Granular 2 Mux (New Update Ver 1e)

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mutools wrote:(it's getting time i can take a good break after M7 release)
totally agree :tu:

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I'm REALLY loving the sound of this!! Bravo! (or, Brava!, as the case may be.)

One question: I haven't really dug into the guts of this yet, but is there a way to stabilize the pitch? No matter what I seem to try, it varies wildly.

Otherwise, excellent work! I'm getting such warm tones out it... :hug:
I started on Logic 5 with a PowerBook G4 550Mhz. I now have a MacBook Air M1 and it's ~165x faster! So, why is my music not proportionally better? :(

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Thanks! :)

The easiest way is to turn off the 2 LFO's, they modulate the pitch together.
The playback envelopes control it as well over a larger scale, so you
could make a completely linear envelope if that's not enough I suppose.

Let me know how it goes...

-Cheers

*actually there is a linear envelope in there already. Its the one used to
generate the autoplay. You should set the line to 100 percent though
if you use that or it wont traverse the entire grain table.

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Thanks! I thought that might be it.

Now to dig in deeper with nice long samples. I haven't had much luck so far. :dog:
I started on Logic 5 with a PowerBook G4 550Mhz. I now have a MacBook Air M1 and it's ~165x faster! So, why is my music not proportionally better? :(

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How do u slice a sample dat many times. Is there away to donit automatically? And how do inload.my own sample...do i render it, i just need help with my sound sources, and what dramatically changes the sound...is it your evelopes u provided or the sequencers......i need help????

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@btayloragent ,

-Everything changes the sound pretty much. The main things are the playback envelope,
the pitch mod and of course the audio content.

-No you cannot create the grains automatically.

Cut from earlier post (sry, I really should clean up this thread at some point):

Slices should be between 10 and 50 milliseconds for granular synthesis apparently.
So the best way to do it is to add recurring markers. Make sure to set the time for
milliseconds, then pick your first time in ms. Delta time is the interval (grain length).

Under the Osc source select "Add multiple samples" from your first to last marker.
You probably need to run a Normalize transform on it, then hit render.

See pic:

Image

*I will make a video I guess, when I'm done with my Drum Synth project.

-Cheers

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yes make a vid, ill try this later after work...thx...and great great work

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I will make a video at some point, for now here are some thoughts on using it.

First of all, I think some folks are expecting more from it than it actually is able to deliver.
Granular 2 is really not comparable to a commercial granular synth like granite, padshop
or even UVI's Falcon. (all of which I own, so I know).

That doesn't mean that its not worth using, quite the contrary IMO. All of the above are
designed to provide the utmost flexibility in regard to playback and such, thus providing
the best possible avenues to that unique ethereal sound we all have come to expect from
granular synthesis.

That's all well and good, but sometimes we don't really want that. That's where Granular
2 shines (IMHO). Lets look at Granite, which is in my mind the closest to Granular 2, design
wise.

Granite's playhead kind of vibrates its way through the sample providing a fairly rhythmical
granular sound, which is great! Except, when you try to pass that sound into your favorite
rhythmical effect plugin. You would think it would work great, but somehow (IME) it just doesn't.
The rhythm it provides often conflicts with that of the plugin. Granite as well as the others
seem meant to stand on their own in a composition, providing a background rhythm that you
must integrate into your own idea.

Granular 2 on the other hand, isn't flexible enough at playing grains to really do that. That's
a good thing though, as the others aren't really able to easily achieve the primitive granular
playback that Granular 2 offers.

So in my mind, the main intention of Granular 2 is that of a sausage maker for your effects.
It is meant to provide interesting sonic material to feed into your favorite rhythmical effects.
The likes of Stutter Edit, MXXX, Effectrix, (most anything by) GlitchMachines, Glitch 2 etc.
Also any trance gates, loopers, creative delays or reverb effects you might have laying about.
Its also suited to making risers or drone type sounds.


That said, it is possible to get a similar kind of sound (within reason) to those synths mentioned
above. It will take some doing however.

You need to understand that Granular 2's playback envelopes are meant to simulate the playheads
in a typical granular synth, as they control the playback movement through the grain table.

Suppose you want to make a sound like that of Granite. If you look at Granite, the playhead
(as I said above) kind of vibrates through the sample. The closest we can come to this in Granular 2
is a saw wave loop.

Image

With the saw, the wave index will increase by (increment), then decrease by (increment),
then repeat this motion as it traverses the wave table towards the end. At the end it starts again.

So that's how we can approximate the playhead movement in Granite.

Say we want to approximate the playhead movement in Padshop. Well the main difference
in Padshop is that it can utilize multiple playheads at the same time (same for Falcon).

Since we only have two oscillators in Granular 2 we are limited to 2 separate playheads.

The way we can simulate Padshop's playback is by loading the same grains into each
Osc, then offsetting the same playback envelope by whatever percent for one of them.

Say we use a saw loop, we would then set the first one to begin the loop at 0 percent (wave index 1 of 100)
and then end it at 100 % (wave index 100 of 100).
Then we would set the 2nd to begin at 25% (wave index 25 of 100) then end at 75% (wave index 75 of 100).

Now we have successfully simulated 2 separate playheads for the same grain samples, as the 2 will never
be at the same wave index at the same time.

As for other tricks used by Granite and the like:

Reverse playback: While Mux can play the grains in the reverse direction through the grain table,
it cannot actually reverse the slices. To simulate this you would need to use two copies of the same sample,
where one has been previously reversed in an audio editor.

Grain Size: Mux cannot do this on the fly, you must specify this when you slice up your sample. You can
vary this by specifying different slice intervals in either separate samples, or at different times within
the same sample.

Grain Density and Play Speed:

Grain density is controlled by the grain size and the loop itself, shorter loops will have higher density
than longer loops under the same grain count.

Speed is controlled by both the loop length and the loop speed parameters of the controlling envelope.


Anyway, that's all I can think of at the moment. Hope this helps.

All you really need to do is experiment and have fun! :)

*Sorry for the wall of text.

-Cheers

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its ok...thx for taking the time

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Thanks for all the tech details, pekbro!
d o n 't
w a n t
m o r e

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Thanks guys,

Oh one other thing that Granular 2 can do that the others cant I think,
It loops insanely fast, I'm pretty sure I have hit the 40 kHz limit with it. :tu:

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amazing creation man.

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@solipsvs,

Thanks! :)

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Image

Sorry still farting with this...

(Update) Granular 2 Mux Version 1d....

-Removed Multipoint Envelope playback system. Replaced with MuWaveform Shape
via two control LFO's. These are now named "Table Index Transport" A & B respectively.
This was done mostly for usability as the 2 systems function nearly identically. The
LFOs offer better speed control as you can now set the loop rate explicitly. They also
afford a nice preview of the transport shape and an amplitude setting that can function
as a quick offset between 2 identical samples and more. (see earlier post, that explanation still applies)
There was a slight trade-off for speed and some other things. (I believe the envelopes are faster).
However I think high-speed is not what we want for traversing the table index, slow speeds
seem to produce better sounds. The LFO's are better suited to that. With this change, the
index loop speed is now limited to 25 khz.

*The transport system is hardwired to be UniPolar, so if will behave that way even if you
use BiPolar shapes. You should probably only use UniPolar shapes anyway as there
is no negative in the table index.

*This is probably the way I should have done it in the first place, that's what I get
for creating patches without reading the manual... I will read it one day, I promise.


-Removed "Envelopes" folder and envelope presets.
-Added "Wave Shapes" folder and a good number of 60k ms waveshape presets, both Bi and UniPolar.
Separating the two wasn't really necessary, but I did it anyway.

-Added a second pitch modulation system labeled "Pitch FM". This is an experiment to bring FM Synthesis
into the mix. 2 standard oscillators have been added and are used to modulate the pitch via
Audio Rate Modulation. (The multi-oscillators have no phase variable so I used pitch). This actually
works well, much better than standard LFO's. This method is tons faster and retains tonal quality at
high speed (where the LFO's fail).

This mode allows you to use any installed waveforms to modulate the pitch of the two multi-oscillators.

This is the mode that's going to get you closest to the sounds produced by Granite and the like.
The "Pad" control now serves to compress / expand the modulation amplitude as we move through
the index. At least "outwardly" nearly identical to the way Granite seems to behave. With this you
can now vibrate the pitch either wildly or smoothly as it moves through the index.

-Moved the old "Pitch Mod" system to the left of the interface. The system has been changed as the
two LFO's are no longer connected to each other. I retained this as this is a means of producing
more predictable and controllable pitch modulation. This is best suited for creating Riser's and percussive
type sounds. The two modulation systems can be used however you like, E.g. separately, together or
mixed. Most times you'll likely want to use them separately.

The presets for this system have been set to 60k ms, or 1 minute lengths. You can still use the
factory presets if you want faster loops.

-Added "Aux Filter", this is set to Band Pass and disabled by default. It is meant to afford a
BP, H-Shelf, L-Shelf or a Notch filter at a point just before the compressor in the signal chain.
Should you happen to want that.

-Brought the "Audio Limiter" to the front panel. The controls are labeled as such: In (In Gain), Trsh (threshold),
Pwr (Intensity) and OUT (Out Gain). Eased up on the limiter settings, I had it set too aggressively. Now
you can easily adjust it to suit your needs. I would warn you not to disable it though.

-Resized the interface to make it somewhat smaller. Now many of the parameter values can only
be viewed by mouse over. This was unavoidable as I needed to keep all the knobs as uniformly
scaled as possible. (This is a personal problem of mine that I'm afraid others must suffer. -sry)
Everything has been numerically positioned. Which is the way to go with a large number of controls (tip 4 u).

*I can go smaller still, please say so If someone wants it smaller than it is.

-Added color coding to the various sections (text only), the UI is getting busy, this should
help to keep you correctly oriented.

-Added Modulation Monitors to all modulation sections. Besides looking cool, this should help
you to see exactly what the modulations are doing.

-Minor color changes over all... Now a lighter background etc...

*Please comment if you don't like the color scheme, so I can accommodate different aesthetic
preferences.

-Grain Envelope labels changed to "A, D, S, R" ... Various labels abbreviated to accommodate the
UI sizing changes. E.g. Transpose = Trans, Fine Tune = Fine etc. Hopefully they all make sense to
you right away.

-Added AEF button to the auto play control so you can open the envelope follower from
the front panel. To change the note or whatever...

That's about it. Please replace the older versions if you want to keep up to date with this patch project.


-Cheers and have fun!

*Please share if you come up with anything neat using this patch...



Granular 2 Mux:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9g5q ... HIwMmFTOW8

*Sorry quick update to remove the UniPolarizers, they were not working as I had
expected. Please re-download :)

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I'll have to try this out later! There's a MuLab/MuX 7 thread in the Hosts forum - something like this would be a really nice plug to add there :).

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