There’s something to be said about the immediate access to all the controls. Also, the user interface looks to be the most ideal for granular.
That being said, this is definitely an indulgence item for die hard granular/hardware fans. It looks like a dream to use, but I can’t afford to sleep.
All true. Granular generally seems to be a fast route to making a lot of music that sounds the same in my experience. But a splash of it here and there is good.
Yeah, I’m having that experience myself with granulator myself. Theoretically, I’m a HUGE fan of granular. In practice, not so much. It’s great to put a bit of spastic atmosphere into a track from what I can tell. But a track BASED on granular? It doesn’t seem like it will have a fingerprint to me.
The good Gaz Williams tried to explore the GR-1
It is not due to Gaz, he does a good job 
, but somehow I am underwhelmed by that machine, And I want to like it so much as I like Granular sounds a lot…
Beside having all the knobs and faders the tardigrain IOS app does a lot of that and for far less…
I may try to put my launchpad XL to good use and control tardigrain from there…
But on the other hand, almost everything I throw into tardigrain turns into wonderful dark strings and that is a bit weird and seems to be the same as with the GR-1…
Maybe my understanding of granular is a bit different as I am into wonderful fragmented slowdowns, as the OT can do a bit as well…
Am I the only one who would like to have a 12 or 16 bit polyphonic Microgranny aka as BigGranny…?
That would be my granular dream come true…
I like the simplicity of the MG and most of the time I am happy with it.
Yeah I think I pretty much agree, its not that the GR-1 sounds bad at all but some how hifi granular synthesis sounds end up sounding a bit more similar than you might like. I’m sure there are ways to tap into it and have it get some more unique sounds. I think the digitakt actually does granular stuff really well also I kind of consider it an 8 voice more controllable less random microgranny 2. That say I still use my microgranny 2 with it all the time, something very special about the crunch of it. Ultimately though I think it really is a difference between granular synthesis and granular sampling where I find the more simple granular sampling sounds much more interesting as more of the original sound seems to show up in unusual ways. Like I was playing the grains backwards on a bird song on the microgranny while tweaking the pitch and suddenly it sounds like cartoon snoring.
I have a theory why it sounds often a bit similar. The grains are already not on the same pitch/frequency when they get picked up. They then get all pitched to the note played, but they still are on different frequency, otherwise you would hear a „normal“ tone. In the end the brain filters a bunch of soundgrains with a almost random fast changing pattern as category „noise“.
This is especially the case if they have short sustain phases. If they played as long notes with long ADSR values, it sounds much more like „sound“. But it will almost have the same characteristics because of the grains have all a slightly different tune.
I‘m sure it will be interesting to mix granular with traditional subtractive synthesis, like you mix noise to the oscillators. They Waldorf Quantum will probably demonstrate what’s possible when granular is part of a combination of other technologies, like wavetables and resonators.
I wonder how it would sound when the grains go into a resonator:thinking:
If someone has a Mutable Instruments modul like RINGS or ELEMENT, let me know how it sounds when combined with granular samples!
But I agree it can be done much cheaper with software, but I still like the GR-1.
Specs are awesome, it does everything i expected and even more. I don’t think it’s overpriced. For such a small company like tasty chips, this thing is a huge success!
Here’s a breakbeat session with the GR-1 we played. It’s a lot of fun to use it with the beatstep.
Still learning our way around the GR-1 and still loving it…
Hello lucky owners,
please, would you continue to feed my desire for this synth. Not enough demo IMHO on the web 
So go on 
Waiting for mine to come back from the workshop then hopefully drop some demo’s
It’s about time for Loopop to do the GR-1 review video, don’t you think!? I even got a warning from the Thread Watchdog Robot asking me if i really want to revive this thread. I bet Loopop has been waiting for things to settle down before doing a review.
It’s probably a good time to think about this one again. So many different options, but this is a a dang good hardware option.
An aside: For anyone considering the Polyend Tracker, you may want to think of the GR-1, to consider how complete the granular part of the PT is.
I want that solely based on how GOOD the GR-1 looks. The perfect combination of retro computers looks with the modern graphics of the screen
Loopop surely waited for the firmware 2.2 update which make the GR-1 mature with great features and stability. This update came out today and it is a great work from Tasty Chips staff 
Does anyone here own the GR-1 and one of the Digis? And can the Digis be used as a soundcard/direct input device (see screenshot from GR-1 manual below) now that they’re class compliant? How cool would that be? If anyone can try this out for me, it would be much appreciated.
Edit: Later on in the manual, it says Analog Heat causes pops and clicks. Maybe it’s the same for the Digis? It’s a shame. But at least the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 that I have is supported/confirmed as working just fine.
Are you aiming for a GR-1?
Quite possibly 
I’ve been doing some granular stuff on OT, which is fine but it’s not the same as having lots of play heads overlapping!
Did you know about the GR-1 before I pointed out to you?
Maybe next year for me. I have a great interest in that Machine.
I’m not sure. My memory is shockingly bad. But let’s just say no so we’re both happy haha
If that was the case, I just wanted to apologize for bringing back the GAS.
