All the effects were very useable but the built-in reverb is especially useful at making the grains sit nicely in the mix.Įfx Fragments takes granular synthesis to the next level with its myriad routing and modulation possibilities. The other two effects slots contain the usual assortment of effects including reverbs, delays and filters. It’s effective, but we found ourselves frequently returning to the more reliable classic panner. The Trajectory function moves the sound in three dimensions by adjusting the relative volume as the grains panned. There are three effects slots but one is permanently assigned as an auto-pan with controls for speed, amount and distance, and this can modify the stereo image of any patch. The secret sauce that enhances Efx Fragments’ sounds is the built-in effects section. These all have the same basic controls to select the playback grain size, density, pitch changes and so on, but the different algorithms change the default method by with the granules are treated. There are three core algorithms in this section, Classic, Rhythmic and Texture. The Grain Release section is where the textures are really made – this section controls how the grains are played back. Again, this will depend on what sounds you are trying to achieve but we spent most of our time playing with Efx Fragments in free-running mode and leaving the effect unsynchronised. There is the option to synchronise the capture to the incoming audio by either linking it to the grid or the incoming audio transient. We found the faster grains worked particularly well on pianos and that values closer to unity worked well on percussive sounds.

The choices here depend on what you are processing. The Grain Capture section sets the length of the sampled grains as a ratio of the original playback speed from half-speed through to double-speed or as spread of values across this range.

These sections all interact and adjusting the functions in one will affect the others. The granular controls in Efx Fragments are divided into three main sections: the Buffer (which contains the waveform view of the incoming audio), the Grain Capture section and the Grain Release section. Granular synthesis involves taking tiny samples of audio and playing them back in different ways, depending on the parameters the user defines.

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