SampleSumo SaltyGrain 1.0 is out ! (aka KTGrain 2.0)

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do you remember Smartelectronix ? especially 1st good and popular granular fx as vst known as KTGranulator ?:)
well - audiocoding scene legends Koen and Bram are back !

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https://www.samplesumo.com/product/saltygrain
( also audio demos there )
SaltyGrain is a real-time granular audio effect plug-in.

It can create a large variety of different sound types, and is ideal for creating strange or spooky effects in movie productions, vocal effects, weird background sounds, lush pad sounds, rhythmic distortions, live sound modifications, etc...

Incoming sound is fed into a delay line from which small pieces of various durations and at different moments in the past are selected. Each of these pieces is then amplified, transposed and enveloped to form a "grain". Each grain is also randomly panned and the whole mix is sent out to a stereo output stream.
Features

delay line freezing for live sampling and sound modifications
feedback of granulated output back into the delay line for dense and shifting structures
up to max. 40 simultaneous grains
plugin parameters controllable via MIDI
play melodies with captured sound fragments
density control by number of grains and grain duration
additional grain stealing option
grain envelope control
typical granular slow motion effect by freezing and gradually moving through the delay line (forwards and backwards)

Specifications

This plugin is available under the following formats:

MacOSX (Intel, 10.5 and up): RTAS, VST (32/64 bit), AU (32/64 bit)
Windows (XP SP3 and up, no Windows8): RTAS, VST (32/64 bit)

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:shock:
Wow, one of my favourite FX just became newer and better ! :love:
I was just thinking about the good old Smartelectronix guys the other day, thinking how good (and ahead) they were, and wondering if i would get some news about them : ta-daaam ! done, in the shape of a lovely plug !
Thank you, WakaX, for the info, and thank you Koen & Bram for bringing back some of your skills to the front of the VST scene !
Tooooo many good plugins these days :D

(by the way, the GUI is gorgeous, even if it is a bit strange to get wooden panels for granular mangling, but i love paradoxes, i love granular, and i love wood :lol: )

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Nice news. I like KTGranulator a lot.

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One naive quesiton, though : despite the GUI, what did change ?
The features seems similar :
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The price? Wasn't it free before?

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@wakax: thanks for spreading the word! Much appreciated!

I think some explanation makes sense here:

As you know, the old KTGranulator plugin has not been maintained very well these last years, and multiple people started to report problems with it on newer machines etc... I tried keeping up with replies, but never found the time to update things properly, as trying to run a small company and having a great daughter does take time and energy in one's life ;-)

So, that's why we came up with SaltyGrain: it's indeed a rewritten version of the proven and (apparently, if I can believe the email I've been getting...) much appreciated real-time granular audio effect plugin (I also really want to mention again that Ross Bencina's great DLGranulator in AudioMulch was actually the inspiration for making this thing in the first place).

What changed: it received a proper GUI, a bug fix here and there, and it is now available on MacOSX (Intel) as RTAS, VST (32/64-bit) and AU (32/64-bit), and on Windows as RTAS and VST (32/64-bit). We hope to bring an AAX version later in 2013.

As we have real bills to pay too nowadays, it is not donation-ware any longer (we did take the time and effort to do a big rewrite and everything else that came with that...), but there is a 20% discount coupon valid until January 20th, 2013 on our site.

Everyone who ever donated will be contacted personally by me over the coming weeks for a special treatment. If you like the plugin, really want to support us and never donated in the past, then by all means: here's your chance to show your love ;-)

We realize there are probably other similar plugins around now, but hey: here's ours ;-)
thinking how good (and ahead) they were
@sinkmusic: Well, thanks for the kind words! I'm sure all other Smartelectronix members deserve more credit to that then myself though ;-)

If you go have a look on our SampleSumo site, you'll see that we (Bram and myself) are now working on various audio- and music analysis related stuff, so expect to see some new things coming up from us in the new year!
If you want to hear more news from us: use our old-fashioned newsletter on the SampleSumo website, or if you're into the social media stuff: follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

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Audio demos sound very rich, deep and interesting! Coming from a granular junkie here :D

I've already used KTGranulator on OSX, but because of the absence of GUI I've never really been into it that much but always liked its sound... Here is my chance! I'll try the demo for sure, but it's pretty much a sold one for me already.

Quick technical questions though, for the freeze function:

-does it keep and save the audio in the buffer somewhere so when I re-open a session in my host the audio previously played in the buffer still plays?

-for how long max can the buffer freeze audio?

Thanks!
Last edited by Neon Breath on Thu Dec 20, 2012 11:02 pm, edited 4 times in total.

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That's awesome! I love KT Granulator!

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Koen, on this way, i want to say thank you for making KTGranular and Saltygrain and i was really surprised about your email on the 24th of december, today, i had the chance to enter my studio and to test out SaltyGrain....

I wanted to buy SaltyGrain before i test the demo because i love KTGranular but someone told me, to test out the demo first and i was somehow happy about that. I know that you have to pay your bills and i appreciate your work, but, why should i pay 69€ for a PLugin which can't do more as the old one, i hadn't any trouble on my mac with the latest version of KTGranular so i see no sense to do this.

But, don't get me wrong,i have an eye on SaltyGrain and i think about buying it before the end of the 20% discount just to support you and maybe to give you some tips which you can add to updates, but, on the other hand, some new features weren't not bad with the new release instead of MIDI learn only... Like Saltygrain in STEREO or something like Heizenbox if you remember this great plugin, this would be great new features...

Maybe you can tell us in this thread what you will to add sooner or later to change my opinion not to buy it...?

Frank
Voice, sample and factory content developer Particular-Sound / Facebook / Soundcloud

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Yeah, 70 Euros is steep... not entirely undeserved, it's a very well done revamp, but it's well above impulse buy territory for me, even with the discount. 20% off 70 dollars I'd have probably bought it (or if I had used KTgranulator I'd feel somewhat obligated), but as it is I think I'll - reluctantly - pass.

Looking forward to more cool stuff from SampleSumo though. :D

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Wasn't it implied that if you donated now, you would be offered a better discount? That's still too vague for me, and I never know what to donate for anything unless there is a minimum stated. Not that I've always donated the minimum, but it does give you a guideline. Maybe I was reading it wrong.

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Even with the discount it comes out at £48 here in the UK.Too steep for me.
Also Avast flags the demo installer as potentially unsafe.

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@antithesist: We felt that the few people who ever actually showed their appreciation by giving a donation in the past, deserved a special treatment. They have been contacted by me personally with a special personal coupon to thank them for their past support.

About the other comments: well, the old plugin has been out there for what... more than 9 years now I guess? Lots of people have been able to use it for free for all these years, and had some good fun with it (myself included), and I got to hear some good music made with it!
Now, by all means: if you still want to keep using what you already have on your machine, please feel free to do so and enjoy it!
For me personally: KTDT is out, SaltyGrain is the fresh one, and it just doesn't make sense to keep the old one. And that will also be reflected on the KTDT site one of the coming weeks.

SaltyGrain is a result of the various support questions I got from several people over the past 9 years (RTAS version, AU and VST Intel Mac support with a better GUI, stereo fix, ...), and we believe it offers enough good value for people to pay for (having The Glitch Mob as our first customer was a pretty cool start). We think it's a reasonable price, especially with the current discount, but if it's not for your wallet, we understand.

The first goal was to make sure we could offer the plugin in a maintainable state, with a fresh jacket, in all the formats we think make sense (AAX should follow in 2013) and with a few minor fixes (stereo dry through instead of mono, small technical bug fixes). We have a list of feature requests from the past years, and we'll try to add a few new things in the future as the next step.

Thanks for your interest guys, and we would be love to have you over at SampleSumo as a friend and customer. But no hard feelings if you just keep what you have ;-)

Have a good end-of-the-year!

Koen

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I don't see what's wrong from the developer to ask money for it since it's been free for near a decade and now it's freshly revamped with a new skin AND formats for all DAW's. Keep in mind as well that when paying for a plugin, you allow the developers to continue to work on it, update it with new features, improve it, debug it, get free updates, etc.

And.... The good old KTGranulator is still available anyway if some don't want to pay for it so...

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i just went for it and bought it. i never got along with ktgranulator on osx because of the missing guy. i am really happy that i can use it properly now, because there's surprisingly few alternatives for this kind of granular processing out there in the plugin world. loomers shift comes to my mind, but it's more of a multi tap delay thing than anything granular. also reaktors grain cloud module, but that's about it. then there's munger~ around since ages for max/pd, but you can't use it as a plugin.

some extra features i'd like to see in saltygrain:

- grain reverse knob; if possible a continuous choice of how many percent of the grains should be reversed.

- an octave shift knob like in soundhacks bubbler

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