In today’s podcast, I have a play with Wavecloud before devouring a homemade prawn sandwich. It is fantastic and I shall be recording some more episodes about it making use of some samples from my own library alongside some of the stock presets Wavecloud comes bundled with.
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The blurb
WaveCloud is an innovative granular synthesizer that offers powerful tools for manipulating and playing sounds. Granular synthesis divides an audio sample into tiny fragments, called grains, each typically a few milliseconds in length. These grains are then manipulated independently in terms of pitch, duration, position in time, and amplitude. Unlike traditional synthesis, the capability to manipulate tiny grains of audio offers enormous precision of sound control, transformation, and compositional possibilities.
WaveCloud offers a wide range of tools for experimentation – oscillator, LFOs, filters, envelopes, routing matrix, innovative WaveGlide and Orbit modules for grain movement, effects, MPE support, extensive waveform editing, customizable themes, MIDI CC control, aftertouch, audio pool manager, and 200+ presets to get you started.
Granular synthesis is extremely versatile and can produce a vast range of sounds and textures, from subtle, atmospheric sounds to complex, dynamic ones. WaveCloud offers dozens of parameters, enabling you to sculpt the sound grains in any way you wish – textural pads and atmospheres, time-stretched effects, glitchy and stutter effects, vocal and instrumental manipulations, granular synthesis percussive sounds, experimental effects, as well as microtonal and harmonic soundscapes.
WaveCloud features a drag and drop system for importing and exporting of audio files and presets. It has its own built-in Preset and Audio Managers to help keep everything in order. WaveCloud even features a fully-fledged zoomable audio editor along with a suite of tools to crop, fade, cut, copy, paste, and normalise your samples.
We include a morphing 3-state Oscillator to support the granular engine. The granular engine allows up to 50 grains per second per note, with grain lengths up to a second in length. Grains can be sculpted with our morphing envelope generator, manipulated with our LFOs, FEGs and VCFs, and passed through lots of randomisation to keep things continually evolving.
WaveCloud also features two unique features for adding movement to audio grains. Orbit mode allows you to play sweeping patterns tied to the physical host tempo of your DAW, and WaveGlide is a sequencer with glides and fades from one location to another.
To top it all off, we include 7 built-in effects, delay, reverb, chorus, overdrive, phaser, resonator, and 8-band EQ. The resonator controls per-note feedback and dispersion for amazing MPE effects.
WaveCloud is not only a deep and powerful granular synth but also a fun way to create many incredible sounds.
Features
• Over 200 presets
• 3-state morphing oscillator (sine, square, saw)
• Morphing grain shapes
• 2 low-frequency morphing oscillators
• 4 multistep envelope generators
• 2 visual filters (series and parallel modes)
• Per-channel feedback resonators with dispersion
• MPE Support (per-channel pitch bend, aftertouch, and CC74)
• Orbit mode
• WaveGlide sequencing
• Fully Featured Mod-Matrix
• Direct record and playback of samples
• Built-in sample editor with editing tools
• 7 built-in effects
• Built-in Audio Manager with drag and drop support
• Preset Manager with easy import/export, drag and drop
• Colour scheme editor
A quick look at Wavecloud, the Granular Synth from 4pockets