New granular synth: The Mangle

[wasi]

Jeez, it's a $30 plugin made by one guy in his spare time that has been incredibly polished and stable from day one. Excuse my sarcasm, but do you guys expect email support for you lunch meals too?

The receipt is typically from the merchant, not the dev, it should be in your email after purchase.

License transfer is answered in this thread. He does them manually, expect to wait several weeks. With a plugin that costs less than some companies' license transfer fee I'm surprised he does them at all. Why doesn't the new owner just buy it for himself and support a niche product by a small developer? To think of all the crap we pay $30 and more for, and then it's on 'labor-of-love' stuff like this that people want to save a few bucks? But maybe that's just me.

He's obviously a busy guy, he's apologised in this thread for his lousy communication as recently as October last year. That's not to say that he really could and should do better, but with a quality product like this and a ridiculously low price and no notable issues, I'll take it. It sure beats him not releasing it at all.


No offense to anybody, seriously. I just feel you're really missing out on something great and $30 is just not enough to hold back over just because he's slow to answer inquiries. It's like eight Granites rolled into one.

[lnikj]

^ This! +1

[cron]

I agree. £20 is a fantastic price for a product that's reasonably mature at this point. IMO he's been very modest in calling it a beta. I can name plenty of developers who'd have called it version 1.0 a few versions ago (before many new features were added) then ignored any bugs and user requests while continuing to pump out new products, never touching it again. I know of two well known devs which have each released 3 (three!) new products since I reported (and they acknowledged) some really nasty bugs in earlier software.

The dev replied to me very quickly when I had an issue (turned out it I'd forgotten to reduce the massive buffer sizes I'd been using for troubleshooting in my DAW - idiot) although this was the very early days. Your mileage may vary.

Maybe if this was a £100 plug (which it could easily be) he'd sell fewer copies and be able to keep on top of support a little better. I understand that the likes of, say, Valhalla DSP sell their plugs for only $20 more and have great support with it, but it's a trade-off worth making to me. I say go for it at the current price. It's an absolute gem with a decent little community around it (e.g. in this thread ) who can help you out if you get stuck.

[Greg Houston]

Good input. Just purchased it.

[Greg Houston]

First thing I noticed, this is using JUCE, and likely an older build because I'm not able to type in values such as the slot names in Cubase 8. This was fixed somewhat recently in JUCE. It took me several months to convince Jule's it wasn't working in the first place even though there had been unresolved bug reports of it over a 7 year time span.

[Neon Breath]

Mangle crushes pretty much all the other grainers around, imo. And trust me, I used and tried A LOT.

So-so & unstable support (but still existent though). So what, get a life and get to work on those whole grains! This granular is the bomb.

[rod_zero]

How is the CPU consumption?

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

Mangle crushes pretty much all the other grainers around, imo. And trust me, I used and tried A LOT.

even padshop pro ?? i ask because i have been researching psp, and i am sure i read you say the same about that.

has this surpassed that now ?? what would you say are the main differences

cheers

[Sampleconstruct]

Mangle crushes pretty much all the other grainers around, imo. And trust me, I used and tried A LOT.

I strongly disagree.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

Mangle crushes pretty much all the other grainers around, imo. And trust me, I used and tried A LOT.

I strongly disagree.

i have been listening to your psp stuff for most of the day. it's incredible.

i know you have some higher-end budget granular tastes, but psp seems like a well-priced compromise

what's the crossover/redundancy with 'the mangle' ??

[Neon Breath]

Mangle crushes pretty much all the other grainers around, imo. And trust me, I used and tried A LOT.

even padshop pro ?? i ask because i have been researching psp, and i am sure i read you say the same about that.

has this surpassed that now ?? what would you say are the main differences

cheers

That’s a very tough one. I’d say they’re really close, but different. I prefer Mangle’s workflow for some reasons. I like Padshop but its workflow never really clicked for me. Mangle has up to 8 slots / layers (Padshop has 2) that you can stack up to create very complex and thick grain clouds. Modulation system is superior imo. The raw granular sound coming out of Mangle sounds better to by ears too, but that’s question of taste here, very subjective . Mangle is a true granular tool and it comes with nothing more than that, very basic filters and no effects. That’s maybe where Padshop shines since it has effects built-in and better filters.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

Mangle crushes pretty much all the other grainers around, imo. And trust me, I used and tried A LOT.

even padshop pro ?? i ask because i have been researching psp, and i am sure i read you say the same about that.

has this surpassed that now ?? what would you say are the main differences

cheers

That’s a very tough one. I’d say they’re really close, but different. I prefer Mangle’s workflow for some reasons. I like Padshop but its workflow never really clicked for me. Mangle has up to 8 slots / layers (Padshop has 2) that you can stack up to create very complex and thick grain clouds. Modulation system is superior imo. The raw granular sound coming out of Mangle sounds better to by ears too, but that’s question of taste here, very subjective . Mangle is a true granular tool and it comes with nothing more than that, very basic filters and no effects. That’s maybe where Padshop shines since it has effects built-in and better filters.

thanks for your answer. it's hard to find many audio examples of 'the mangle', so this helps

i do like the idea of having effects built in, i have to say

[Sampleconstruct]

Mangle crushes pretty much all the other grainers around, imo. And trust me, I used and tried A LOT.

I strongly disagree.

i have been listening to your psp stuff for most of the day. it's incredible.

i know you have some higher-end budget granular tastes, but psp seems like a well-priced compromise

what's the crossover/redundancy with 'the mangle' ??

Short version:

Mangle has it's advantages, it loads up to 8 samples, PSP only 2, one in each layer, but those layers are like individual synth modules, each one with a filter, 2 LFOS, a step sequencer, a modmatrix and it's own delay/chorus (there is one master reverb), Mangle can pitch-quantize things so you can create tonal grain clouds, there is a similar function in PSP but that creates more atonal/dissonant grain clouds.

But the main difference: 8 overlapping or separate grainstreams in PSP with long grain times (up to 1 sec, crusherX can do 60 seconds), which can create these very fluid and dense organic textures, not possible with The Mangle. So both have their qualities, a more extended PSP engine can also be found in HALion 5.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

Mangle crushes pretty much all the other grainers around, imo. And trust me, I used and tried A LOT.

I strongly disagree.

i have been listening to your psp stuff for most of the day. it's incredible.

i know you have some higher-end budget granular tastes, but psp seems like a well-priced compromise

what's the crossover/redundancy with 'the mangle' ??

Short version:

Mangle has it's advantages, it loads up to 8 samples, PSP only 2, one in each layer, but those layers are like individual synth modules, each one with a filter, 2 LFOS, a step sequencer, a modmatrix and it's own delay/chorus (there is one master reverb), Mangle can pitch-quantize things so you can create tonal grain clouds, there is a similar function in PSP but that creates more atonal/dissonant grain clouds.

But the main difference: 8 overlapping or separate grainstreams in PSP with long grain times (up to 1 sec, crusherX can do 60 seconds), which can create these very fluid and dense organic textures, not possible with The Mangle. So both have their qualities, a more extended PSP engine can also be found in HALion 5.

thanks for this. i have seen you recommending HAL many times, but it's way out of my budget, especially as this whole area is quite new to me

it's actually a little frustrating to be look at all, as i have reaktor. there are so many ensembles in the ul, but i have no idea where to start. i originally started looking at 'the mangle' as it seemed to have a much simpler front-end for a beginner. same goes for PSP

am i missing something in the reaktor library that covers all of this ground (and isn't one of those ensembles that doesn't even come with tooltips) ??

i have d'loaded PSP demo, but won't start it till i have a good 30-day run. if TM can be xferred, then maybe it would be worthwhile taking a punt on the beta price i don't really have the money to get it wrong

[Sampleconstruct]

One of Reaktor's weaker aspects is it's granular sampler, even in the latest NI release Molekular, the granular module still produces clicks and ugly artifacts and none of the granular ensembles I've used either from the UI or the factory lib come anywhere close sound-quality-wise to some of the state of the art instruments.