Audio Damage Descent granular

[BBFG#]

New Granular effect:

https://www.audiodamage.com/collections ... 269437b03f

Descent is a granular delay and reverb effect that transforms your audio into evolving, otherworldly textures. At its core, Descent captures incoming audio and breaks it into tiny grains—anywhere from a handful to dozens at once—then scatters them across time and pitch to create everything from subtle thickening and rhythmic delays to vast, frozen soundscapes and shimmering pitch-shifted clouds. With independent control over grain count, duration, overlap, and direction (forward, reverse, or random), combined with extensive randomization for pitch, pan, position, amplitude, and timing, Descent turns any sound source into a living, breathing texture. Whether you're adding shimmer to guitars, creating infinite sustain on synth pads, or designing abstract sonic environments, Descent delivers studio-quality granular processing with an intuitive interface and real-time FFT visualization.

Features
Granular engine with adjustable grain count (1–50 simultaneous grains), duration, overlap, and envelope shape for precise texture control.

Pitch shifting from -24 to +24 semitones with pitch quantization—lock transpositions to specific intervals for harmonically-correct shimmer, fifths, octaves, or any chromatic combination.

Six-axis randomization: independently randomize pitch, pan, position, amplitude, duration, and grain count for everything from subtle movement to complete chaos.

Direction control plays grains forward, reverse, or randomly mixed—perfect for tape-style effects, reverse swells, and glitchy textures.

High-feedback mode with diffusion control transforms delays into lush, reverb-like washes that never get harsh or out of control.

Tempo-sync or free-running modes let you lock grain timing to your session or let textures evolve organically.

Real-time FFT visualization shows your granular cloud evolving, making sound design intuitive and immediate.

35 factory presets covering shimmers, delays, reverbs, pitch effects, and experimental sound design to get you started instantly.

Cross-platform preset manager with XML-based presets compatible across all plugin formats and operating systems.

[pekbro]

I haven’t had a chance to really play with this too much yet, but wasn’t too excited by it myself, so far. Will probably buy it anyway. Since it’s AD.

[Download SOphist]

I gave it a quick spin and didn´t seemed like bringing anything special to the table. 1st impressions, though.

[VariKusBrainZ]

Other Desert Cities is the one to check out

[BBFG#]

Except this thread is about Descent.
And by extension a bit about Ascent.

I take it as maybe relative to the Dawesome plugins Love and Hate in the market it's trying to entice. And of course, the fact that Audio Damage codes for all three OSs puts it ahead in that regard.

Downloaded/installed the demos for both Descent and Ascent and finding them to be very nice, and kind of smoother than the Dawsome ones.

[noiseresearch]

Anyone bought this? Seems a nice one but I hesitate since Audio Damage Plugins where never stable and quite buggy for me.

Also: any similar plugins I should take a look at?

[VariKusBrainZ]

There are sooooooooo many granular delay / reverbs

[noiseresearch]

There are sooooooooo many granular delay / reverbs

Really? I own Silo which can be seen as granular/reverb. I tried Sol by DAWESOME but disliked the sound. Care to name your favorite (which is not a multi-fx-monster) ?

[cake builder]

Sol seems like a stripped down version of Love. I'm not the one you asked but I really like EFX Fragments and Graindad.

[edhombre]

This can be really pretty. I use it on my iPad and it's just £2.99 on iOS . Not sure I'd pay £23 for desktop tho...

[noiseresearch]

This can be really pretty. I use it on my iPad and it's just £2.99 on iOS . Not sure I'd pay £23 for desktop tho...

Thanks. I'm soon able to demo it. AD is running a sale atm.

[pekbro]

I’m kinda torn on these, imo they don’t have the typical AD innovation or flair. More paint
by number I think. YMMV.

[Download SOphist]

agreed. I tried the demo briefly and didn´t seem to have much wow factor. decent, but pretty standard.

[Funky40]

yeah, no wow factor. But i found my uses in no time. It`s straight forward. You can quickly see what it does and what your uses could be. There lies some value in my opinion. But not something one has to have. With that low price ( and my currency beeing strong) it was ok for me.

[kraster]

TAL G-verb and Arturia Fragments are my goto granular effects