Granular textures and echoes
GRAINCLOUDS takes what you just played, cuts it into grains, and plays them back eight different ways: as a drifting cloud, a night sky, a tape machine, a swarm. Turn a few knobs and it's a texture. Set DELAY TIME, or lock it to your tempo, and it's an echo. Your playing drives it, so chord changes come through clean and stutters follow your rhythm. It's as quick to reach for as a delay or a modulation effect.
Hear it first
Eight ways to make a cloud
It started out as an experimental reverb. The grains got more interesting than the room, and it grew into a family of algorithms that each create grains and play them back in their own way.
grainclouds
The namesake. It textures what you play, scatters it with randomness and folds octaves into the grains. CLOUD DENSITY sets how many grains are alive and DRIFT detunes them. At SPEED 0, a held vocal stays at its own pitch while new notes still enter the cloud.
Constellation
Grains shoot across a virtual night sky. The star field is persistent, so the same settings give you the same sky every time. VOICES, ROTATION and PITCH SET shape it.
Ribbon
A tape machine built out of grains. FREEZE a phrase and scrub the playhead by hand with HEAD POSITION, or let WOW RATE and FLUTTER push it into granular tape flanging.
Pulsar
Grains fired as a pattern of pulses. PULSES, PULSE LENGTH, STEP RATE and PATTERN, with PROBABILITY and RATCHET under TEXTURE.
Rain
Grains that fall like drops. RAIN RATE, DROP SIZE and RATE DRIFT, with WINDOW SHAPE, HISTORY and DROP VARIATION under TEXTURE.
Swarm
Chaotic chorus. The grains move as a flock, pulled toward a shared centre rather than following one LFO. FLOCK SIZE, MOTION RATE, COHESION and INDIVIDUALITY set how tight it flies.
Stereo field
Grains born as left and right pairs, 1 to 15 of them, spreading and moving across the image. The stereo is built into the grains, not added by a widener afterwards. PAIRS, FIELD MOTION and DECORRELATION.
Shards
Your audio split like cracking glass. SHARD COUNT, SHARD LENGTH and RETRIGGER, with PITCH SET, FAN and DETUNE under TEXTURE.
Built for exploring
Jump between algorithms as often as you like. Each one keeps its own settings, so you can try Swarm, come back to Ribbon, and find it exactly where you left it. Each algorithm also brings its own controls: in Rain you're setting drop size, in Swarm how tight the flock flies, so you always know what you're shaping. And every algorithm has its own visualizer, drawn from the sound you feed it, so you can see what the grains are doing as you play.
Your playing drives it
DYNAMICS lets how hard you play move the sound. Pick a TARGET (CHARACTER, LENGTH, SPREAD, DENSITY or DECAY) and set how far your playing pushes it. REFRESH listens for your next note and clears the grain buffer when it lands, capturing the new sound instantly, so chord changes come through clean instead of stacking up on each other. Pair it with FREEZE and the stutters follow your rhythm and pitch.
Then the effects
Every algorithm runs into the same effects section: the console reverb from SPU-94, MODULATION for tremolo and pitch wobble, PITCH to shift the grains up to an octave either way, and a filter. SAMPLE RATE drops the rate on the fly, changing the grains' pitch, length and fidelity as you turn it.
The texture stays behind you
CLARITY ducks the texture under your dry signal in four bands, keyed from the dry, so a vocal stays on top without wiring a sidechain.
Download first, buy when you're sure
DOWNLOAD gets you the full plugin: every algorithm, every control. Until you buy, it goes quiet for 10 seconds every minute, and there's no time limit, so keep it in your sessions as long as you like. When you're ready, BUY is $19.99. Enter your key and the silences stop. There's nothing to reinstall.