Partikl
Particle Delay & Temporal Shifter
Part of Studies
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Description
Partikl is a granular delay and temporal shifting device that can process your audio into unexpected musical forms.
At the heart of Partikl is a granular engine that chops, time-stretches, reverses and reorganizes your incoming audio. An LFO keeps the grain loop moving, a delay line adds space and some subtle movement of its own, and a spectral pitch shifter transposes the result.
Partikl keeps recording your input into a buffer a little under three seconds long, and the grains play from the start of it. The grains go through the delay and then the pitch shifter, and BLEND mixes the result with your dry sound.
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Particle grains
- CHOP/RATE
- Sets the speed of the LFO on LENGTH, from almost still at the bottom of the knob up to about 4 Hz at the top. Turn it up for faster, choppier movement.
- DENSITY
- Sets how many grains play each second, from 2 to 20. Low settings leave gaps between the grains, and high settings run them together into a cloud.
- LENGTH
- Sets how much of the buffer the grains loop through, counted from its start, from 10 ms up to the whole buffer.
- STRETCH
- Sets how fast the grains move through the buffer, from nearly frozen up to ten times normal speed. Normal speed is about a tenth of the way up. Low settings stretch the audio out and high settings skip through it, while the pitch of the grains stays the same.
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Length LFO
- LFO
- Sets how deeply an LFO shortens LENGTH, so the grain loop breathes in and out at the CHOP/RATE speed. Past about a third of the knob, the loop shrinks to almost nothing at each peak.
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Reverse chance
- CHANCE
- Sets whether the grains run forward or backward through the buffer. Fully down they run forward, and fully up they run backward.
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Feedback delay
- TIME
- Sets the delay time, from 1 ms to 3 seconds. The right side runs slightly shorter for width. When you move TIME, the echo drops out and fades back in over about seven seconds.
- FEEDBACK
- Sets the level of the echo mixed in with the grains, up to 80%. The delay gives one echo rather than a string of repeats.
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Pitch shift
- PITCH
- Shifts the pitch spectrally in common intervals, from -24 to +24 semitones, and keeps the formants in place. The steps are -24, -12, -10, -9, -8, -7, -5, 0, +2, +3, +4, +5, +7, +12 and +24, and the center is no shift. It comes after the delay, so the echo is shifted too.
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Blend random
- RANDOM
- Pulls the processed level below the BLEND setting by a random amount. Turn it up for a bigger drop. At zero it does nothing.
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Master
- BLEND
- Sets the mix between your dry input and the processed sound.
- GAIN
- Sets the output level, from silent up to double. Noon is unity.
Try thisSet PITCH to -12 with a short LENGTH and STRETCH near the bottom for a sub-octave smear under your dry signal. Keep BLEND below noon so the original stays on top.
In Studies
Partikl is in Studies Effects, under Glitch and Granular. We renamed the standalone plugin's OUTPUT knob GAIN.
Bundle
The standalone plugin is also part of the Granular Suite.
- Formats
- Studies: Audio Units, VST2 and VST3 on Mac, VST3 on Windows · Apple silicon native
- Systems
- Current macOS and Windows 10/11 x64
Standalone version
The original plugin with its own interface, as a one-time purchase.
AU · VST2 · VST3 · macOS · Windows