Datamind Audio, forward-thinking company behind Combobulator, the ethical, AI-powered texture-transformer, and Concatenator, the sample-based resynthesizer, has expanded their toolkit for sonic explorers, with Refractalizer.
Refractalizer is, at its core, a granular synthesizer. If you’ve been involved in music production over the last 20 years, you probably know what it is and the wide variety of timbres the technique produces. It can sound “glitchy,” or stuttery (think Ableton Live’s “beat repeat”);it also excels at ethereal or otherworldly tones that stretch time and smear frequencies.
Essentially, granular synthesis is all about taking little slices (“grains”) of an audio file or signal and repeating them at regular or irregular intervals. Usually the size of these grains, the rate and regularity of the loop, position of the playhead in the file, and other aspects of the sound, such as pitch and direction, can be controlled.
There’s a great write-up of this category of synthesis, its history, and “microsound,” the concept on which it is based, at Perfect Circuit: https://www.perfectcircuit.com/signal/what-is-granular-synthesis . It’s really interesting to see the progression from mere physics concepts, to stochastic experiments with tape, to the digital era and DSP.
Granular is now well-understood and almost ubiquitous. Just about every major manufacturer has a product out there for sale. Ableton Live Suite even ships with Granulator III; it’s a free, downloadable Max4Live pack, and it’s one of the best devices of its kind.
The hardware options are abundant as well. More on this, later.
But that’s not the end of the story. Just because this synthesis technique has become commonplace, it doesn’t mean innovation has stopped. Refractalizer brings a lot of exciting, new features to the table and I’m going to concentrate on those for this review.
Datamind Audio reimagines the standard “granular synth,” transforming it into something more musical; something you can actually play like an instrument and experiment with, if you want to get crazy.
Refractalizer: Making It Grain
When you think of granular synths, you don’t necessarily think of quantization. At least, the compositions I think about are more in the abstract, stochastic, musique concrete vein. You have a vocal snippet randomly repeating across the stereo spectrum or stuttery, digital noises rhythmically bouncing about. Another common application is turning a sample into a smeary, ethereal, animated pad. You can do all this with Refractalizer too, but the breakthrough here is quantization.
Just about every important parameter can be governed by the almighty metronome. This may not seem like a big deal, but in today’s music, especially modern styles like EDM, dubstep, riddim, breakcore, and drum & bass, sounds that weave in and out of the grid are most effective.
Quantization on the grain (trigger) rate parameter is especially cool, resulting in a gating/chopping effect with shorter grain-length settings or feedbacky, phasy tones at longer ones. This control goes from a glacial 32 bars to a blazingly fast 1/512nd of a bar!
What’s great is that you don’t have to choose to be locked into the grid or not; grain-rate and grain-length can smoothly transition from quantized to un-quantized via the respective sliders. In practice, this means you can go from, for instance, a 1/16th note, trance-style gate for 4 bars, then to an accelerating, audio-rate “riser” for a crescendo, all with one control. The unquantized grain rate control goes wayyyyy into the audio realm, too (up to 20 kHz!) Grain-rate can be “played” chromatically via MIDI and there’s even built-in scale quantization, if you want that.
Another important difference between Refractalizer and just about anything else in this sphere is the ability to drag and drop multiple samples into the plugin and have them loaded into a pool where their pitch and gain settings can be adjusted. Oops, ok, well that’s not the unique part; the cool stuff happens when the samples are in the pool: each sample gets loaded into a slot which can be instantly processed by the Refractalizer engine.
The slider on the left hand side allows you to scroll through your pool. Predictably, you could use external automation to control this parameter, but it can be way more fun and unexpected to apply a modulator to it. (We’ll get to the extensive modulation section in a moment.)
Even better than that is that Datamind Audio has provided us an option to smoothly scroll through the list for smooth transitions from one sample or another.
There are many applications for this, but one I can think of right off the batt is a multi-vector wavetable synth patch:
- Load a few synth samples (or anything really) by dragging them onto the display
- Take the playback speed down to less than 20%
- Have a short grain-rate and time and make pitch tracking 100%
- Finally, drag an LFO to the sample slider on the left side of the waveform display.
You change the timbre of the oscillator by scanning through the waveform horizontally and vertically (through the sample “multi-buffer”).
I’m glad that users have the option to enable interpolated morphing between samples. It’s usually one or the other and you’re always wanting the one you don’t have.
Moving on to the previously-mentioned modulators, there are a lot of them!
There are no less than 14 modulators, including two sidechain inputs, and 8 macros! That’s a lot! A lot, a lot! Modulators aren’t just for the synth’s parameters, by the way; you can control parameters from other modulators, too.
Some ideas for all these tools:
- Use ENV1 to fade in LFO2
- Make the sidechain rhythmically scan through the waveform
- Ttie note number to the sample-slider for pseudo-sampler “key-groups”
- Make an ENV control the playback head speed, ramping it down, for a classic timestretch sound
Assigning macros works the same way as it does for assigning modulation targets, but in reverse; drag a control (like filter frequency for instance) onto one of the macros. I don’t know how many parameters can be tacked on to one macro, but I haven’t felt limited, thus far.
Speaking of limiting…you’re going to need some with this plugin. Refractalizer is capable of some wide frequency response and amplitude swings. More on this in the “Issues…” section.
The Grains of the Operation
Anything that calls itself a synthesizer certainly needs components like VCAs and filters.The amp section has a little more than just a volume control. You can completely disable the envelope’s effect on the sound and have it free-running, drone style. Are your micro-loops too clicky or fuzzy? You can change the “window” style (grain-shape) and smooth the edges to mitigate this, if so desired. Sometimes that zero-crossing noise sounds good, though!
(Sound-design tip: If you find your grains to be less edgy and “smooth” is still set to zero, change the window to “rev ramp” or square.)
You get “stereoize” which is like automated panning, too; a hallmark of most granular engines.
In the filter section, there’s a good selection of digital and modelled (MS-20-style) types. You can enable two at the same time and they can be configured in series or parallel. They sound good, too. The digital 12db HP is especially useful for shaping the low-end (and protecting your speakers!)
Moving downward, there’s the FX section, with eight, freely-assignable slots.Currently there are only four effects: reverb, delay, compressor, and distortion. Refractalizer can’t compete with something like Serum 2 or Surge XT in this department, but the effects are good, if a bit utilitarian. Distortion is my favorite of the bunch because it’s nasty, imbuing heavy harmonics to your program material. And guess what? The manual tells us that it’s inspired by Ruina, Noise Engineering’s FREE distortion plugin. (So that’s why it makes everything sound like a Sunn O)) track!) Perhaps they will build this section out in the future with more effect types.
Issues and Caveats
I ran into a couple minor issues and one not so minor, with Refractalizer. The minor stuff is more cosmetic than functional.
For instance, the sample browser is an unstyled, JUICE framework component. (JUICE is a development platform for audio apps.) It just looks out of place in this plugin; I’d expect a native OS file browser to open or maybe something that is styled to fit the plugin. It always opens up in the Refractalizer samples directory, too, which is an annoyance. I’ve already mentioned this and Datamind Audio is looking into it.
Performance is generally good, but it’s very easy to overload your CPU with certain settings. This is especially true when you uncouple grain-rate from grain-length and use longer length settings. It makes sense because you’re essentially creating hundreds of streams of audio in a very short time and those streams take longer to “die out” because of the larger audio grain size. Adding polyphony compounds this problem.
Uncoupled and un-quantized settings as described above can result in very loud audio. This is my #1 gripe. Yes, Datamind has provided a built-in limiter, but I still suggest playing this instrument at lower levels until you get more familiar with it. Heck, throw a safety limiter on your master bus, too (this is good practice, anyway!) Note that this is not necessarily a Refractalizer thing: when hundreds or even thousands of slices of audio are repeated at a high rate, sonic energy builds up, resulting in extreme amplitude.
If you have issues like these, Datamind Audio is very quick to address things, especially via their Discord server. It must be said that none of these things were game-breaking or prevented me from properly testing the software.
Final Opinion
Datamind Audio is fast becoming one of these companies like Elektron, Noise Engineering, and Fors.fm (see our Tela review). Everything they put out, you’ve got to have. Collect ‘em all, type of thing.
Combobulator is an insane take on neural synthesis (ethically-sourced AI data, by the way). What Concatenator does is almost indescribable. Is Refractalizer an essential purchase?
I think, if you support Datamind and have already purchased one of their products, you probably already have Refractalizer in the cart. It fits right in with the rest of the catalog, too.
It’s a unique product that breaks the bounds of “microsound,” but with so many flavors of granular, you’ll have to decide for yourself. I know I had fun with it, especially when I figured out how to make it work for me.
Datamind Audio currently offers an unrestricted, but time-limited, demo. Try it out, right now (the link is all the way at the bottom of the page): https://datamindaudio.ai/refractalizer
When you’re ready to buy, it’s currently $99 and they offer bundle pricing with their other two products, Combobulator and Concatenator, for a discount: https://datamindaudio.ai/refractalizer/#explorer
Demos
First, you have to start with the mind behind the plugin, Encanti. He really shows off what Refractalizer can sound like in the context of a real track, on the grid.
This one got me hooked, also from Encanti:
Simon Stockhausen demonstrates the lighter side of things, on this tonal piece:
I put together a couple short things.
This first one is an ambient affair where I use Refractalizer like a 4-quadrant vector synthesizer. That is, I had a few unused ambient clips from 2012 that, again, I loaded into the multi-buffer and scrolled through the samples with interpolation ON. If you reduce the AMP amount to near 0%, you’ll get a drone that doesn’t react to MIDI notes.
In the second one, I take you to Glitchville. This is extreme glitch mode. LFOs on pitch, rate, length, speed, scan, length-mult, and sample-selection. Manual control of rand pitch, and other things. A mostly-aleatoric patch, meaning I let Refractalizer do its thing.
Finally, if and when you do purchase this plugin, you may need a little help getting around. This tutorial is great and goes over everything, from the melodic side to the rhythmic and everything in between.
Alternatives
Before, ahem, too many “grains” of sand slip through my fingers (ok, that was the last “grain” pun, I swear), I want to mention some alternatives.
FREE / Built-In
Granulator III: It comes with Ableton Live Suite via a Max 4 Live pack. It’s really great. Utilitarian. This is my go-to for more ethereal stuff. https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/granulator-iii/
Fruity Granulizer: It was probably my first experience with granular synthesis. Very much outclassed by Refractalizer, but it’s there. Here’s the instrument page.
gRainbow looks really fun: https://strangeloopsaudio.gumroad.com/l/gRainbow
VCV Rack: There are a number offerings, not the least of which is Mutable Clouds and 3rd party variants: https://library.vcvrack.com/?query=&brand=&tag=Granular&license=
Steinberg’s HALion Sonic X-Stream: More spectral and spacey, but free and fun. https://www.steinberg.net/vst-instruments/x-stream/
Paid
There are almost too many to list, but none quite do what Refractalizer does.
DAWesome Novum: The UI is so enticing! https://www.dawesomemusic.com/plugins/novum/
Audio Damage Quanta 2: Seemingly caters to the melodic side of things, rather than the rhythmical stuff that Refractalizer can do. https://www.audiodamage.com/products/ad055-quanta-2
Arturia – Efx Fragments: Looks really full-featured. Operates as a VST effect rather than an instrument, so it processes incoming audio. https://www.arturia.com/products/software-effects/efx-fragments/overview
Hardware
Hardware options are out of the scope of this review, but more and more instruments are integrating granular (the awesome Elektron Tonverk) or are highly focused on it (Torso S4, one of our 2025 top picks).
About the Author
Written by Derek, a.k.a. (d) / glitched for ANR.
(d) is a multi-genre music producer, focusing on experimental electronic music. You can find his sounds at: http://glitched.bandcamp.com
