Creative Effects
GRAINFREEZE
A granular processor that sweeps continuously between discrete echoes and dense evolving ambience.
- Formats
- VST3 · AU · Standalone
- Operating system
- macOS · Universal
- Version
- v1.0.0
What it does
Where an echo becomes a cloud.
Discrete rhythmic echoes and dense evolving ambience are usually two separate products. GRAINFREEZE moves continuously between them, and the reason it is a sweep rather than a mode switch is architectural.
Grains are not summed to the output. They are injected into a recirculating diffusion network — the Ice Cloud Engine — and Bloom sets how much of each grain goes in. At zero a grain is an echo. At maximum it is an excitation that becomes a cloud. In between, it dissolves.
Movement comes from a procedural motion system rather than LFOs: fractal noise, random walks and swarms, every source normalised to the same standard deviation so depth means the same thing whichever one is routed.
Key features
One control instead of a mode switch
Bloom sweeps from echo to cloud continuously. Level across the whole sweep varies 2.1 dB as a smooth arch, and L/R correlation falls from 0.98 to 0.07 across it.
A motion system, not an LFO
Fractal noise, random walks and swarms. Motion coherence falls monotonically across lane distance (0.99 → 0.97 → 0.52 → 0.01) and worst autocorrelation beyond one correlation length is 0.08 — so it never settles into a pattern you can hear.
Swarm dispersion and modulation depth are decoupled
Exactly decoupled, and asserted: spreading the flock does not change modulation depth. That is the difference between a control you can use and two controls fighting each other.
Level holds still while everything else moves
0.5 dB across Bloom, 0.6 dB across Density, 0.8 dB across Size, 0.2 dB across Reverse. Pitching down two octaves costs no level at all; pitching up costs only what anti-aliasing requires.
Freeze that actually holds
Ten seconds with no measurable decay in the grain engine, and −0.45 dB over sixty seconds in the cloud.
104 presets that morph
Across eight categories. Preset morphing interpolates in normalised space, with discrete controls snapping at the midpoint.
The interface
Audio
Audio demos for GRAINFREEZE are not published yet.
We would rather show you nothing than show you a demo that was not recorded through this plugin.
Measured
GrainfreezeTests and GrainfreezeBench · 48 kHz
- CPU, default patch
- 1.75 % of one core
- CPU, absolute maximum density
- 3.3 %
- Latency
- 0 samples
- Cloud decay accuracy, undamped
- within 3 % of requested
- Cloud stereo correlation from a mono input, no widener
- 0.007 – 0.06
- Grain interpolator reconstruction error
- −61 to −76 dB
- Block-size invariance
- bit-identical at any host buffer size
- Allocations in processBlock
- zero
Figures are produced by this plugin’s own test suite and benchmark, on the hardware and sample rate named above. They are not estimates.
Technical details
- Formats
- VST3 · AU · Standalone
- Operating system
- macOS 10.13 or later
- Architecture
- Universal — Apple Silicon and Intel
- Plugin code
- Glcr
- Version
- 1.0.0
- Latency
- 0 samples
- CPU
- 1.75 % of one core at default, 3.3 % at maximum density
Worth knowing
- The full control surface is not yet documented in the repository; the controls section will be published once it is.
Also in these bundles
SIGNATURE EFFECTS
Get GRAINFREEZE as part of SIGNATURE EFFECTS — 8 plugins worth £454 for £249.
£249
Save £205COMPLETE COLLECTION
Get GRAINFREEZE as part of COMPLETE COLLECTION — 20 plugins worth £1,264 for £399.
£399
Save £865
