Tasty Chips Electronics has today released the firmware 2.0 of the GR-1 hardware granular Synthesizer. The new firmware 2.0 transforms the previous instrument into a completely new with a lot more possibilities without paying extra. The big highlight of this update is the multitimbral support that allows you to stack up to four patches, assign patches to MIDI channels and/or to play mode, record audio to one patch in real-time and play chords and solos with the others.
Beside this, it supports now bigger SD cards, can work with MPE controllers and more. The new multitimbrality is a big step forward for this granular synthesizer, arguably the most important in the whole development in my opinion.
New Features
- Multitimbral! Complete rework of sound engine and GUI
- Enable, disable and focus on up to 4 parts simultaneously (Shift + 1,2,3,4 preset buttons to toggle part. Preset buttons (without shift) just set the patch to last enabled part)
- Many features accessible by MIDI NRPN yet to be disclosed…
- File chooser remembers selected items in each directory, per data type (sample, patch, performance)
- Menu switches now simply work by a single press on the encoder button
- Make use of bigger SD cards (16 GB and up)
- MPE strike and MIDI note on velocity as modulation sources
- Firmware upgrades via the internet (plug in that LAN cable!)
- NRPN support: 14 bit MIDI precision for all CC’s
- LED brightness has a minimum to stop everything from going dark 😉
- Support for USB computer keyboard for entering filenames (For this to work, you must have the keyboard plugged in already before you power it up!)
Bugfixes
- fixed crash when all voices grabbed by midi sustain/hold
- .ogg load crash
- sample position shift gone (most notably occurred with MPE)
- (potential) hang when entering sampling menu
- all sound off (CC 120) set envelope release to 0.. fixed.
In a few weeks, the company will start a new video campaign on YouTube where they will cover all the new features.
The GRC-1 MIDI controller is still in heavy development, and we hope to have the first model ready in autumn. As said before, the GRC-1 will offer hands-on controls for everything to do with multitimbral and more. The GR-1 at this moment only offers multitimbral controls via GUI menu’s and secondary button functions.
Production: at one point production was going so well we were almost 2 weeks ahead of schedule. Then problems with component stock and a mistake with PCB assembly hit us.. and now we’re delayed a week again. In any case, you can keep track of the progress in our GR-1 production schedule. We try to update it weekly
More information here: Tasty Chips Electronics GR-1
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