Inspired by a disucssion we were having in the Software Deals thread, I wanted to start this.
Slate + Ash Cycles is currently on sale and we were discussing alternatives to that. Cycles seems like it’s ideal target mmarket is ambient producers, but I would love to hear anyone who disagrees and uses it to make dance music like leftfield House/Techno/Garage…etc.
Additionally there is a prodouct by Dawsome called Novum which looks pretty cool. Curious if anyone has compared both?
For more context, from that thread I said this:
"I like to take samples and change them into new sounds. That is a huge part of how I write my tracks so when I saw Cycles I got really intrigued by it. I feel sometimes like I am spamming Tantra2 on the end of some tracks, just to make them sound even weirder and I’d like to try something new.
Track I am finishing now has Granulator 2, I used it on movie dialogue to kind of push it back and turn it into a sound bed. Granulator 2 is really really good.
I also bought an effect called Graindad, which is amazing. I am using that on a main vocal part. I usually randominze it until I get something close and then tweak it. It is a great alternative to a reverb delay, but is more of an effect than a sampler. Highly recommend if its on sale. It also can make super long tails that go on forever and clutter up your track, so its best to automate the on and off. Sometimes that can be awesome though, so I find myself recording those sounds sometimes to an audio track and then filtering it so it’s not taking up so much space."
Not sure how many of you all like to work this way but I would love to read what you all like to use and any thoughts you have on the plugins named plus others that you love as well.
was contemplating cycles for a more controlled and precise breaks manipulation rather than granular but it’s already expensive… haven’t found any videos that really show all that it’s capable of
I like the idea of hearing about any fun tools that take a sample and do interesting stuff with it. As @BassesAndPads says:
Novum seems really interesting - it takes your sample and splits it into 6 layers which can then be individually treated and recombined. The UI specifically I find invites you to get stuck in and is really fun to use.
Edit: The big thing with Novum is that it’s not just granular synthesis. It’s granular, spectral and subtractive synthesis in one package which is rare afaik.
If you have Reaktor, there is a plethora of sample mangers available for mostly free in the user created ensemble section.
Pretty good range of slight shifts in starting points and pitch, to turning your samples into something that can only be described as an auditory. nuclear holocaust
got rid of all of my NI licenses during the Maschine Wars, swore to never go back but cycles definitely intrigues me, it’s hard to tell what the max sample time is of a sample you can use in Cycles or in Novum for that matter… I’m interested in dropping stems of tracks into them and going to town, basically trying to get 20 tracks out of one
Cycles is awesome as is Choreographs too which you can drop user sounds into. Both are incredibly heavy on the CPU though, otherwise I would use them more often. I did sell most of my hardware though because I did so much granular/sampling manipulation and ultimately at the end of the day when it came to listening to the recordings and results, the slate and ash stuff was miles better sounding and creative than what I’d done on other machines. I use cycles on most of my commercial work, it’s the sprinkles and middle8 stuff that can get you out of 8bar loops and take you somewhere else with an arrangement.
I have faderbank midi controllers now that I just assign controls to, to get more performance out of them.
I’d love cycles to be better on my mac, maybe the new M chips change the game on all that? I’m running the top of the line 2019 laptop which I bought primarily for these plugins and it still struggled!
yeah was reading that link thoughtstarz posted earlier, several people on the m1 platform having inconsistent cpu experiences… some taxed heavily others not too much… I’m worried about it as well I’m on an m1 but it’s not a max and I only have 16gigs of ram… but I want to create sample fodder anyway so I probably don’t need a lot of instances at one time
I didn’t spot a standalone version but it is VST3/M1 compatible. You can put anything in it from my limited trials so far, so loops certainly aren’t a problem. Some of the stock samples are quite long, but I haven’t tried putting a full tune in it.
The guy who makes this has the idea that synths should feel fun and creative, and Novum is really good at that - with all the graphical timbre colour wheel etc (as are his other synths for that matter). The trial is also 90 days which is pretty extensive to get a feel for it. A small point but it does also seem pretty light on CPU as granular stuff goes.
The main thing I’m looking for when I check software out is an inviting interface that allows beginners to test the water, and then depth to go further if needed. Novum seems to have smashed it out of the park on that because it makes you just want to tweak around and you get some interesting stuff out of it. I kinda like software where you can not know anything about it and get stuck in.
Yes, I was going to suggest the Reaktor ensemble Grain States which is a grain cloud combined with a sequencer and effects. One of my most used Reaktor ensembles
Mmmmm, I’d say basic but done well. So you can apply things like jitter which creates a pulsing effect, and also the classic randomness to the position in the sample, and panning too. And there’s LFOs of course. But there’s no “dice” type function that I’m aware of though for that true randomness that a few VSTs have come out with.
