Riot Audio have released Impressions, available at the intro price of £69.00 / $92.46, increasing to £89.00 / $119.26 after the promotion.
Impressions is a two-layer Integrated Granular Synthesis instrument with extensive movement capabilities, with a focus on pads and pulses with complex organic textures.
A truly original take on multi-source granular synthesis, Riot Audio’s Impressions is an instrument capable of combining granular sample playback in a way no other instrument on the market has done to date.
Instead of the tried-and-tested multi-layer engine approach, where two independent granular streams run alongside each other and are simply crossfaded, Impressions uses a new proprietary unified architecture (Integrated Granular Synthesis) where the two grains are correlated in the granular stream.
The result is an incredibly synergistic sound picture where the boundaries between origin sound sources almost disappear. Even with substantially divergent sound sources the grains appear to the listener clearly correlated, greatly assisting with creating distinct, cohesive sound design.
The aim behind developing Nanomix, the engine behind Impressions, was to find a way to use more than one granular source without simply running independent granular engines alongside each other. After testing many different granular instruments on the market for over a decade, it seemed that there was none that could really “glue” together two sound sources, mainly due to this seemingly universal approach to the functionality.
The solution took some time to figure out but involves a singular unified granular engine, which can be called an instance of “Integrated Granular Synthesis”. In this engine grains are called up from either of the two sound sources in an alternating pattern, according to a ratio set by the Grain Ratio slider on the Home Page. Even with Smoothness set to 0 (and therefore maximum randomness introduced to the grain creation timings), there is still an avoidance of overlapping grain creation. Note that the grains themselves are usually longer than the intervals between creation so the sounds you’re hearing will be overlapping, but crucially, the grain starting points are not independent.
The resulting clear time-based correlation between the two grain streams (which are really only one stream with alternating sources) means that our ears interpret them as coming from a singular source.
What this allows us to do is to combine two sound sources and almost always lose the identities of the original sources. The ear makes up a new hybrid source that doesn’t exist. In this way we can combine vocal with string samples, percussive with non-tonal textures, and the listener can’t readily identify the origins.
This results in a goldmine of truly original sound design where the large but still limited range of natural sounds can be combined in an infinite number of ways, to form cohesive new sounds that didn’t exist before.
Impressions is the first Riot Audio instrument to feature user sample import. This allows for quick experimentation and creation of patches instantly unique to each user. For this purpose there is a preset category of “Starting Points”, where you are encouraged to drop in your own samples for play and customization.
Features include:
- Radically reinvented integrated two-source granular engine with unified architecture (Nanomix)
- 65 high quality sound sources
- Sample source categories: Strings (Short, Long), Percussive, Textures, Vocal
- 222 ready-made presets including 20 atmospheres, 20 basses, 20 chaos patches, 20 key, 50 pads, 50 pulses, 20 vocal patches as well as 22 sound design starting points covering all preset types.
- User sample import capability
- 0.3 GB uncompressed sample content
- A total of 8 tempo-synced LFOs, mappable to practically all instrument parameters, including two LFOs that can modulate other LFOs
- Two sets of mappable modwheel parameters (grain settings and FX)
- Tempo synced Delay
- 3 types of Saturation, two types of Degrading, Filters, EQs and Reverb
Watch the walkthrough video HERE.
Impressions requires a free or full version of Kontakt
For more information on Impressions, click here:
NOTE: Some of the links you click on may be affiliated. Clicking and purchasing using these links helps support and fund The Beat Community. Thanks for your support.
