appreciate the info…
I tried to find the dev on instagram but couldn’t, I know tracktion sells the plug but would love to pick his brain directly
+1 for Madrona Labs Kavio. Wonderful plugin. Kaivo’s combo of granular synthesis and physical modelling can take samples to some really interesting places.
Emergence by Daniel Gergely is also pretty great, but more straightforward granular.
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A couple things to add to the list to spark other ideas in this area. I love anything to do with examples of how you can rework samples, and granular is just one part of that.
One concept I really like is the idea of being able to manipulate a sample via a Trackpad. I don’t have an iPad, but I always was jealous of the way Samplr worked on that platform.
Spacecraft is a similar idea but has been ported to desktop. Also of note - it’s a one screen interface. My only worry is that there doesn’t seem to be much in way of updates and I’m not sure if it’s M1 compatible. (At this point I ain’t activating Rosetta even for something this cool.)
The Jellyfish seems to be a fun interface that allows you to chop a sample with MIDI markers and then play back what it calls pulses. It sounds a bit less extreme than other granular synths I’ve heard, perhaps a bit on the gimmick side, but it’s again trying to find a new way to manipulate samples in a visual way so it’s interesting there (and can capture live audio too.)
Another sample tweaking tool I really like to look at is the Morph tools. The most famous one is Morph 2, but Melda have a similar version of this that is very good, and is onsale for half price quite a bit. These are great for spectrally merging 2 sounds, and fun to use for textures, often by merging a rhythmic and a sustained sound.
Then there’s what I’d loosely term as “remix” style plugins. By that I’m thinking of things like Loopmix, Palindrome and Looperator. You could even include Shaperbox, Infiltrator, Effectrix and all those effects in here as they can have just as drastic an effect on the sample as an actual sampler.
In terms of DAW Tools, Granulator 2 in Ableton is well regarded, but I also hear a lot about the increased capabilities (including Granular) in Logic via Alchemy. Which always nags at me to try Logic given that the entire DAW costs as much as some of these samplers.
I’ll try and do another follow up on some NI / Kontakt stuff too, seems like there’s a bit of goodness hidden in there, althogh I quite like the big, bold layout of Form so I should probably give that a bit more time too.
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Dayum! Cycles, even on sale, ain’t cheap 
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For drum mangling, I’m really enjoying Devious Machines Infiltrator at the moment. It’s basically a somewhat derivative mashup of Cableguys Shaperbox and iZotope BreakTweaker but it’s really well put-together and sounds great. I’m just using the demo right now (committing tweaks to audio and pasting them into compositions to get round the intermittent demo noise limitation, don’t tell anyone!) but as I say I find it really impressive and less confusing from a consumer perspective than the modular Cableguys Shaper series and with a more straightforward UI than BreakTweaker.
For repurposing harmonic content, I doubt I will ever find anything as awe-inspiring as Borderlands Granular. It sucks you need an iPad to use it, but it’s worth owning one just for this app alone. Nothing has come close to the frankly bizarre and wonderful recontextualisation of audio that Borderlands is able to provide.
For general mangling of any material, Unfiltered Audio Byome and Fault are hard to beat. Decent UIs, great presets and enough tweakability to come up with content as colourful and crazy as you desire.
2nd update, a bit of research on Kontakt instruments.
I sortof wonder if Schema Dark is maybe influenced by the Cycles thing a bit? It looks like a halfway house between that and maybe Beat Scholar.
Trails - a sampler specifically that calls out its intent to create trailer sound effects.
Ibrido - load and randomise up to 4 samples. Modulate samples and play them together. Auto key detection, and split samples across the keyboard to play together. Basic fwd/back/reverse/pingpong stuff.
Rekombinator III - Drag & drop 2 samples and then combine, or randomise.
Granulate - seemingly the only dedicated granular synth on this list that doesn’t have a library attached to it.
Ghost Drop - Ghost Drop make some really interesting instruments. They are all fairly cheap & cheerful and a bit esoteric, but this is their attempt at a granular sampler.
Granularis is also free.
Yes love this! I’ve not graduated from using presets really but it sounds awesome. Really classy plugin
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Didn’t AFX Twin co-create a windows app made for sample mangling…
I think it’s this one.
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Also perhaps relevant to @BassesAndPads for your original post - specifically vs Cycles. Music Tech say that Straylight is the obvious candidate but it doesn’t have a sequencer. That was somewhat changed with Ashlight which does have modulation to send to its effects engine. Again worth noting that if this goes in the 50% sale, all 3 Light instruments come in at less than Cycles on its own.
The other alternative mentioned is Omnisphere. I’ve considered this one myself in the past, as it does work with presets, but I don’t know if that’s relevant to this thread so I’ll leave that one there. I tend to think that some of the more interesting options mentioned here could be the direct sample manipluation tools.
Back to granular, I’m not sure if going analogue is a good way to go with this, but TAL Sampler, which famously simple, now has a granular engine. It’s definitley cool looking, and traditionally a bit simpler as it focusses on simple old school type sampling and sound - but they have added granular capability to it recently.
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An interesting thing here is that a lot of these solutions refer to themselves as Soundscape or texture makers.
What I like to do is make lead and harmonic sounds out of samples. So maybe 40% soundscape (the mangling of the sample to mold into a new sound) but still a groove or a hook in terms of how the sound is presented in the song.
Kind of tough to describe, but a lot of left field techno does this. They make stab grooves out of sounds you would never guess and change vocals up so they are impossible to recognize but still deliver a melodic hook.
Yeah I’m with you. And I almost want to break out of that also; since there are so many granulators. I didn’t find as many remix tools, and I guess given that people say Kontakt runs very hot with the S&A stuff, maybe VSTs are likely the way in this are?
The ones I’ve found since that seem interesting are the SugarBytes ones like Looperator, Egoist & Artliery - seemingly more of an effects/remix focus there. I guess Shaperbox & Infiltrator sit in this category too. Are there others or are these the main player for that kind of sample manipulation.
I went ahead and bought Cycles because they rarely have sales and the new tutorial page on their site really is a massive help about what it can do. I will start spending time with it later today and update how it goes.
The reveiws of this plugin are off the charts and it is used to much in commercial music like movie soundtracks that I have to think I should be able to generate some quality ideas for dance music. At least that is the intention.
I know Palindrome was mentioned earlier, but does anyone here have experience with other Glitchmachines creative samplers like Cataract and Polygon?
It’s a good shout. I couldn’t find much like it and I think sometimes you have to go with what’s top dog. Interestingly I started looking back into the M4L rabbit hole again, something I’ve mostly avoided. But I’ve uncovered one or two more stable looking shops that seem to have a good link with Ableton (Dillon Bastan) etc. Wondering if chaining some of these might do a similar trick to what we’re discussing here.
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Not on my side, but interested to hear if anyone else has.
Those look really cool. I have Tactic and it’s not that enjoyable to use. It seems like on paper that I would love it, but that doesnt seem to be the case.
@holonology M4L is amazing and is must use. I use M4l plugins on every track, especially the sequencers. Euclidian Pro, Modsnake, metroproseq, Snake, MonoSeq, the Hy plugs. All amazing to use.
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Please report back!
After reading through this thread and already having lots of the recommendations, I started looking into Cycles and decided to go for it. I’ve only played with the Loop functionality so far and it’s pretty cool. I will say though that it does seem pretty darn expensive for what it does, even with the 30% off. It also seem unique enough that I don’t regret picking it up.
If you like granular, something really cool but also expensive and never goes on sale, you should check out AccSone CrusherX. It’s insane.
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So many things to love and hate in this paragraph. 
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