The instrument
A four-track granular synthesizer for Windows. Four independent clouds, each with its own sound, its own effects and its own modulation.
Windows 10 / 11StandaloneVersion 1.0
Granular synthesis takes a recording apart into fragments a few milliseconds long and rebuilds it as a cloud. Move one control and a piano note becomes a held chord; move another and it becomes a rhythm, or a texture with no obvious source at all.
Yantra Granular gives you four of those clouds at once. Each track loads its own audio and keeps its own grain cloud, Freeze voice, filter, BODY resonator, effects and a full set of modulators. When you want them to, the tracks listen to each other: a Freeze voice can play another track's sample, and one track's hits can start another track's LFOs and envelopes.
It is built to be played rather than programmed. The controls that change the sound most sit under your hand, the buffer screen shows the grains where they actually are, and the whole window scales to whatever size you give it.
Four tracks, each with its own sample or live input, its own grain cloud, effects and modulation.
Haze blends the grain cloud into a continuous, blurred image of the sound it reads. Scan stretches it, Pitch and Spray move it.
Freeze holds one point of the sample and plays it as a voice of its own. Give it a rhythm and it finds the hits in a loop and plays them as a beat: Rhythm 1–6 and Poly, where Variation reshapes the pattern to the left of centre and slides the hits through the sample to the right — or Markers and Sequence for hits you place yourself.
A resonator on every track, with six models: Modal, String, Sympathetic, FM, Strike and FM Voice. Set it to follow the note or the scale the grains play, and it rings in key.
One note plays a chord. Chord Walk moves through progressions by itself, shaped by Mood, Voicing, Strum and Cadence, and Melody adds a line on top in the same scale.
Equal temperament, Just intonation, or your own .scl and .tun files.
186 routings from seven sources — LFO 1, LFO 2, RANDOM, CLOUD ENV 1, CLOUD ENV 2, DRIFT and FREEZE — to 29 destinations, on two matrix pages. Scene Morph glides between four scenes on two axes.
Filter (SVF or Ladder), Diffuse, BODY, Vibrato, Flanger, Chorus, Delay (digital or Tape) and Reverb (Plate, Vintage Spring, Room, Chamber or Hall), with Shimmer.
In Yantra mode the grains land on the cells of a mathematically solved Sri Yantra figure, and the visualizer draws the same figure the engine scatters onto.
MIDI notes, MIDI learn and tempo sync throughout. Novation Launch Control 3 is recognised natively.
Next update soon.
| Format | Standalone application for Windows |
|---|---|
| Tracks | 4, fully independent: sample or live input, grain cloud, Freeze voice, effects chain and modulation each |
| Grains | Up to 60 per track |
| Grain size | 2–2000 ms |
| Density | 0.5–120 Hz, or locked to tempo |
| Pitch | ±36 semitones and fine tuning in cents; up to 12 semitones of Pitch Spread |
| Tuning | Equal, Just, or .scl / .tun files |
| Grain windows | 8 shapes: Hann, Tukey, Gaussian, Decay, Ramp, Sinc, Swell, Bounce |
| Scatter | 11 orders: Plain, Cluster, Inward, Outward, Random, Pulse, Rain, Ratchet, Timbre, Duo, Glitch |
| Freeze | Rhythm 1–6, Poly, Markers, Sequence |
| BODY | Modal, String, Sympathetic, FM, Strike, FM Voice |
| Effects, per track | Filter (low-, high-, band-pass; SVF or Ladder) · Diffuse · BODY · Vibrato · Flanger · Chorus · Delay, digital or Tape · Reverb (Plate, Vintage Spring, Room, Chamber, Hall) with Shimmer |
| Modulation, per track | 186 routings from 7 sources (2 LFOs with 5 shapes, 0.01–20 Hz or tempo-synced; RANDOM; 2 Cloud Envelopes; DRIFT; FREEZE) to 29 destinations · Scene Morph on two axes |
| MIDI | Note control, MIDI learn, Novation Launch Control 3 |
| Sources | Audio files up to 60 s, or live input (the last 16 s) |
| Audio | WASAPI; Windows Audio (Exclusive Mode) with a 20 ms buffer recommended |
Questions, bug reports and licence trouble: support@yantragranular.com.