Grain Scanner from Amazing Noises

[Neon Breath]

Hey folks

Anyone got this? https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/grain- ... ng-noises/

I love Amazing Noises Max For Live devices, they seem to always think outside the box with pretty original, top quality devices. Never been disappointed by their devices so far.

Unfortunately there's not much info on the page, no go trough/overview video, no idea what are the effects contained in the Effect Tab and to be honest I'm not sure what Grain Scanner brings on the table in term on innovation & new features. Henke's Granulator II is fantastic already (and free!), as well as lot of other granular plugins like Quanta, Granite, etc. And it's not cheap neither, so I'm really wondering if it's worth it. If anyone bought it and could share his/her thoughts about it, would be very appreciated.

Any comment or feedback welcome!

Thanks

[pottering]

I got it (mostly because I trust Amazing Noises and Ableton), it is really good.

It is hard to explain but It is different from Granulator.

I think it is meant to be simpler to use, more "instant gratification".

It is easy to get crap from other granular stuff when you are outside the "sweet spots", with Grain Scanner stuff sounds good most of the time, when messing semi-randomly with the controls.

The effects in the Effect tab are Filter, Distortion and Reverb, all basic, nothing crazy.

https://imgur.com/a/lUO21Wx

[Neon Breath]

Thank you pottering for the quick and clear reply. Appreciated!

It is true that lots of granular synth often sound bad and need alot and alot of time and effort to make them sound good.

Effect section indeed seems rather simple. I wonder if they'll add more in the future as updates. One thing I wished Grain Scanner has is filtering per grain, instead of just a simple filter slapped at the end of the chain. Pretty useless.

I think I'll bite and get it when I have the chance

[[jur]]

It's definitely an amazing companion to Granulator; different beast, all about modulations.
There's many samples embedded in the device which is quite unique for a M4L device and definitely a big advantage over Granulator; it's basically like navigating Wavetable's waveforms. You can of course drag your own samples.

[Neon Breath]

Thumbs up [jur]! Thanks for your input.

[mauriziogiri]

Hi, take a look at this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqujGl0iq0E
(it's not made by me, I think I'll do a sort of tutorial in the near future)

Maurizio - Amazing Noises

[Neon Breath]

Thanks Maurizio!

Exellent, exellent video. Very complete tour. Actually, you can say thanks the guy who did it cause it made me buy it! Just got it.

I agree with the people here you posted before, so far from what I've tried it is far superior to the (already) good Henke's Granulator. The Layers for the creation of massive overlapping grains is really stunning. You can get some crazy dense textures out of everything, even a single tiny click ...Very fun to use, very easy to navigate & use and as already mentioned above, it's instant granutification!

I'd like to say congrats Maurizio for this incredible device, I think you have raised the bar for Max For Live granular synthesis instruments. This is probably the best one available.

Congrats again and hope to see it grows with new features in the near future!

(don't hesitate people to post more your feedback even if my initial question has been answered)

[ampism]

I just bought this, because it looks amazing. And because Granulator II wasn't allowing me to drag my own sounds in...But when I open it, I have the same problem (?) ! I have tried wavs, aiffs, tried mono files, stereo files, very short clips, longer samples...but no joy. I can access the presets, and I can drag in aif files from Ableton's "Samples" category. But not my own sounds. This is really, really annoying! I have emailed Ableton and Amazing Noises, but not heard back yet (only messaged them yesterday so not expecting a response today - hopefully early next week). But if, in the meantime, anyone has any clues as to why this might be happening I'd be super grateful. Cheers!
Oh, should mention, I'm running AL10 Suite, purchased only a couple of weeks ago, so should be latest version, and M4L presumably is up to date. Macbook Pro 2.2 ghz intel core i7. 16GB ram

[mauriziogiri]

Hi ampism, I can confirm that it is possible to drag samples onto Grain Scanner from any external folder, and it is very strange that you can't. Maybe it could be a permission issue? Or maybe one of the folders in your path has a strange character in its name (for instance '*' or '/'). Anyway, you can also add your folder into the Live browser, try to see if this solves the issue.
Cheers,
Maurizio

[ampism]

Hi Maurizio, thanks for responding. The folders are already in the Live browser (and have also tried dragging directly from them too), and as far as I can see, there's no unusual characters in the folder names. If it is a permission issue, then what can I do to find that out? Thanks again, paul

[ampism]

Ok, I may have solved the issue...the folder I was trying to get sounds from is called "Sounds/samples", so maybe it's the "/" character? I dragged a wav from there onto my desktop and tried to load it from there and it worked However, there are lots of sounds in there that are in other projects - if I now change the name of the folder, surely it will cause issues when I open these projects? Should I duplicate the folder and then rename it? That will take up quite a lot of space on my hard drive.

[mauriziogiri]

Hi, unfortunately the "/" character is used by the system to separate folders; this means that Max for Live is searching a folder named "samples" which is inside a folder named "Sounds" and of course it can't find it.
I don't have a solution for this... maybe rename and move the folder somewhere else, then put an alias "Sound/samples" in the original position?

[Joe Chapman]

Is anyone having problems with Grain Scanner all of a sudden?

I had a great time with this when I first got it, and it worked perfectly. Everything worked well and it had no problem with tons of automation. I left it for a while and just came back to it, and for some reason it's ruined now. Despite the CPU/resources meter remaining at almost nothing, Live is incredibly laggy when I add Grain Scanner, even to an empty project. It takes almost a minute to load it (this on an M.2 nvme SSD!), and once it's in, the controls take a minimum of 3 seconds to respond and then snap to the last point, so it's impossible to sweep a pot or slider. The mouse pointer and responses to clicks are generally lagging too, until I cut Grain Scanner.

I've tried installing the latest beta instead, I've tried reinstalling Grain Scanner, and I've tried reinstalling Live 10. Nothing works. I've also tried deleting the entire Cycling 74 hidden folder inside App Data, just in case some dodgy file is getting left behind between reinstallations, but that didn't help either.

All other M4L devices and 1st/3rd party plugins seem to be fine, so this is a bit of a mystery.

[[jur]]

Did you try re-installing an old Live version? Maybe your problem appeared after the L10.1.9 update?

[Joe Chapman]

Did you try re-installing an old Live version? Maybe your problem appeared after the L10.1.9 update?

Entirely possible on the second question, yes. I'll give the old versions a try since Ableton Support seems to be unresponsive (understandable in the current circumstances).

I take it you don't have a problem with GS and the latest Live 10 though?