Wish list for granular delay

[ilmai]

Greetings effects people!

I have been looking for the perfect granular delay plugin (i.e. real-time granular effect, not a sample-based granular synth) for a long time, but haven't been totally happy with anything out there. Clouds, Grain Stream and Byome come the closest, but they're not quite there for me especially in terms of controlling the grains. So I decided to make my own. The basics are already done so now it's time to make it interesting and inspiring.

I have a bunch of unique features already in mind but decided I want some more inspiration so I'm creating this thread. What are some features you have always wanted in a granular effect but haven't found in existing plugins? What are some features that are found in existing plugins that you find indispensable?

[antic604]

Have you tried Virta? It's not a granular delay per se, but - as all Madrona Labs plugins - it's very good!

https://madronalabs.com/products/virta

Also, what about Sandman Pro?

https://www.unfilteredaudio.com/collect ... andman-pro

[ilmai]

Have you tried Virta? It's not a granular delay per se, but - as all Madrona Labs plugins - it's very good!

https://madronalabs.com/products/virta

Also, what about Sandman Pro?

https://www.unfilteredaudio.com/collect ... andman-pro

Yes, I have tried basically everything out there, and while there's some awesome stuff quality-wise, I couldn't quite find anything that would be as controllable as I would like. That's also what I'm trying to fix with my own plugin.

[onerob]

Soundtoys Crystallizer?

[Sinthoid]

Have you used crusher-x? That thing has doezens if not hundreds of real time parameters. Even per grain effects.

[Neon Breath]

@ilmai: That's great! Love granular delays and granular synthesis tool. What type of plugin you'd like to develop? Windows & OS X, vst or/and AU? Are you planning to sell it or distribute it for free/donation?

I'd definitely implement per grain filtering, with a few choice of filtering like hp/lp/bp/reso and a random parameter so each grains can have a random filtering applied. Filtering per grain is something we rarely see in granular plugins, most of them simply use a filter stacked at the end of the process, making the filter pretty useless. I can put my own filter myself at the end to do the same job.

I'd also make sure to have random/jitter parameters for most controls, granular synthesis becomes alive and really organic when there's a fair amount for randomness along the granulation process.

Possibility to have ton of grain overlaps, for the ones who have the CPU power so massive grain clouds can be achieved.

Keep us posted, I'm curious and looking forward to see the results!

[noiseresearch]

/* whitenoise */

[ilmai]

@ilmai: That's great! Love granular delays and granular synthesis tool. What type of plugin you'd like to develop? Windows & OS X, vst or/and AU? Are you planning to sell it or distribute it for free/donation?

I'm working on Windows with JUCE, I'll have to think about other platforms if I ever get this ready. I have a day job and like I said, this is the first plugin and first piece of audio software I have developed so it might take a while or never come out... but if I do release it, it's probably just going to be freeware.

I'd definitely implement per grain filtering, with a few choice of filtering like hp/lp/bp/reso and a random parameter so each grains can have a random filtering applied. Filtering per grain is something we rarely see in granular plugins, most of them simply use a filter stacked at the end of the process, making the filter pretty useless. I can put my own filter myself at the end to do the same job.

I'd also make sure to have random/jitter parameters for most controls, granular synthesis becomes alive and really organic when there's a fair amount for randomness along the granulation process.

Possibility to have ton of grain overlaps, for the ones who have the CPU power so massive grain clouds can be achieved.

Keep us posted, I'm curious and looking forward to see the results!

Those are some good points, thanks! Per-grain randomization and modulation for most parameters is definitely something I have in mind, per-grain filtering might get too expensive but we'll see, it might be an option at least. The basics of granular delay were super straightforward to implement, but I need to brush up on my DSP skills before going into stuff like (good-sounding) filters, saturation and better-quality pitch shifting.

Overlap is definitely already possible, currently I have separate controls for grain generation rate and length so you can dial in overlap using those. ...and the amount of overlap possible is just a matter of tuning the parameter ranges. I'm still thinking about what the controllable parameters should be. Most granular effects seem to just expose the tweakable parameters of the algorithm directly but I'm not convinced this is the most intuitive way.

The main idea I'm planning to implement and that I haven't seen elsewhere is multiple "grain emitters", inspired by particle emitters which are more familiar to me from game development. These emitters would have separate generation and modulation parameters and effects, and could be either always on (which is how granular effects usually work) or sequenced. This would allow effects that would normally take multiple parallel granular effects to achieve. I still haven't implemented any of this or designed the UI so these are just ideas at this point.

[Neon Breath]

The main idea I'm planning to implement and that I haven't seen elsewhere is multiple "grain emitters", inspired by particle emitters which are more familiar to me from game development. These emitters would have separate generation and modulation parameters and effects, and could be either always on (which is how granular effects usually work) or sequenced. This would allow effects that would normally take multiple parallel granular effects to achieve. I still haven't implemented any of this or designed the UI so these are just ideas at this point.

SoundMorph Dust use particle emitters for its granular processing, you should check that out. There's also the stand alone software Sound Particles that uses exactly that too, just like VFX particles in the 3D world.

[ilmai]

SoundMorph Dust use particle emitters for its granular processing, you should check that out. There's also the stand alone software Sound Particles that uses exactly that too, just like VFX particles in the 3D world.

Both of them are granular synths though and not real-time effects

[Neon Breath]

Dust has a FX Version included too, not just the synth version.

[VariKusBrainZ]

Lagrange is yum

[ilmai]

Dust has a FX Version included too, not just the synth version.

That's interesting! Based on the web site, the FX version came with an update. Still not quite what I'm looking for, but might take a look at the demo. I don't think it even had a demo originally?

[Blaster]

There's a grain delay in Ableton Live.

[V0RT3X]

There's a grain delay in Ableton Live.

And it sucks in comparison to most of the others mentioned here. I'll use it for some things, but it's not that great.

Just my opinion.