Sonic State‘s Nick Batt took a trip to Synthfest UK last weekend and got a hands-on demo of the upcoming Tasty Chips GR-1 granular synthesizer.
The GR-1 is a hardware polyphonic granular synthesizer, capable of creating textures, characteristic sounds, drones, soundscapes and pads.
Features:
- The GR-1 is massively polyphonic: 128 grains per voice, times 16 voices = 2048 grains in parallel.
- 32 bit mixing and a HIFI stereo DAC for rendition.
- 7? full-color display.
- It can use (USB or DIN) MIDI keyboards, USB sticks/disks, USB audio interfaces, and even PC keyboards.
- CV interfaces for integration with Modular (Eurorack) systems.
- On-board controls and MIDI connectivity make it easy to manipulate sound.
- Knobs and sliders allow all granular parameters to be changed in seconds.
- The GR-1 also allows stand-alone operation: No MIDI keyboard required! The GR-1 has buttons and sliders to create 4 note chords or drones.
Pricing and Availability
The GR-1 Granular Synthesizer is being developed via a Kickstarter project, which recently completed, meeting its fundraising goals. The first batch is expected to ship to backers in Nov 2017.
Looks cool but not as exciting as it looked in pictures.
Pretty basic really, but good on them for making a cool device.
Stiff competition with iPad apps like Borderlands, Samplr, iDensity, and Reason 10 with Grain.
they’re a lot of updates and stretch goals that they are bringing to it via updates next year. I think it will compete quite well.
yeah
I love these kind of hardware that take me away of the DAW.
Really nice design, it’s like Reaktor in hardware.
January is waaaay toooo far away. This thing looks killer every time I see it and im sure there is more beneath the surface. If they get sampling through an audio interface in there, then it’ll be super interesting! Cant wait to see what else it does since their videos keep showing the same 3 functions. I see 2 FX knobs and a whole horde of bottoms on the bottom right.
The Percussa SSP looks more exciting to be honest
Not really more exciting, just more. Its definitely interesting but looks like a deep dive into a manual and a full setup and power supply for anyone who doesn’t already own it.
Disappointed there’s no live processing through a buffer, ala, Granulator II and iPulsaret.
Would love to have adjustable sample start and end points, possibly with crossfading.
With an all digital box like this, I’m expecting most, if not all, parameters will be receive midi CC.
Considering it’s software, don’t two lfo’s and a standard ADSR seem a bit too ‘traditional’ (considering granular synthesis is so untraditional in most all respects)?
Neat idea, but probably not happening: scan position as an aftertouch target. Would be sick if it accepted MPE, or could receive on omni.
Ahh, one more.. if it truly will be 16 voice, having multiple layers or splits would be absolutely fantastic (and something I’ve had to Frankenstein with software)
PPS: Can you define the initial sample pitch, so that you don’t have to repitch your samples before granularization? (I.e., so that your source playing at F4 transposes from F4)
Lovely product btw. I adore granular synthesis, soni hope my comments can be viewed more constructively than as bickering. I’ll almost definitely be picking one of these up.