The design is so awful. Lots of deadspace on the unit. Dull gray box.
Shit, I only buy black stuffā¦
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Thank God we all donāt all like the exact same thingā¦what a boring world it would be.
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Just weird having the screen down the bottom and the left hand becomes redundant because they stacked all the knobs on the rightā¦And then dead space top and middle. It makes literally no sense from a design perspective. And it makes 1010s Blackbox look like Miss World.
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i want to like this thing so bad. i had a similar feeling when the Tastychips GR-1 was released. on paper, it seems like the perfect creative sound tool, but in reality it doesnāt really allow you to do anything very creative or pleasant than most plugins or eurorack granulators
the 4 stereo tracks with modulators, the resonator, the form factor all seem great. but iād really like to see something that can take a sample or live incoming audio, fragment it into particulate, and restructure and re-synthesize new sounds from those grains. for that we need complex envelopes which can travel in a wide range of directions at various rates exponentially and logarithmically, formant and grain parameters that allow for sharp grain envelopes or windows which make for beaded particle sounding textures which can then be morphed and blurred into new timbres almost like a wavetable, and ways to blend multiple fragments together or even with other sample layers or synthesized sound like cross-modulation, simple timbral layering, multiple bandpass filters for frequency mixing simultaneous layers, multiple amplitude envelopes for creating dynamic shifting sounds out of multiple existing sounds or patches, spectral or even āpulsarā synthesis methods for further blending, granular delays for blurring smaller clusters together into clouds which can then be turned into āoscillatorsā themselves and used chromatically for real synthesis. maybe some sine waves to mix in. imagine being able to fm one particle with another within a granular cluster with control over the spray and density of each with multi-stage envelopes for not only amplitude and filtering, but the movement between the āoperatorsā. the ability to "phase distort between two granular "oscillators or even the grains within them would be pretty incredible too, potentially. if we then had the type of wavefolding, mirroring, hard sync that something like serum has, we would essentially have the ultimate sound design machine. they have the right idea with the resonator. something to really restructure and transform the new dissected sound pieces into something new, but here its implementation just seems like a tacked on effect like a master reverb. still cool, but i dont know if itās what i imaged it would be capable of
imagine creating wavetable-like sounds from granules of a recorded sample. didnt the virus ti have something similar to this? i dont know if you could make your own, but it seems like whatever waldorf touched on with the iridium and quantum approached this sort of micro-level detail for manipulating and crafting your own new timbres from external sound worlds with its kernels
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Hahaha this made me bust up.
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I think the design is beautiful and looks functional to me. I like having the knobs clustered on one side, accessible and all. Donāt want to have to look at the screen unless I have to look at the screen.
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I hope and I think this would be a great product. I also think this is the worst pre-order campaign I ever seen (at the same level of Polyend Tracker Mini or StarCitizen). It is much worse than most of kickstarter campaign.
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Personally, Iām waiting for Loopop walkthrough before buy it
There wonāt be a worse campaign than thatā¦10 years of teasing!!! And finally the product ended up just okā¦.oh my. 
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Iām with you on that, but hardware synths in general are so much behind software.
Even in the granular area the ārevolutionā of affordable variety of standalone devices happened not long time ago, literally years. I remember in 2015 the only affordable options I could have (besides an IPad) were microGranny and kaosPad mini with that simple granulizer (which is fun for the first hour maybe).
So we need to be patient, such advanced innovative algos will appear, but a bit later 
Even Waldorf Iridium does not have them, and they are not a synth startupā¦
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Thatās true. I kind of got derailed from my initial point when I started daydreaming about my dream hardware but my initial point was going to be that the gr-1 and this arenāt as good as even granulator 2, audio damage quanta, grain scanner, glitch machines palindrome, from what I can tell so far. I think that qubit nebulae 2 and maybe miso cornflakes have done best, Maybe assimil8or. But I donāt see much of an advantage to those over the norns grain and loops scripts
What I do like and think shows an advantage over both hardware and eurorack is the sonicware texture lab. Chromatic, synth oriented, has a mic (like the s4), a sequencer, and its own nice character.
That may be the most exciting hardware granular to me. Sounds better than the lemondrop or tempera
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Iām really hoping the folks at Torso will consider a multitrack Sound on Sound mode, whereby you can continually record into a looping buffer. That is, if the S-4ās processor can handle something like that.
That aside, Iām still wondering how much the S-4 can function like a 4 track recorder. Each stereo track can have around 2-3 mins of audio (I think), so itās sounding like it should be possible?
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I was thinking about bringing a synth/sampler/groovebox thingy to market, of my own design; but watching this thread unfold has officially changed my mind.
Iāll go on record and say that I think it looks nice, and the demos sound fine to me, if limited.
Walk a mile in their shoes, as they sayā¦
I wish Torso success with this.
Cheers!
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You gotta have thick skin to put anything out in the world, especially technology products where youāre innovating into new territory. Itās never easy and almost always messy. And no matter how it goes, you can never please all of the people all of the time.
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I think of it as bunch of really great pedals (Chase Bliss etc.), being put in a box and being able to intricately modulate them. IMO samplers effects often felt a bit sub-par. Sure you can buy multiple pedals, but the steep prices for effects makes (poor) me disregard them to look for other categories in hardware, and opting for software effects instead.
Where for me that goes āwrongā though, and it might be that I come from Ableton, but intricate modulation inside software has always felt really uninviting for me.
If the process of sound design/UI on this is fun, Iāll sell some stuff for it, for sure. To me it sounds really good, like it has digital grit. I think that combined with the fact that it feels like there hasnāt been a really good interesting sampler in the last couple of years.
Also somewhat refreshing to (AFAIK) not include a sequencer in a sampler. Maybe itās just me but Iād much rather have a focused UI and features for one, two or three things, instead of everything having a synth, drum and sampler track like itās been trending a bit recently.
Side note
There are more important things going on in the world than complaining about this, look at the world for a second and stop complaining about a couple of Danes (or any other small company in this space) trying to create something. Everyone hits road bumps and hardships on their way. Youāre not standing up for some āvalues in the communityā. Like this shit is hard, and just like in your life where neither you or things are perfect, things arenāt perfect in these small companies either. Itās probably very stressful & financially unstable.
We should be thanking anyone for even trying to create something exciting in this space, itās like some crazy virtue signaling where protesting people making instruments and their marketing is something a good hearted person does? Get over yourself, jesus christ.
Every little thing that comes out in this industry, thereās at least one person that it fits perfectly, it makes them love music. Thatās what itās all about.
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amen to that side note.
iām going to go jam some Granulator II and use a midi fighter twister and pretend itās an S-4 for the night
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Almost , sounds likeā¦Tempera
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Sounds more like this honestly.
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