Alessandro Petrolati Density

Alessandro Petrolati has released Density, a granular synthesis application for Windows and Mac.

The first Density release, dates back to 2001, was developed for Csound language, to follow the GSC release was based on GSC4 of Eugenio Giordani. GSC4 (Granular Synthesis for Csound) was the first patch for granular synthesis on Csound to implement the model proposed by Barry Truax.

The current Density implementation, follow a dynamic generation of the grains, rather than a fixed number of “voices” (static). The maximum density achievable, depends only on the actual CPU power.

Density features

  • 8 granular streams simultaneously.
  • Loading up to 12 sound-files (aiff,wav) for each stream (96 tot.).
  • Dynamic scrub pad, wrap-around selection, crop, normalize draw, etc….
  • Scrub quantize: zero-crossing, bpm, phase and samples.
  • Multi sounds buffer windows (resizable), fine scanning explorations.
  • Rapid change sndfile, just jumping between the windows.
  • Envelope/windowing menage up to 12 shape prototypes.
  • Envelope/windowing loading and menage 12 sound-files (aiff,wav).
  • Dynamic buffer load/save, normalize, crop, resize length etc…
  • Main mixer, 8 channels, 1 master, solo/mute and VST slots.
  • Quick-record export master channel, progressive autoname file or directory and re-sampling and quantize outfile.
  • Trigger granular streams: foreground, sync, all.
  • VST support: one for each channel + one for the master.
  • DSP settings and infos report on the statusbar.
  • Snapshots memory allocation up to 24 for each stream and 24 for the main mixer.
  • Fast snapshots presets for store/recall.
  • Simultaneous (streams and main) transition (interpolation), between two snapshots in a given time.
  • Clients menage: include/exclude widgets from transitions.
  • Four table to draw transitions curves.
  • Micro-pad interpolating between four snaps.
  • HV_pad (i.e. hyper vectorial pad), combines 9 snapshots (multi dimensional) and provide auto-explore engine (spiral, dunk, reflects).
  • MIDI Input mapping: learn/manual functions, range map/rescale, exponential curve.
  • MIDI Output sync: enable/disable, continuously/mouse up send.
  • Shorts key for voices selection, dragging sliders etc…
  • Windows float/no float mode.
  • Fully managing the project, save/save as and load.
  • Drag and drop audio files (streams and windowing) and drag and drop project folder (main).
  • Oscilloscope and spectralscope tools.

Density is available to purchase for Windows and Mac, priced at 25 EUR.

More information: Alessandro Petrolati / Density