Sugar Bytes - Graindad

Graindad is Sugar Bytes' real-time granular effect, for sound designers and producers in ambient, experimental and electronic music who want to freeze, stutter, stretch and texturise audio as it plays. It records your signal and plays it back through up to 64 grains at once, with 12 main controls keeping it far more approachable than most granular tools.

The grain engine

Those 12 parameters cover looping, stuttering, time stretching, pitch shifting, reversing and harmonising. Recording matters as much as playback: Graindad can capture in sync with your host clock, on a MIDI trigger, or when a transient arrives, thanks to a multiband transient detector. That last option is what makes it so good on drums, as each hit can spawn a new grain cloud.

The Harvester and modulation

There are two modulation systems. The classic one has envelopes, an LFO and a 16-step sequencer with step repeat. The Harvester is a visual controller that moves many parameters at once, and you can morph between the two. Randomisation runs through almost everything, including what triggers a new random value, so results can range from gentle shimmer to total glitch.

Effects

Low-pass, band-pass, high-pass and band-reject filters sit alongside an HQ reverb, spring reverb, shimmer, delay, flanger and chorus, with a complex dry/wet envelope to blend the grains back with the source.

The sound

Graindad turns a vocal, a guitar line or a drum loop into frozen pads, shimmering clouds or broken, glitchy textures. The randomisation is a strength and a weakness: it throws up happy accidents constantly, but you'll want to print the results you like, as it rarely does the same thing twice. For more extreme spectral reshaping, look at Transfigure.

Features

• Grain engine with up to 64 grains
• 12 main controls
• Harvester visual modulation system
• Freeze, stutter, glitch and texturise
• Multiband transient detector
• Host sync and transient clock
• 16-step trigger sequencer
• LP, BP, HP and band-reject filters
• HQ reverb, spring reverb, shimmer, delay, flanger and chorus
• Extensive random functions

System requirements

• Version: 1.0.6
• Mac: macOS 10.13 or later. AU, VST2, VST3, AAX and Standalone (64-bit). Native on Apple Silicon
• Windows: Windows 7 or later. VST2, VST3, AAX and Standalone (64-bit)
• An iPad version is sold separately on the App Store

SOUND7 is an authorised Sugar Bytes reseller. Digital delivery: licence activation code sent by email.

Demo