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Baby Audio Grainferno: Granular Under Control

Baby Audio is back with a new instrument, and this time it’s taking on granular synthesis. Does Grainferno bring enough new to set it apart from existing granular software?

Baby Audio is a clever company. Although it has roughly the same kind of instruments and effects as lots of other outfits, it usually brings something new to the table. Take Transit, for example. The transition designer (made in collaboration with Andrew Huang) combines a bunch of effects algorithms into an easy-to-use and inspiring package. Atoms, a physical modelling synth, sidesteps the usual modal and string engines by going with one designed around a mass of springs. Now there’s Grainferno, a new take on granular synthesis.

Oh no, not another granular synthesis plugin, you may be saying. While the market is fast moving towards peak saturation in terms of granular effects, granular-based instruments are less common. However, do we really need another one? After all, there are only so many applications for grain clouds and glitch effects, right?

Not necessarily. Grainferno does the typical granular thing but also adds some very welcome musical and rhythm-based processing features. Is it enough to get you to part with your hard-earned cash, though?

What Is Granular Synthesis?

Before we get into the nuts and bolts (or is that grains?) of Grainferno, it may be helpful to first look at what granular synthesis is. A kind of sample synthesis, the granular process snags tiny pieces of audio called grains from a signal. Grains can be of different sizes, traditionally in the millisecond range but not always, as Grainferno shows. Playback can happen in an orderly way or randomly, resulting in glitchy explosions, time stretching-like sounds, and so-called grain clouds for a reverb-like result.

Although unique and often beautiful, granular processing is something of a niche effect. While perfect for genres like ambient or for sound design, it tends not to be as broadly musically useful as something like subtractive analogue synthesis. Most people, when designing bass or percussion, would turn to a different kind of synth.

So how does Grainferno fit into things?

Although unique and often beautiful, granular processing is something of a niche effect

Grainferno Overview

Grainferno starts with a sample (or two, with Morph slider to adjust between them). You can drop in your own or choose from the included ones. Rather than play back the audio as you would with a sampler, that is, linearly from a chosen start point, you instead use the sample as fodder for the creation of grains.

The heart, then, of Grainferno is the granular engine. Start by adjusting the rate of grain triggering, which can go from very slow all the way up to audio rate. What’s wonderful about Grainferno is how you can set the rate to a musical key or synced to BPM, allowing for the creation of both tonal and rhythmic effects that feel fresh and new – and very useful. You can then dial in the size of the grains at either linear or exponential values.

The other main feature of the grain engine is the Movement section. With Scan, you can decide on the direction of grain playback – forward, backward, or static – plus the amount of Scatter, or randomness. Both of these controls offer additional modes as well, such as BPM sync for the Scan.

Additional grain processing happens in the Grain Effects section, with a multimode filter with lowpass, highpass, bandpass and notch circuits, a grain compressor, and Blur for introducing feedback. You can also adjust grain gain, pan, shape and pitch.

At this point, we should also mention the templates that come with Grainferno, which allow you to quickly jump to one of six starting points: Grain, Tonal, Stretch, Slice, Chaos and Rhythmic. This is a handy way to launch straight into a style of sound design.

Modulation, Effects and View Screens

So far, we’ve only been looking at how to manipulate grains. You also have control over the behavior of the audio in general via the modulation section. Grainferno is packed with modulation sources, including three ADSR envelopes (and interestingly, ENV1 can be set to affect just the grains rather than the voice). There are also three LFOs with an unusual Modulo parameter for multiplying the LFO and wrapping its values back on top of itself for wild modulation, three random mod sources, and an envelope follower. You can also use incoming MIDI note, velocity, mod or pitchwheel position information to control destinations.

If you’re serious about sound design, particularly for genres like bass or IDM, Grainferno is a godsend

Baby Audio has a large catalog of effects plugins, so it’s no surprise that Grainferno should be well-kitted out in this regard. The FX page gives you access to EQ/filter, a compressor, soft clipper, delay, chorus and reverb channels, each with multiple algorithms to choose from. You can freely move these around to change the order as well.

Lastly, there’s a Play view, which, like in recent versions of Arturia’s Pigments, does away with the editing parameters but replaces them with four macros. You can assign macros from the modulation section on the Design view.

Sound Design

Let’s dig into Grainferno and see how we can use it for sound design on some different elements for a drum and bass track, with a special focus on tonal and rhythmic control over grain behavior.

We start with this rhythmic pad. It uses two samples bundled with Grainferno. We turned on the Auto Pitch function for each sample so they’d conform to the song’s key, and then cranked up the Rate (set to milliseconds) all the way to create synth-like overtones.

Rhythmic pad:

Next, an electric guitar-like lead created from the Hydra Bass preset. The Rate is key-mapped to octaves and set to -3.00, with grain size modulated by an LFO to create a repeating effect.

Lead:

For the bass, we went with the Industrial Bass preset, which uses beat-synced grain rate and scan to generate a choppy feel.

Industrial bass:

Lastly, we wanted to see how we could chop a break in Grainferno. As there’s no time stretching, we first loaded up a break in Ableton Live, exported it at the project tempo, and then dropped that into Grainferno. From there, we set the Rate to BPM sync and automated it so it would create rhythmic glitches.

The original break:

And processed through Grainferno:

Grainferno In Conclusion

Baby Audio has another winner on its hands with Grainferno. It’s managed to make granular synthesis predictive, something that is sure to set it apart from other instruments. While granular processing can be beautiful, working with it is often like conjuring a storm. You can tweak the knobs and hope for the best, but really, you’re just setting up parameters and letting the plugin do its thing. While Grainferno can be random like the best of them, thanks to the wealth of tempo syncing and pitch tracking, it also allows for very controlled sound design work.

Although versatile, we’d like to see more in Grainferno, such as being able to process the two samples independently. You can set the playhead position separately for each audio file, and of course, the Morph slider can create interesting cross-fading effects, but grain behavior is still governed by a single set of controls.

In terms of competition, there are a number of instruments capable of granular synthesis out there. If you have Ableton Suite, you already own Granulator II, the Robert Henke M4L instrument. Then there’s the aforementioned Pigments, as well as Absynth, although neither of these is a dedicated granular synth. They do, however, offer more depth in terms of sound processing, with multiple oscillators, filter types, etc. We’d love to see more filter models in Grainferno, as well as additional oscillators – even a dedicated tonal one for bolstering sound with VA-style synthesis would be helpful.

As of the time of writing, Grainferno is currently on sale for $79. This is a solid price for an instrument of this caliber. If you’re serious about sound design, particularly for genres like bass or IDM, Grainferno is a godsend. It’s fun, intuitive, and easy to get inspiring results quickly. Whether a single-oscillator synth is worth it to you for $129 is a different story. Grab it at the intro price without thinking. If you missed the sale, try the demo first. It just may become your secret sound design weapon.