Granular Synthesis

hi people. could someone who is dealing with granular synthesis on the forum give an advice? go the hard way with Max/MSP or PureData? or there are good plugins out there that can "replace" this amazing software?

wonder if you could cobble something together with the ableton live sampler machine things?

audiomulch does great granular synthesis so does Reaktor with not much need to go under the hood.

  On 10/8/2010 at 10:50 PM, Awepittance said:

audiomulch does great granular synthesis so does Reaktor with not much need to go under the hood.

I just with AudioMulch had MIDI routing and effects as well. Also ReWire.

Here's a nice little tutorial for Pd, it's a bit dated, but still quite effective. It's a nice read even if you aren't into programming as it explains certain techniques and processes in synthesis and to a lesser extent, sampling.

http://www.pd-tutorial.com/

thank you guys, i appreciate it. ive been experimenting with a combination of Uhbik plugins, based on Uhbik-G that has this grains&pitch feature, quite easy and simple but it was ok for a start. gonna look into the plugins that you recommend, and thanx to Gbiscuit for the PD tutorial link, ive seen some fantastic patches that blew my mind away and i just got so excited. i know that Ableton can do magic stuff but ive already decided that Cubase is my first goal, even though i suspect Ableton is more popular than Cubase nowadays among electronica artists because of its powerful live features. this makes me wonder if artists consider Cubase outdated for electronica today, i guess Richard Devine does, but i think FSOL do not :)

  On 10/9/2010 at 3:48 PM, mollekula said:

this makes me wonder if artists consider Cubase outdated for electronica today, i guess Richard Devine does, but i think FSOL do not :)

cubase is dense and technical. the layout is perfectly fine once you learn where everything is + memorize some key shortcuts... until then, though, it's pretty intimidating. it's just choc full of shit.... great fun to explore and muck about with. ableton, on the other hand, is minimalistic. the important shit is there, nothing else. so ableton is faster to get into, quicker to do tracks, but cubase has a lot more features. in cubase i can right click on audio, then normalize, reverse, dc offset, all sorts of utility stuff like that. ableton, these features are not there. they are not there because they'd complicate the use of the interface, and the workflow of ableton. that's the core tradeoff, i'd say.

one thing that's a pain to do in ableton is chop+slice+rearrange long recordings (i.e. not samples or loops). i find cubase's linear editing to be far better than ableton's!

full disclosure: i have been using cubase sx for years as my primary DAW. i still record stuff to it. however, i got ableton too a couple months ago, and i've been quite enjoying it.

^ you can indeed reverse smaples in ableton.

selpams

It's true!

There's a sturdy little granular synth in the max/msp examples which you could work without actually knowing how to use the program, might require some tinkering to add frills. I'm guessing you'll probably want to use it as a vst or something though which can be problematic, even with rewire. I remember reaktor having quite a nice one too which is easier to run through cubase. I'm sure there are plenty of nice purpose built vsts which do the same job though.

  On 10/9/2010 at 8:19 PM, Retape said:

^ you can indeed reverse smaples in ableton.

perhaps, but facepalms are irreversible. my point was, it doesn't have as many things as cubase, and when i use ableton i miss these things. but if you are j. random househed they'd probably just confuse you, anyways.

just thought I'd tell you in case you were using Live on a daily basis and were constantly annoyed that you couldn't reverse samples!

I get your point, though.

  On 10/10/2010 at 12:22 PM, Retape said:

just thought I'd tell you in case you were using Live on a daily basis and were constantly annoyed that you couldn't reverse samples!

 

I get your point, though.

i suppose the fact i forgot it COULD do that illustrates my problem. cubase has it all, then i'll go for it in live and it isn't there. detrimental to mental flow. i use dozens of bits of software and the marijuana is making me go senile.

live bills itself as a 'sequencing instrument' i think? this is accurate. it's good for jamming out your idea lightning fast... but then you go back to the recorded jam, try to clean it up, and it's really aggrivating. i have been debating getting a second audio interface so i can run live on one computer and record its output to cubase. this would give me the better recording/editing facilities with live's playability.

you shouldn't need a second computer to do that. On my mac laptop i run soundflower and setup 8 stereo virtual busses. I then in Abelton assign each track of a jam i've done to the 8 virtual busses. Then i open Cubase, open 'vst connections' make sure soundflower is set for the main soundcard and then setup 8 busses with assigning them to the soundflower #s. Im in the process right now of taking a bunch of live sets where i recorded them in arrangement view as i was jamming on abelton and editing them in cubase

  On 10/11/2010 at 2:26 AM, Awepittance said:

you shouldn't need a second computer to do that. On my mac laptop i run soundflower and setup 8 stereo virtual busses. I then in Abelton assign each track of a jam i've done to the 8 virtual busses. Then i open Cubase, open 'vst connections' make sure soundflower is set for the main soundcard and then setup 8 busses with assigning them to the soundflower #s. Im in the process right now of taking a bunch of live sets where i recorded them in arrangement view as i was jamming on abelton and editing them in cubase

send me your mac laptop and i will switch over to it immediately.

How about KTGranulator, it's a sort-of-clone of AudioMulch's DLGranulator, but it works as a VST plugin: http://koen.smartelectronix.com/KTGranulator/

  On 10/8/2010 at 11:11 PM, wahrk said:

I just with AudioMulch had MIDI routing and effects as well. Also ReWire.

AudioMulch has had MIDI routing since version 2.0. Feel free to post to the AM forums with your effects feature requests.. i'm listening.

damn, im in love with this forum. you guys are awesome! big thanx to everybody who responded, im already infected with rabies for these interesting pieces of software that you have recommended