Fluss - Granular Playground

Bram / Hainbach, This instrument is a literal blast to play with and explore sounds you’d never think of to make on your own. I know it’s technically an app, but it’s so playable, so musical. I’m happy to know there’s still iOS Apps being developed utilizing the touch screen format in this fun/intuitive way. It’s how apps should be on these touch screen devices. Well done. I nearly fell off my bed when I shook the app and everything bounced around. Brilliant! Can’t wait to see if another collab comes out! If so, maybe Nuclear Drums? Atomic Loops? I don’t know what that means or what I’m saying. But it’s staying on this comment. If that brings any inspiration then dope! Thank you for this and again, well done! Cheers.

I recently discovered using it as an input processor effect, and we tried it on my friends violin. We got the coolest lush shimmer going. Definitely worth having for granular opportunities.

Update: Actually, it DOES NOT. It says import wave files standalone and AUv3. That’s a long way from stating that it’s an AUv3 instrument ONLY and has broken features because of small-minded designers. Don’t worry, I won’t waste my money on your products in the future. ———— Terribly hard to read on iPhone 12. Actually, impossible to read. Genetic defect in all developers to use too small to ‘comfortably’ read. It’s called eyestrain. There’s plenty on room to use readable font. It won’t play in the background and it resets to default settings if put in the background! Junk designed on the iPhone! Apparently standalone mode can’t play audio in the background and has no setting even, at least that I can find. Nor is such in the embarrassing dumb design, the cheap block of pages like found in cheap $30 DVD box. Search is next to useless, dah! And, again, it’s too small. iPhone UI wastes way too much space. As far as iPhone 12 this is betaware and embarrassing poor design. Sound experimentation with granular sound synthesis is very good as is the quality of presets provided. But for iPhone 12 UI design, is very lacking. Very embarrassing from what was a fairly reliable group. Not anymore.

Very awesome app can you Please add recording ability from the internal microphone

Fluss works, at least for me, because like so much of Hainbach’s corpus, it’s grounded in tactile concepts: rebounding particles, tape loops, slow, slow, SLOW time. If that’s what you’re after, it’s a great tool for creating evolving spatial and temporal textures. That said, I can’t give it five stars because of a GLARING (to me anyway) flaw: it stops playing audio if you put it in the background. This means I can’t use an external plugin (like Lines or Filterjam, or BlindEQ) along with it, and that’s exactly what I want to do with it. That said, if you aren’t looking to multitask with it on the ipad, it’s a great means to that glitchy but also soft focus sound.

yes, sounds wonderful

Initially I was not impressed by this. Usually I am underwhelmed, as an iphone developer, by gimmicky new ways to slide your fingers across the “no-so-precise” touchscreen of apples generalized 40pxl radius to work with. This usually makes it so apps like this are good in theory or on paper but not so great in experience. No so with Fluss. I was going about my initial use of this all wrong, trying to maintain consistent control instead of letting go. This tool will help you let the process just flow or .. fluss. Good Job from Bram and bach with this one.

I love playing around with this amazing app. The sounds they give you to use are great. That said, I wish I could incorporate this easily into my Logic workflow (yea, I know there are ways but it all seems quite complicated to be honest). Any chance we could get a plugin version of this?

Overall, this is an amazing implementation of granular synthesis. Fluss is very fun to use and the integration with the touch interface toward modulation is particularly innovative. That said, the more I like it, the more I want Fluss2! Specifically, I would love more clock and tempo syncing options, particularly around when grains are triggered (like on Beads). But also, when using Fluss as a processor, some more visualization of the buffer, playback head speed, and modulation, in terms of tempo rather than time. The quantizer also begs for more visualization. I’d love to see the boundaries shown in the XY control for notes! And if that gets too keyboard-y and not Buchla enough, you could make the boundaries into shapes, or even allow the user to change the layout to keep it super creative. Basically keeping the fun randomness, but allowing for a biiiiiit more control, when desired. Further, while the touch interface is very innovative, I found it a bit sensitive. Very easy to cause the controls to move too fast. You can use the friction control to slow things down, but that seems to slow everything down. Would be nice to have a global friction and a separate sensitivity option so flicking a slider could only apply a maximum amount of force. Lastly, being able to apply modulation to a specific play head would be huge. So one head could be making bigger grains and another smaller, for example. Well done!

Only a few hours in. I’m sure I’ll learn more about how to use the synth with experimentation. But some things I’d like: more control. A limit on the panning, filter & scan speed, similar to the way “faders” can be limited. I would also love a way to draw in a line & separate the orbs in the octave/pitch XY pad, having one oscillator “locked” in a row or column (or diagonally), free from interruption with the movement of the other 2. Lastly a way to assign “play heads” that can be triggered by an external controller (I started using the .wav file like a drum pad by tapping different locations, if that makes any sense) Thanks for a very creative experience.