Sounds from a Sonic State video :
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I’m wondering what the HDMI connection is for.
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Thank god. Rust binaries have a much more round, full sound to them. Older synths programmed in C++ just sound thin to me.
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viewport interface (guess) for remote screen?
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This thing looks amazing and the Rust thing makes me laugh as a software developer as Rust is beautiful and all Rust developers love telling the world they’re using it.
The thing that annoys me is these granular demos always sound similar to me: lush pads coated in reverb or alien ship crackles. I’m hoping it’s like the fact that every OB6 demo on YouTube sounds similar and then you get one and realise you can make it do all sorts of weird yet musical stuff. Engineers and synth geeks aren’t the best at showing the musical flexibility of things.
I love the idea of granular synthesis and would possibly get one of these if the user interface is good but can you make it do leads and melodies, beats etc or is it a synthesis method only for background evolving texture? I know we don’t have such high standards for flexibility for acoustic instruments but this, of all synthesis methods, should be ridiculously flexible.
Edit: This video shows some of the potential. Can imagine outside of the noodling some of these parts being used for something incredible with some arrangement / composition. Tasty Chips GR MEGA Granular Workstation Sound Demo (no talking) - YouTube
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The only videos available at the moment are over two months old, all done at a show, on a prototype system in the midst of development. It is way too soon to make any firm decision on what the final product is going to sound like.
The specs are likely to hold though.
I included the GR-MEGA in my post on the “shown too soon dilemma”.
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That horizontal slider is like catnip for OT users. It’s just begging to be fucked with.
Form factor is actually a bit Elektron-ish, eh?
I’ve never been a fan of granular but this feels more like an actual instrument.
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I tried the GR1 prepandemic and was surprised at how much I liked it, but the build quality put me off a bit. It’s not like it’s crap but for the price I wanted something that felt better to play with.
Also the file management at the time was a bit complicated but that may well have changed,
That said, someday there will be a granular and spectral hardware instrument for me.
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You trying to sweet talk me?
Well, I do happen to have a pristine S-50…
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My MV8800 has a monitor port and a mouse port. I actually used it a few times!
You’d assume.
They also allow you to plug in a USB computer keyboard. There are four sequencers, would a keyboard help ? Not sure. No doubt a little more screen real estate would help, plus having a larger display for all the parameters, with a larger waveform window.
Could you plug a mouse in too ??
It’s HDMI 1.2 so it also has 8 channels of uncompressed 24-bit 192kHz audio out. 
This is a crazy idea admittedly, it came to me when i made that post, a keyboard with an extra screen helping with a sequencer could be a tracker. Doesn’t make any sense with granular synthesis does it, but I just saw this thread on one of Tasty Chips early products, the ST4, which was a tracker.
But no, it’s not possible or reasonable. And yet there is a reason for a keyboard and HDMI connection. Odd that they have not talked about those more.
Still !
Toward the end of November TC gave an update on the GR-MEGA, with information on their current status, with first shipping hoped for in February, stretching to an end of summer time frame for pre-orders. They also gave some early sound demos, which are more sound examples rather than flashy music demos, and talked about some of the technology being added, specifically a phase vocoder.
If you are interested in the phase vocoder technology, the wikipedia page on it describes the tech side pretty well. There are significant technology challenges ro be worked on with this so it is good to know that TC has decided to take this on.
A phase vocoder should not be confused with phase modulation or phase distortion, both interesting ways to generate sound, but quite different technologies.
I am making an assumption that the phase vocoder on the GR-MEGA will be able to be applied to live audio input, so could be used with this like an effect, or for primary sound generation. Adding this to the other technologies in the GR-MEGA should make this a very powerful product.
ADDED : The phase vocoder, is likely a main part of what they call their Spectral engine, one of the five engines they described early on. I can be wrong on this.
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No black version?
Edit yes, excuse my ignorance, and it looks very nice!
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September 2024 
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Status update made on February 13th.
Basically they’re nearly done and are about to start manufacture. They will be doing youtube videos soon. Sounds like this all will be accomplished by next status update in a month.
They are happy with their improvements and changes, so i am looking forward to seeing the videos.
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