Clouds [Granular Synth]

Granular synthesizer creating new textures in real time. Adjust position, size, and pitch of the sound grains. Play many grains at the same time! Create rhythmic patterns. Blur. Repeat the sound back into itself, reverb. Maximum disorientation.

Clouds is a granular audio processor – with a couple of twists.

Unlike granular sample players, Clouds is focused on the realtime granularization of incoming audio signals, and the acquisition of textures from them.

Classic controls such as grain position, size, and pitch are provided. Clouds can superimpose many grains simultaneously (at least 40, depending on the CPU used by its other features) and thus create thick textures. Control over texture density, independently of grain size, is thus provided. An external trigger input allows grains to be seeded in sync with LFOs or rhythmic generators.

To provide a richer variety of timbres, Clouds allows the shape of the grain’s envelope to be morphed – from sharp rectangular edges to a smooth bell curve. In addition, a diffusion network can further dissolve the edges of grains into blurry textures.

Finally, to cover various applications of granular synthesis without the need for additional modules, Clouds’ comes with four “blending” settings for mixing and re-routing its output signal: dry/wet balance, random panning amount, feedback amount, and reverberation amount. Voltage control over one of those four parameters is possible.