New granular synth: The Mangle

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The Mangle

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Thanks for the update :)

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I just bought Mangle this week, and a couple days later I get a minty fresh update! I'm so glad to see that development is continuing - as far as I'm concerned, the Mangle is the most intuitive granular synth out there. I don't have the money to bother with Halion or Max right now, and I'm very happy with the sounds I've been getting out of it so far, so I can see this being my go-to granular synth for the foreseeable future.

I haven't patched the update yet so apologies if this was changed, but here are two things that came up for me over the past few days of use:

- Modulation - Amount

I've found it's very hard to do subtle/small amounts of modulation. The way the scale is currently set up, if I'm modulating the pitch or start position, there are maybe only 3 or 4 small modulation amounts that the bar snaps to - after that the mod amount jumps into the stratosphere. If I just want to add a few ms of jitter, or a few cents of pitch mod, it's pretty much impossible to dial in with the mouse. Solution - a "scale" or "zoom" function, that allows you to dial in fine vs. large amounts of modulation.

- Modulation - Position

The way it's set up now, modulation starts at a leftmost/rightmost position and proceeds right or left from there. This is fine for most purposes, but if I want to spread the grains across the stereo field it would be more useful to have the modulation go outwards in both directions from a center point. I haven't found a good workaround for this yet - any suggestions?

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This is great news! I was worried this one was headed in the direction of Straightarrow Quiver...

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Oh wow, what a pleasant surprise! I kinda thought this had been left for dead to be honest. Really nice update too. Thanks!
LevelSongD wrote: - Modulation - Amount

I've found it's very hard to do subtle/small amounts of modulation. The way the scale is currently set up, if I'm modulating the pitch or start position, there are maybe only 3 or 4 small modulation amounts that the bar snaps to - after that the mod amount jumps into the stratosphere. If I just want to add a few ms of jitter, or a few cents of pitch mod, it's pretty much impossible to dial in with the mouse. Solution - a "scale" or "zoom" function, that allows you to dial in fine vs. large amounts of modulation.
This is already implemented. In the panel where you dial in modulation amount, there's a zoom function which defaults to "1.00x", meaning 1x zoom. You can drag this up to 9.99x zoom to allow much finer control. Hold the control key (on PC, not sure what the mac equivalent is) while dragging the mod amount slider for even finer control.

As per your other question, I'm not aware of any way to dial in bidirectional modulation as of yet. Would indeed be convenient on the pan control, although I'm not sure how this would work once you take the random distribution feature into account. It's nice being able to set the pan dial fully left, random modulation fully right (i.e. covering the entire dial), then panning solely using the random number distribution feature. You can get really nice effects where most grains are near-centred with an adjustable density of 'strays' toward the edges of the stereo field by keeping mean position set to 50 and adjusting the spread control.

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For some reason the zoom function didn't work until I patched the update, but now it's working fine. I tried that workaround and it sounds like it's working - I can't tell if the modulation is biased towards the side you turn the pan all the way over to, but that seems like the best solution for now. Thanks!

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No presets in the latest update?

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Hum long time I search for such system, with some "not just play sample repeatidly"...

I've a question: it seems possible to save patch, but how about loading patch ? I don't find any option for it !

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Seems like update 08b has the dll missing the 'slot setup' bit where you can map the note range for a sample grain. Anyone else confirm this?

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jk-cream2 wrote:Seems like update 08b has the dll missing the 'slot setup' bit where you can map the note range for a sample grain. Anyone else confirm this?
It's moved. It's now in the 'key map' section accessed just to the left of the modulation panel, below the rate knob.

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Thanks for the update. I don't seem to understand the new 'position' loop locks. Is the line supposed to be the start of a looping of the clip/grain? Alt-click on the waveform and you create a new line but I don't understand what you are supposed to do with it. You've got speed and amount - amount of what? On the wave form it seems to have a grey area where the first line starts. Not sure if the thing is looping from there.

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I would like the start arrow (where you start the grain from) to be more precise and controllable, doesn't seem to be numerical output of the actual position of the start of the grain.

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I too am at a loss about how the alt-click is supposed to work. I don't see any looping happening, just more lines added....
jk-cream2 wrote:Thanks for the update. I don't seem to understand the new 'position' loop locks. Is the line supposed to be the start of a looping of the clip/grain? Alt-click on the waveform and you create a new line but I don't understand what you are supposed to do with it. You've got speed and amount - amount of what? On the wave form it seems to have a grey area where the first line starts. Not sure if the thing is looping from there.

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I'm pretty excited with granular synthesis since I got Granulator in Ableton Suite bundle. The Mangle seems to be more melody-oriented, it's impressive how clean sounds it can make just from a guitar sample. Also, the GUI is oustanding. No tiny knobs and switches you can't find, very intuitive and straightforward.

Certainly I may consider buying it someday.
Blog ------------- YouTube channel
Tricky-Loops wrote: (...)someone like Armin van Buuren who claims to make a track in half an hour and all his songs sound somewhat boring(...)

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MMultiBandGranular on sale now, about the same price as The Mangle:

http://www.meldaproduction.com/plugins/ ... ndGranular

If you had to choose between them, what would you pick?

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Effect vs instrument....what do you want? They are both good at what they do. I find Melda products not very intuitive, and workflow a little obscure, but very powerful nonetheless.

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