Flowsonics’ Graindrop is the latest plugin to offer creative, experimental sound mangling in an accessible package. It’s billed as a granular delay effect, but can actually manipulate your audio in all manner of ways, with a strong emphasis on randomisation.
Your eye is immediately drawn to the central XY-pad, which enables you to assign and control two parameters simultaneously. You can also engage the trajectory mode, which keeps the parameters in constant motion, resulting in an ever-changing sound.
The parameters are divided into different sections. In the Grains area you can adjust the length, density, shape and playback direction of each grain, while the Manipulation area allows you to dial in random stereo spread, random muting, spectral freezing and pitchshifting.
Elsewhere, you can adjust the amount of delay feedback and filter cutoff, and tweak the delay time and dry/wet mix.
Naturally, everything can be automated in your DAW, and there are 12 included presets.
Graindrop is available now on the Flowsonics website in VST/AU formats for PC and Mac. The regular price is $40, but you can currently purchase it for $25. There’s a demo version, too.
