The ADDAC System ADDAC112 makes looping and granular sampling hands-on and intuitive with many creative features, a lot of front panel control, and little menu hassle
One of my favorite synthesis forms is granular. I love atmospheric sounds, textures, and other special sounds where granular synthesis is perfect. Here samples are not played back conventionally (sampler) but are instead split into small pieces. Playing these parts at the same time creates deep, complex textures quickly. These refined with modulation and reverb will give you endless, atmospheric sounds.
Today ADDAC System from Portugal has immortalized their idea of a looper and granular sampler in a new module called ADDAC 112. The approach the developers are taking here is clever and intuitive.
ADDAC112
Instead of arranging everything (control + audio/CV I/O) on one interface, they separated both elements and divided them into two modules. One purely for control (ADDAC112A), one purely for the audio & CV I/O (ADDAC112B). That’s very clever in my opinion because with this you have a better overview and improved playability of your patch. The main module has three different sections: a looper, a granular engine, and an output mix, each with dedicated controls.
The granular engine can either be fed with samples from an SD card or via real-time recordings from the looper. The audio input feeds the recoding buffer of the looper. Multiple controls allow to record and play loops into a list so that any sample in the list can be accessed at ay time and more acting as a standard looper. It can record up to 99 loops per prest loop. These can be manipulated in detail including the pitch, volume… They go a step further and offer a possibility to work with probability whether a signal is looped or not or an option to add a recording delay. That’s pretty advanced.
Granular Engine
The journey to the granular engine begins with a looped signal. Here, the developers also decided to go another way. They added the possibility of longer buffer sizes with up to 5 minutes. According to them, it’s a softer approach to the granular principle. As in the looper, you have also here a lot of direct control over the grains. You can set the number of grains, the grain play head & direction, grain size, grain loop delay, repeat, volume, panning, pitch, envelope, and more. A lot of options to adjust the grains as you want and everything is on the interface, so no annoying menu diving. Plus, many parameters of the engine have CV inputs.
The last part of the module is a handy output mix section with individual control for the dry input, looper volume, and grains volume. All audio and CV inputs & outputs are located in the “B” module. I like this wireless design of the main module a lot.
There is currently no sound demo or first look video available. The module is a big hit in my opinion. Granular samplers always struggle with the fact that they are very complex and have little front panel control. Here it is completely different. Little display but a lot of physical control. Great work.
ADDAC System ADDAC112 is available soon for 540€.
More information here: ADDAC System
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