Top 10 Granulizer Plugins 2019

Granulizers seem to be getting popular these days so it is only natural that we start looking for what’s cool & trendy for this year, but first WHAT IS A GRANULIZER?

Granulizers and Granular synthesis in general works by taking an audio sample and dividing it up into a bunch of small chunks (grains) of time. Once the sound has been chopped in this way you can do some cool things with those grains. So without further ado, here is our top 10 list of granulizer plugins for 2019.

1. Plug & Mix – Granulizer

This one is an oldie but it has kept its popularity. This special granular delay effect splits incoming sounds into small grains and then transforms and mixes them up. This plug-in can give you dark, disturbing sounds as well as strange hi-pitched tones.

2. Inertia Sound Systems – Granulizer

It features a very versatile DSP engine that can go all the way from metallic crunch and grainy fuzziness to smooth reverb-like tones, spectral widening or chaotic soundscapes. The controls are deliberately kept few and simple, but you can get a great variety of really rich sounds with unusual harmonic content out of Granulizer.

3. FL Studio – Fruity Granulizer

Fruity Loops actually has a very good granulizer in its factory toolset. Fruity Granulizer is a generator plugin that utilizes granular synthesis technology. The source material for this Granulizer is a wave sample loaded by the user. Granulizer splits a wave sample into many small pieces (grains) that are looped/played-back according to the settings of the generator. The length and spacing of the grains can also be altered to achieve different tonal effects.

4. Sound Guru – The Mangle

The Mangle is a product born from years of experiments with granular synthesis. The goal was to ‘play’ with the stream of grains in a musical and expressive way. This led developers to some unique features: a large XY area with real-time grain display. Pitch and tempo locking. True stereo grains and multi-timbral layering. You can stretch out rich harmonics from acoustic sounds. Turn field recordings into ambient soundscapes. Or just load some synth sounds to be recombined with intricate patterns and cloud effects.

5. New Sonic Arts – Granite

New Sonic Arts describe Granite as a unique sound engine that melds a state-of-the-art granular processor, an innovative modulation system and a suite of per-grain FX with the result in musicality not achieved before with granular synthesis. It is marketed as a tool fit for producers and composers working in the film and game industry.

6. Hvoya Audio – Ribs

This is a freebie packed with some really useful features. You can play it as a polyphonic or monophonic synth, scratch audio samples like on a vinyl turntable. You can also generate complex polyrhythmic beats with custom grain sizes and morph between rhythmic and harmonic structures, or basically use it as a granular FX with polyphonic capabilities.

7. accSone – Crusher X V8

Crusher X is a granular polyphonic multichannel Synthesizer for sound design, electronic and experimental music. Its powerful live granulation algorithm creates very complex sounds, drones and outstanding surround effects. Crusher-X is used by sound-designers, composers, musicians and film-makers all over the world and comes with GCOs, an Autotune and Pitch tracking system, up to 10-channel surround outputs, up to 199 individual grain streams, unique 3D grain visualization, over 3000 LFOs, over 330 real-time parameters and more than 160 presets. It’s a beast and it’s an industry standard.

8. StoneVoices – PolyGAS

PolyGAS (Polyphonic Granular Advanced Synthesizer) is a free virtual synthesizer based on granular synthesis. It features a 32-part polyphony and supports audio file import. It has a built-in editor of the bending parameters of granular synthesis, 18 envelopes with 40 nodes per envelope. There are also built-in FX like reverb and delay, all of which feature unique engines for processing. You can’t lose anything by trying it!

9. Tracktion – BioTek 2

Now this is something! Beautiful and brutal at the same time. If it’s good enough for Richard Devine, it’s good enough for the rest of us is all I’ll say here. This is a powerhouse sampling and synthesis workstation offering unlimited sound design in a unique and inspirational environment that enables you to evolve your own sound.

10. Glitchmachines – Polygon

Polygon is a sampler geared towards the electronic music producer and experimental sound designer. Polygon’s clean and logical interface, extensive modulation options and distinctive sonic attributes make it an invaluable tool for creative sound design for your projects. It includes a large library of samples and comes with 120 presets to get you started. Of course, you can also load any of your existing samples to fully customize Polygon to your needs and create something completely new.