Tempo Sync Fruity Granulizer

Open an empty Fruity Granulizer channel.

Drag and drop your sample/recording on the Granulizer channel.

Open the SMP tab (at the top of Granulizer's window) and right-click the 'Time' knob and then select 'Autodetect' from the pop-up menu.

Select the 2nd last tempo shown at the bottom of the list with (tempo) behind it in brackets. This locks Granulizer to the project tempo.

Trigger Granulizer with a C5 note in the Piano roll, for the duration of the original sample and put the pattern in the Playlist.

Automate tempo and now Granulizer will time-stretch the sample live as the tempo changes and keep the audio in sync.