4 Patches with Sugar Bytes Graindad

[@arcticfoxstudios2018]

Ahh, granular VST's ... Please stop making holes in my wallet.

[@DataBroth]

so sorry, this one is fun though

[@Honestcosby]

If it’s got the word granular in it I’m buying it. Fragments has been my fave so far but this one may beat it. Just yeeted my 100 granular link money to sugar bytes immediately

[@DataBroth]

@@Honestcosby I'd say fragments is still a bit better in general, but graindad is a lot better UI, they are both great for different reasons though

[@DataBroth]

For my thoughts on Graindad vs Fragments vs Portal, read: www.databroth.com/blog/portal-vs-fragments-vs-graindad

[@el-bov8034]

Listening to this video vs your autochroma video, Imagero's plugin seems perhaps a bit more, erm…'musical'. I have Silo, but it seems to get too crazy pretty fast (could be user error). Fragments seems like it might be a good alternative, but so does autochroma…and Portal. Curious to know your thoughts. Though I understand you seem to be able to find uses for each of them, is there any that you’d consider desert-island options? Cheers

[@DataBroth]

@@el-bov8034 I consider any one of the 3 in my granular shootout to be "desert island" options. The more affordable ones like autochroma, silo, emergence, and glow are nice and do some things a bit different, but fragments/portal/graindad are all very solid and any one of them could be your "one and only" granular effect, it just kinda depends which use cases you find most important

[@el-bov8034]

@@DataBroth Many thanks for the reply! After I wrote the comment I dowloaded efx and Graindad. As much as I know Sugar Bytes plugins are powerful, i always find their interfaces unnecessarily obtuse and unintuitive. I'm not agains reading the manual, but even a cursory mess around had me so lost. efx Fragments was much easier to get on with. But I also spent some more time with Silo and Emergence. I think referring to what Im after as 'musical' was a mistake. After all, it all has musical uses. But i guess what I'm really looking for is subtle. Leaning more into clouds with sparse flourishes and sparkles of granular goodness is what I'm after. Surprisingly, after stripping everything back to nothing, I managed to get some pretty sweet results out of Silo (Emergence an do subtle really well, also). But going back to your autochroma video it seems so much more subtle. Of course, you make it all look effortless. I'm sure i my hands it'll just end sounding like chaotic pitched farts, but at leas I know the possibility is there for what I'm after. I demoed it before, but don't hink I had much time to put into it. So I've emailed the ev to see if I can have a demo reset. Fingers crossed. Cheers :)

[@cullenkernan2844]

Interesting looking plugin for sure.

[@DataBroth]

It's pretty sweet, very similar to portal and fragments but with its own little twists ofcourse

[@frankenmizer828]

The harvester didn't make sense until the strings - that page of the interface made the innovation on offer pretty clear. Thanks, DB.

[@DataBroth]

I'm glad it helped, it's a bit of a gimmick but kind of a cool one makes me wish portal had some sort of motion recording for the XY grid

[@LorisSolic]

@@DataBroth why do you say its a gimmick, whats your take on it. From the few seconds of exposure in your vid (great content) it seems like a pretty powerful modulation environment.

[@DataBroth]

​@@LorisSolic ​ Gimmicks aren't necessarily bad per say, often times the gimmick is the selling point, I think I'd call it a gimmick partly for the visual design and naming convention; things like "flight path" "auto pilot" "harvester" also it does things in a novel and unconventional way that takes away a fair bit of "control" over the end results, it's more about watching the motions and objects moving around, it's about play rather than programming it also doesn't represent the primary function of the device, it's an attractive mechanism that is fun to play with, and even a nice way to arrive at new sounds as I said, I kinda wish portal had it I stand by my usage of the word gimmick, it's rather gimmicky, even if it's useful, that's part of the charm of Sugar Bytes' plugins anyways most of them have some unique gimmick maybe if I were to define "gimmick" in this circumstance, I'd describe it as: a function or feature that allows a unique control or expression but doesn't add any new possibilities otherwise unachievable if left out. Also usually has some sort of fun name or art direction. A feature designed particularly to inspire rather than to achieve a specific sonic result. that addresses the "gimmick" part of your question, but as for my take on it, I think it's kinda nifty. without motion it does nothing you can't do from the front panel. Being able to record different node motions at different rates is neat, and can allow for some slow interwoven control changes while retaining a bit of "humanized" motion. The harvester path adds a bit to that as well. It's really only particularly useful for slow subtle motions, once you take things to extremes there's not really a lot of control over the end results most of what it can do is easily replaced with some lfos or slow randomizers, which would likely be easier to manage in the long run it's not a bad feature by any means, it's just, sort of a gimmick sorry for the long reply and thank you for the question

[@LorisSolic]

@@DataBroth no, thank you for taking the time to elaborate, really appreciate your opinion

[@daviHuggMonster]

that is one I will probably get these days,

[@DataBroth]

it's pretty cool I like it as an alternative to the others

[@psy-lion]

So awesome! Piano patch is so lovely

[@DataBroth]

thank you, it was using Arturia's Piano 3

[@Gideonwolf111]

Great demo man…thank you! I haven’t fully had the time to check this out but super useful to see you put this to the test. 🤜

[@stephenroldan5107]

😎