Feature | The ultimate guide to digital synthesis
What is granular synthesis?
>Like wavetable synthesis, granular has samples at its heart. Granular synthesis is, broadly, the opposite of wavetable synthesis though – where a wavetable synth builds on the capabilities of a sampler by stacking multiple waveforms and morphing between them, granular synthesis breaks a sample into pieces, creating additional scope from a sampled sound by dividing it, not multiplying.
It uses the same principle used to power the timestretching capabilities found in most DAWs by looping miniscule elements of an audio file, known as grains, allowing each to be sustained without altering the pitch.