GR-7 Grain Delay manual

Open it in your DAW

GR-7 Grain Delay plays inside Studio 56 FX, which installs with Studio 56. Add Studio 56 FX to a track as an effect and sign in, then choose GR-7 Grain Delay on Home.

If you don’t have Studio 56 yet, the Support page shows how to install it and add it to a track in your DAW.

The four knobs

The four knobs on GR-7 Grain Delay’s screen shape the whole sound, and each preset sets where they start.

Hold

Stretches each piece longer and slower until the cloud hangs in the air.

Stack

Spreads the pieces wider and sends more of them up or down an octave, and on presets that run free of your song’s grid it starts them more often.

Drift

Sets the cloud swaying in time with your song, and loosens where each piece lands on the grid or, on presets that run free of it, picks pieces from further back in what you played.

Air

Brightens the top and gives the cloud more chorus and a bigger plate reverb.

Your DAW records every turn as automation, and Undo takes a turn back.

Using presets

Click the preset’s name at the top to see them all, or use the arrows beside it to go to the next or the one before. Its folders are down the side, with Favorites and My presets under them, and the star beside a preset keeps it in Favorites.

Save as new keeps the sound you have under a name of your own in My presets, and Save updates one of yours. Point at one of yours to rename or delete it.

Write 4 more like this writes four new presets close to the one you’re on and places them around it on the map beside the list. Drag the dot between them to blend, and Keep this sound saves the blend as a preset of your own. It works with Pro and on a plugin you bought.

More controls

More controls at the top opens the settings GR-7 Grain Delay’s face has no room for. Press it again to go back.

Grains moved up to two octaves, held to octaves, fifths, chords or a scale, with any share of them played backwards. Freeze stops the recording, so the grains keep reading the same four seconds for as long as it is on. A filter, a chorus, an echo, a plate reverb and a compressor after the grains.

Live Grain

Replays the last four seconds as a cloud of tiny grains, scattered into a wash, pitched up into a shimmer or frozen.

Curve LFO

Moves other controls up and down in a shape you draw, slow for drifts or in time for pumps and gates.

Filter

Runs the whole sound through one filter in ten types, with resonance and drive.

Studio 56 Chorus

Widens and thickens a sound with a slow shimmer that keeps the bass solid, from a gentle double to a ringing jet.

Filtered Stereo Delay

Echoes from 0.3 ms to 12 seconds or a note of the song, in parallel, ping-pong, crossed or as two mono lines, with a filter in the feedback loop and a ducker that turns the echoes down while the sound plays.

Plate Reverb

Adds a smooth plate reverb, from a short ambience behind drums to a long bright or dark wash behind pads.

VCA Compressor

Compresses from a threshold of -60 to 0 dB at 1:1 to 20:1, with a knee of up to 24 dB, an attack from 0.05 ms and an RMS or a peak detector, hearing the sound itself or a second input.

System requirements

Mac

macOS 10.15 Catalina or later, on Apple silicon or Intel

Windows

Windows, 64-bit

Plugin formats

VST3 and AU on Mac, VST3 on Windows

DAWs

Ableton Live, Logic Pro, GarageBand, FL Studio and other DAWs that load VST3 or AU plugins, but not Pro Tools

Internet

To sign in, to get what you buy and to make instruments and effects, but not to play them

More help

Installing Studio 56, using it offline and other questions are answered on the Support page. For anything else, write to oliver@studio56.ai.