GRAINFERNO Review
Baby Audio’s Grainferno is a new granular synthesizer with dual sample granular blending and a few unique tricks up its sleeve. As with all Baby Audio plugins, the UI is minimal and simple with just enough controls to get the job done, but leave you wanting just a few more. Grainferno features a dual sample grain engine, three envelopes, three LFOs, two randomizers and a simple six part effects section.
The grain engine will load up to two different samples and has a cool “morph” control with seven different crossfading methods. For example, the crossfade mode simply blends between the two samples, but “follow” mode will use the grains of sample 1 to shape the envelope of sample 2. Weave, 4-bit and 8-bit modes all swap between sample 1 and 2 per grain in various patterns.
Grain playback can be set to milliseconds, BPM, or even tuned playback speeds that map to the keyboard which allows for some fun formant shaping and more wavetable-like tonalities. The per-grain filter is a cool idea in principal, but the resonance isn’t quite sharp enough to really hear how this is impacting the sound.
The coolest part of Grainferno’s grain engine is the “G-Blur” granular feedback which imparts a smearing quality on the grain engine. This is done by feeding the signal back into the grain engine with some pitch modulation. This is by far the most unique feature in Grainferno and is capable of some rather unique tones. There’s also a “violent” mode that adds ring modulation to this effect.
The FX tab features six effects: filter, compressor, distortion, delay, chorus, and reverb. These can be arranged in any order and each effect has a couple alternate modes. For example, the compressor has an OTT option, the reverb has a shimmer mode, and the chorus can also be a phaser or flanger.
Modulation is done via drag and drop, which is always nice to see. Hovering over a modulated control will reveal a pop-up showing all the sources that are targeting it. From here you can adjust depth, disable the modulation, or discard it completely. The randomizers are nice because it is per-grain rather than per note. They are also completely unique per destination, making them “polyadic” like in GRM Tools Atelier.
While Grainferno isn’t the most powerful granular synth on the market, it does offer a few unique features that make it worth trying out for sound design. Also the minimal UI will make it a useful tool for beginners who would rather restrict the complicated world of granular synthesis to a more manageable set of controls. I absolutely love seeing the polyadic per-grain randomizers as well as the bizarre grain blur effect. I always love seeing what Baby Audio is up to, like Sugar Bytes, they seem to lean into more playful and minimal tools rather than trying to do everything, perhaps even more so.
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GRAINFERNO: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/4-Synth/16951-Grainferno?a_aid=61c378ab215d5