In my ongoing quest to destroy my bank account and prevent my child from attending university, I’m considering a Nanobox. Specifically the Lemon Drop because I’ve had a fascination with granular synthesis for something like 25 years now, and the Razzmatazz, Tangerine, and Fireball don’t really appeal to me at all (at least not right now while I’m lusting over hardware granular synthesis.)
Up to now, I’ve done all my granular synthesis for free! Csound has a number of granular opcodes that are incredibly powerful. Sample length limit is almost non-existent, grain density can be cranked into the tens-of-thousands before it starts to become a problem, you will never run out of voices, and there are more tweakable parameters than you find on any piece of hardware. Even something like the GR-MEGA from Tasty Chips really can’t keep up with Csound and a mildly competent PC.
So yeah, I’m not used to paying money for granular synthesis, but I’m also used to generating all my granular sounds with code rather than knobs and a keyboard. The thing is, the Lemon Drop only partly mitigates this concern. It’s a tiny box with two knobs, four buttons, and a decent amount of connectivity. It’s not exactly a knob-per-function kind of thing that will make sound design a delight. I like their implementation, but I could do just as well with code, just not as immediately. $400 is a big ask.
I do have a Microfreak, which introduced granular synthesis in the latest firmware, but I find the implementation a bit lacking. It’s not terrible, but the limited interface of the Microfreak hampers the design potential quite a bit. I should probably fart around a bit more there before I dismiss it too much, though.
Anyone own a Nanobox? Are they really worth $400? I do have a birthday coming up…
I’ve farted around with the granular synthesis on the Microfreak some more, and I’m a little more impressed. There are at least three different models. I just wish Arturia were a little more transparent with what each of those are doing. I think Clouds is grains from a random phase throughout the sample, Scans is scanning through the sample at some rate, and hits is doing… I dunno. They sound nice, anyway. Hardware GAS dissuaded for now. The actual polyphony, and two, longer samples per oscillator of the Lemon Drop would be a very nice upgrade. Not to mention transferring samples to the Microfreak is proving to be a complete shit show. Ostensibly max sample length is 24 seconds, but I could not get a 19.4 second sample to transfer no matter what cable or jack on the PC I used, and only succeeded when I chopped it down to 16 seconds and changed the bitrate to 16 bit to make it smaller. Memory is pretty limited if you want to granulate longer samples. 210 seconds doesn’t go that far. Also, MIDI Control Center seems a bit garbage overall. Hanging and faffing about. Lemon Drop seems to have that side handled with SD card support.
It’d still be nice to control the Lemon Drop with the Microfreak’s KB. I think I’m starting to wish more synths had touch-sensitive, PCB keybeds. Arturia really did good with this one.
And in my continuing conversation with myself…
After extensive hardware granular synthesis research, I settled on a Tempera last night. I was peripherally aware of it, but all I saw was the grid and immediately assumed it was another sampler or sequencer. Glad to find out I was assuming almost entirely incorrectly and it’s an amazing granular house of madness. I pre-ordered last night, and the next batch is due to ship mid-March. So stoked!
The others looked fairly appealing, too.
Tasty Chips GR-1 looks very cool and very capable, but it’s a bit bigger than what I’m looking for right now. It’s also a fairly traditional (if such a term can be applied here) implementation of granular synthesis. Their GR-MEGA looks much more appealing, but it’s a bit more than I’m willing to spend right now.
1010music’s Lemon Drop looks immensely cool for what it is, but two knobs and four buttons does little to discern it from any number of more capable VSTs. It’s also exorbitantly expensive in Korea for whatever reason. I guess they don’t ship outside the continental United States, and anyone importing them here charges a high premium.
Oddment Audio’s groc looks like it would get the job done in a fun way, but it doesn’t exist yet, and there’s no telling when it will exist. All my attempts at communication with them failed.
I avoided Eurorack because yeah, not going there…
Torso T-4 also looks like it might be a great little machine, but there’s so little information out there about what and how much it can do. There might be more if I dug deeper, but I’m also not the biggest fan of the form-factor.