FABRIKAT - Granular Synthesis / Sample Playback

[reverberry]

These demos are sounding really nice. Is there a pre-production run coming up soon? I wanna get my hands on one of these

The pedal is a little delayed due to some last minute changes, but I hope to have the first 40 available late next month.

I can't stop thinking about this damned pedal. It's unhealthy. Do you have any idea on how much longer we'll have to wait?

[Dandolin]

[Davin]

Someone on reddit said these were going on sale tomorrow at 5pm EST. Is that true?

[Dandolin]

[Pladask]

Hi
today is the day. I've delayed the launch over and over again, but this time it's definitely happening:
https://pladaskelektrisk.com/

[whoismarykelly]

Ordered! Can't wait to get this one in the rotation!

[cantremember]

Congratulations on selling out in seconds! I'm stoked I was able to grab one!

[Paul_C]

I THOUGHT I'd checked that 11pm CET was the same as the time in the UK, but having seen that people had ordered and that the site showed it was out of stock, I looked again and discovered I was wrong - 11pm CET is currently 10pm in the UK.

So while I might well still have missed out, I missed the chance to at least try and order one.

Ho hum, I'll have to wait until the next run . . .

[Dandolin]

So, I find myself wanting to better understand granular shuffling and masking. Can someone kindly direct me to some reading and/or listening material that might help?

Thanks

[UglyCasanova]

While I don't have a link, shuffling is randomizing the order of the grains within the buffer and masking is muting certain grains within the buffer. The granular synthesis buffer is like a deck of cards, where cards = grains/bits of recorded audio. Granular synthesis lets you manipulate the cards in the deck. When you shuffle it's like randomizing the order of the cards, and masking is like removing some of the cards. At least that's how I make sense of it.

[Dandolin]

Cool--thanks UC! Do you know whether, in the algorithms on the Form/Fabrikat, there are other manipulations going on, such as to speed/time interval of playback? Is that subject to randomization too? Or with mask, is there manipulation of the pattern or density of the muted grains? Really appreciate your input. It's your demo of the shuffle algo that has fired me up to understand what's going on....

[UglyCasanova]

I mean, there are several time stretch modes on both pedals, but if you're referring to the shuffler and masking alone, they don't time stretch.

Shuffler has one knob for the size of the buffer and one knob for the size of the grains (how many card there are in the deck). Those knobs interact quite a bit, so while the content of the buffer is continually rearranged (randomly), the sonic differences are tremendous. Small buffer plus small grains will give you a very artificial and cold sounding robotic effect while maxing out the buffer (1000ms) and having fewer grains will bring back low frequencies and give more of a "normal" delay sound with unpredictable repeats (sometimes normal, sometimes backwards and everything in between). Using the feedback knob (feeding the processed signal back through the shuffler) you can get some very interesting patterns happening.

In the masking mode the buffer is fixed to 250ms and the two knobs control mask rate (probability of masked grain) and the other knob controls the size of the grains within the buffer.

I hope that makes sense. I've started demoing it twice now, but there are just soooo many sounds in there that I only get 2-3 modes in before I find something new and forget what I'm supposed to be doing and just play.

[Pladask]

Great explaining by UC :):)

If you're interested in further reading on the subject "Microsound" by Curtis Roads is considered the bible of granular synthesis. Also I found this paper by Ross Bencina helpful in getting started with the FORM/FABRIKAT project: http://www.cs.au.dk/~dsound/DigitalAudi ... 310801.pdf

Happy hunting!

Also there's this is you're interested in granular reverse delay: http://ilovefuzz.com/viewtopic.php?f=279&t=60495

[Dandolin]

thank you both--that is very helpful, and it does make sense to me.

[Pladask]

Hey folks!
I need your opinion on something. I've had feedback about broken rotary switches from two FABRIKAT owners and I'm now feeling fearful about unleashing large quantities of pedals into the world with rotary switches that may eventually break down (repair work, administering shipments and customs documentation, inconvenience for you the buyer). Generally I despise mechanical components as they are prone to break, hence why I use momentary footswitches for my pedals. So because of this I'm considering to swap the rotary switch for a regular, step-lesss potentiometer that decides the program.

How would you feel about this? On one side it's way more durable/sturdy, but lacking definitive steps in the rotation may come of as unsatisfying and unclear ("have I changed program yet?"). Also bumping into the program selector while playing the pedal could potentially cause a program change. The pedal interface would of course keep the "1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8" markers to give a visual indication of the current program.

I've been over other alternatives (buttons, rotary encoder), but decided they are not feasible for FABRIKAT.

Please share your thought. Thanks!