Fluss - Granular Playground

A really exciting and accessible app. I have been look for something just like Fluss for ages. Brilliant for creating or generating evolving soundscapes whilst benefiting from the rich waveform possibilities of sampling. I love it!

This is the latest app from Bram Bos and Hainbach, whose previous release Gauss was a very interesting piece of work. This time they've released a granular synthesiser and it's wonderful! I've spent several hours diving in and messing around, manipulating sounds with the controls within the app, and it works as a live processor too, a little bit like a very powerful delay. Please ignore the one star review from someone called MrGroozy. He's completely misunderstood the app, hasn't really tried it out, and totally doesn't understand the nature of granular synthesis. Yes, there are loads of built-in presets that you can play with, but you can record or import literally any sounds - some muesli being poured into a bowl, the wind in the trees, an elephant doing a plop, whatever you like, and the app will create something new from it that no one on the planet has ever heard. Would have been five stars for sure but the user manual is really disappointing. It's just one page long. It could have been SO much more and could have given a lot more insights into how to get the best out of the app. As it stands, it really only skims the surface and tells you what each button/control does. Anyway, it's a great piece of work and Fluss itself is absolutely brilliant. A must-buy for sure! You can lose yourself for hours, days even, in the limitless sonic possibilities that it offers.

I’ve used this for 7 minutes. So I am just giving it five stars right away to recognise a genuine other-level of touch interface use that’s been implemented here. It’s not just tap, double-tap, but also flick-and-ricochet - a ‘flickochet’ control? Yes, I claim the credit for coining this term I think. Think of your favourite echo or delay or tremolo unit, but able to take your sliding of the control to make various settings, not a ‘static’ thing. In other words, you shove the delay time say, hard across the screen, and it ricochets around, constantly adjusting that setting in real time. It’s like that ping-pong game of old, and the shove and ricochet you induced, slowly decays away after you let go. So the control WILL sit still, if your last touch was static, held for a split second in that position - but you can swipe quickly and the ping-ponging begins, a dynamic ricochet that slowly like a rubber ball bouncing, decays in its movement. So, after just seven minutes, I get the basic idea. I was not sure how this needed 405Mb, after all many delays are like, 15Mb or so. This clever shove-and-ricochet behaviour of the control sliders and joysticks is what all the fuss is about and why it takes nearly half a Gb (I mean, it’s a cross-hair and a circle dead centre of it, but this is what it would physically be in hardware). It pretty much obeys the laws of physics, the bouncing-around controls thing. It decays like you’d expect, and probably there’s a subtle setting that prolongs that decay - there’s certainly a ‘friction’ adjustment for something, which in engineering might be termed ‘damping level’ that you can apply. A genuine innovation, refinement and moving-forward of touch interface implementation. What a great thing - wouldn’t like to try it with a mouse, usable, but effort compared to the iPad and iPhone touch-screens. Go Bram Bos and Hainbach, a brilliant piece of sonic jiggery-pokery!

Really like the playability of this and the simple user interface. Can easily get some unique soundscapes. It’s also very relaxing to play with! One issue I have is since you changed the colours, the cyan play head is now the same colour as the waveform, and when the wave you load has the same height (compressed, normalised audio) as the play head it is difficult to spot where it is. I was thinking it would might be good to have snapshots that you can switch between so you can create different chords in the pitch section.

It appears quite apparent to myself at least, that this was very much the vision of a musician that wishes to create a particular “sound” and the issue I have is not with the idea itself, it is the distribution of the idea to others as “one’s own” That is to say, what this is capable of was not my idea and I find it extremely difficult to escape the limitations of the very specific “sound” as a result. It’s a bit like being offered someone else’s imagination but the price to pay for such an offer is that one simply cannot escape the boundaries of said imagination. This, I believe is where one might suggest the argument that it is in fact an “instrument” but I think this is to miss the point I’m making - I am suggesting that the most significant accomplishment in terms of creativity has been accomplished, not by myself, but by the creator. I simply can’t escape the feeling that I’m “playing” someone else’s imagination and not my own…………….OK, I’ll make this as simple as possible, the app has no syncing options and without it, it is purely an ambient sample machine, it makes little difference what samples are used.

If you’re into weird, interesting, surprising, beautiful, evolving noises in limitless flavours (which you probably are, if you’re dabbling in granular synthesis), this should be right up your street. I honestly spent about 3 hours after installing, absolutely hypnotised by 3 instances in AUM, just with it’s first 3 presets, tweaking and playing with the amazing physics based modulators. Set friction to zero, give ‘em a little flick, and get lost in time, space and sound. The option to also use as a live effect or a recorder is the cherry. An absolute gem, utterly joyful in my opinion. I love it 🍻

Perhaps it’s early days? Perhaps there’s more to come? Perhaps I just don’t ‘get it’ yet? I’ve always been super-impressed with everything I’ve purchased from Bram Bos - but not this one yet. I’ve played around with the preset sounds and sounds of my own but what I seem to end up with is something that sounds remarkably like the sort of thing you’d get if you were playing with the tuner on your short-wave radio. A bit like the kind of stuff Stockhausen messed around with in ‘Hymnen.’ Also, it’s a bit of a battery-drainer. 10 minutes and my iPad Pro has lost 20% of it’s charge.

… instabuy. And Hainbach? Instabuy and write a good review.

This is a tool to use with other tools as a control surface,a sampler, and a highly intuitive granular synthesis musical instrument... Please keep making your apps. Your designs are Absolutely Amazing!!!!!

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.