FREEZE Suspended, not stopped.
Tap FREEZE and the read positions are captured. Grains keep being born around them, so you can keep reshaping SIZE, DENSITY, SCATTER, FOCUS or PITCH over a region that refuses to move.
DETRITUS
GRANULAR TRANSFORMATION INSTRUMENT
Turn any sound into playable matter.
Two audio sources, broken into grains you can traverse, freeze, crystallize and evolve — then played from the keyboard with macros and MIDI expression.
This field is live. Move across it to scatter grains.
MORPH decides which source each new grain is born from. FREEZE suspends the matter without stopping it.
- System
- macOS 11 or later
Apple Silicon and Intel - Formats
- AU, VST3
and Standalone - Factory bank
- 100 presets
150 sources - Version
- 1.0.0
The film.
Sixty-six seconds inside the instrument, filmed from DETRITUS itself. Sound on.
Sonic matter
you can play.
DETRITUS takes two audio sources, breaks them into grains and reorganizes that matter into sounds you play with notes, gestures and modulation.
A grain is a short fragment read from a source, with its own amplitude window, tuning and stereo position. Hundreds of grains being born, overlapping and dying make up the texture you hear. Each note you play triggers a voice that governs its own population of grains.
- 1
Source
The audio file loaded into A or B, each with its own position, range, root and time settings.
- 2
Grain
A fragment read at one point in the source. SIZE sets its duration; DENSITY how many are born; SCATTER and FOCUS where.
- 3
Voice
What a note triggers: tuning relative to ROOT, the AMP ENV envelope and its grains. Up to 16 voices.
- 4
Bus
The mix of all voices, where CRYSTAL, the FX chain, MASTER and the limiter act.
Everything runs on your Mac. AUTO, SMART and EVOLVE are processes of the engine itself — no artificial intelligence, APIs or cloud services.
Two sources.
One population
of grains.
DETRITUS does not crossfade two signals. MORPH decides, at the moment each grain is born, which source it will read from — and the grain keeps it for its whole life.
That is why A and B don't need the same tempo, length or tuning. They bring different roles to the same instrument: the attack of a metallic percussion and the body of a drone. In the field, A is mineral and silver; B is copper and amber.
In between: the population is shared. Not two stacked layers — one mixed population.
- MORPH A/B
- 0–100%. The probability of origin of each new grain — not an effect or a volume crossfade.
- SOUNDING B
- A smoothed estimate of how much of the active grain population comes from B, weighted by amplitude.
- ORIGINAL
- Hold to hear the selected source untouched, looped from its start. Release to return to the instrument.
- LOAD
- Factory sources, your own files, or drop audio straight onto the field.
One window.
Nothing hidden.
A header, the Granular Field, eight controls, four tabs and a keyboard. The field reflects real engine data — sources, grains and activity — not an animation running on its own.
Select a number to find it on the interface.
Eight controls.
The whole engine
in reach.
The main row is where you play the matter: where grains are read, how long they last, how many are born, how far they spread — and two buttons that change what the matter is doing.
POSITION
0–100%
Base read origin in the selected source. Also set from the field and the navigator.
SIZE
5–500 ms
Grain duration. Short fragments; long ones sustain and overlap.
DENSITY
1–100%
Relative density of births and overlap.
SCATTER
X 0–100% · Y 0–100%
An XY pad: horizontal scatters the origin, vertical widens the stereo image.
PITCH
−24 to +24 st
Global grain transposition relative to the note and each source's root.
FOCUS
0–100%
Concentrates origins around the emitter; high values narrow the scatter.
FREEZE
OFF / ON
Tap to capture positions. Drag vertically to raise the CRYSTAL layer.
EVOLVE
press
A new engine variation with every click. Shift-click goes back.
Three behaviors
of matter.
Suspend it, let it sediment, push it somewhere new. FREEZE, CRYSTAL and EVOLVE are what make DETRITUS feel alive under your hands.
CRYSTAL Sediment with its own shimmer.
A resonant spectral layer resynthesized from the grain bus. Drag FREEZE upward and the frozen matter grows a crystal that sustains for up to thirty seconds, with an octave of shimmer on top.
- AMOUNT
- 0–100%
- SUSTAIN
- 0.2–30 s
- SHIMMER
- 0–100%
EVOLVE One press. A new state of matter.
Each press generates a real engine variation — correlated changes to the matter — and glides into it while the readout shows MIGRATING. Shift-click returns to the previous state; the last eight are kept.
Starting state
Four tabs.
Every stage
of the grain.
Where grains are born, what shape they take, how they move and which effects they pass through. Open each tab exactly as you would in the instrument.
Motion, birth and time. Three decisions, in this order:
- Where can grains be born? POSITION and the range define the region; BIRTH places the exact point — free, on a grid or on transients.
- How does the read point move? SCAN sweeps the region, free or synced to your host.
- How does time relate to the material? REPITCH, STRETCH or SYNC decide how reading progresses against pitch and tempo.
- SCAN
- OFF · FREE · SYNC
- Hold the position, sweep the range at its own rate, or follow host tempo.
- MOTION
- 0.01–4 Hz · 1/16 … 4 BAR
- Sweep rate, or musical length of the sweep in SYNC.
- DIRECTION
- FORWARD · REVERSE
- Direction of travel. It does not reverse each grain.
- BIRTH
- FREE · GRID · TRANSIENT
- Continuous origins, origins on time divisions, or on detected transients.
- TIME
- REPITCH · STRETCH · SYNC
- Tie reading to pitch, separate it from pitch (0.25–4×), or lock it to host tempo.
- BPM
- AUTO · MANUAL · 40–240
- Reference tempo of the material. AUTO analyzes it; MANUAL takes the tempo you know.
- ROOT
- MANUAL · AUTO
- The tuning reference of each source. AUTO is used only with enough confidence.
- GRID
- 1/4 · 1/8 · 1/16 · 1/32
- Resolution for BIRTH GRID and the reference for RHYTHM mode.
- LOAD › FACTORY
- 150 sources
- Search and nine categories, from techno loops and percussion to pads, drones and noise. Select a row to load it into A or B.
- USER / FILE
- Your audio
- Open a file or drop it onto the field. RELINK SOURCE finds missing material.
Shape, five transformation processes and the voice envelope. The mode you choose stays active whichever view is open.
- MODE
- FREE · LOOP · CLOUD · RHYTHM
- How origins are distributed in time.
- RATE
- 1–160 gr/s
- Nominal birth rate of grains.
- SMART
- 0–100%
- Correlated variation of origin, length, slight pitch, level and space.
- GRAVITY
- −100 to +100%
- Pulls origins toward the emitter, or pushes them out of the range.
- FORMANT
- −100 to +100%
- Spectral color, from dark to bright.
- WINDOW
- HANN · GAUSSIAN · TUKEY · BLACKMAN
- The amplitude window that shapes the edges of each grain.
- LOOP
- Progression
- Advances origins through the region, following births and the source's own time.
- CLOUD
- Spread
- Increases spread and overlap until the grains become a cloud.
- RHYTHM
- On the grid
- Places births on the musical grid, following GRID in SOURCE and your host tempo.
- BEHAVIOR
- FREE · SCALE · CHORD · ARP
- Unquantized, snapped to a scale, voiced as chords, or stepped through a pattern by births.
- SCALE
- CHROMATIC · MAJOR · MINOR · DORIAN · PHRYGIAN · PENTATONIC
- The note set, with any key from C to B.
- VOICING
- TRIAD · 7TH · SUS · FIFTHS · OCTAVES
- Chord offsets for the grains, or the ARP pattern over 1–3 octaves.
- CUTOFF
- 30–18,000 Hz
- A filter on every grain — separate from the FX filter on the mix.
- RESO · TYPE
- 0–95% · LP · HP · BP
- Resonance and filter type.
- SMEAR
- 0–100%
- Lengthens and smooths the overlap, widens the envelopes and links successive origins.
- SPREAD
- 0–100%
- Granular pan width, shared with the SCATTER Y axis.
- MOTION
- STATIC · RANDOM · ORBIT · PING-PONG
- How grains travel across the stereo field.
- AMOUNT
- 0–100%
- The resonant spectral layer, shared with the vertical FREEZE drag.
- SUSTAIN · SHIMMER
- 0.2–30 s · 0–100%
- Decay of the sediment, and how much spectrum is shifted an octave up.
- ATTACK · DECAY
- 1–2,000 ms · 10–5,000 ms
- How each voice starts and falls to its sustain level.
- SUSTAIN · RELEASE
- 0–100% · 10–5,000 ms
- Edit with faders or drag the nodes on the graph.
Five modulation sources, each with one target and a depth. Drag a module's handle onto a control to route it.
Targets POSITION · PITCH · SCATTER · FOCUS · SIZE · DENSITY · SMART · GRAVITY · FORMANT · SPREAD · MORPH · SMEAR · GRAIN FILTER · TIME
- RATE · DEPTH
- 0.05–12 Hz · 0–100%
- The MOD wheel scales its amplitude.
- SHAPE
- SINE · TRIANGLE · SAW UP · SAW DOWN · SQUARE
- Free, or synced to the host from 1/16 to 4 bars.
- LFO2
- 0.05–12 Hz · SINE · TRIANGLE · SQUARE · SAW
- A second, independent LFO with its own timing and target.
- ENV
- ONCE · LOOP · FREE · HOST
- A note-triggered modulation envelope, single or repeating, free or synced.
- RANDOM
- 0.05–20 Hz · SMOOTH 0–100%
- New random values at your chosen rate, from stepped to glassy smooth.
- FOLLOWER
- A · B · GRAIN · COMBINED
- Tracks the level of the granular matter itself and turns it into modulation.
Seven modules on the output, each with its own bypass dot and a smoothed transition.
- FILTER
- DRIVE
- CRUSH
- CHORUS
- DELAY
- REVERB
- MASTER
- LIMITER
- DRIVE · TONE · MIX
- 0–100%
- Saturation with level compensation that follows the signal.
- CUTOFF · RESO · TYPE
- 20–20,000 Hz · LP12 · BAND · HP12 · LP24 · HP24 · NOTCH
- The mix filter that places the matter in your track.
- CRUSH · RATE · MIX
- 0–100%
- Quantization and rate reduction.
- DEPTH · RATE · MIX
- 0–100% · 0.05–8 Hz
- Short modulated stereo delays.
- TIME · FEEDBACK · SYNC
- 20–1,500 ms · 0–92% · 1/16 … 4 BAR
- Free or host-synced delay.
- SIZE · DECAY · MIX
- 0–100%
- The space around the matter.
- LEVEL · RELEASE · CEILING
- −36–0 dB · 10–500 ms · −12–0 dB
- A lookahead, stereo-linked limiter that keeps exploration safe.
Built to be played,
not programmed.
Every Factory preset arrives with four named macros, each moving two targets at once. Open PERFORM and play — no hunting for parameters.
Per-note expression with MPE.
With an MPE controller, every note bends, presses and slides on its own. Pressure reshapes that note's new grains; per-note bend retunes grains already sounding; slide and CC74 move FOCUS, POSITION, SIZE or SCATTER.
Classic MIDI is just as direct: pitch bend of 2, 7, 12 or 24 semitones, and a MOD wheel that scales LFO1.
- VOICE MODE
- POLY · MONO · LEGATO
- VOICES
- 1–16
- MPE ZONE
- OFF · AUTO · LOWER · UPPER
- KEYBOARD
- MIDI 24–84
100 instruments.
150 sources.
Each Factory preset pairs a source A and a source B into a ready-to-play instrument. The sources are stereo 48 kHz / 24-bit WAV material — and every one of them can be swapped for your own.
Presets by category
Sources by category
Browse the Factory bank
Or bring your own sounds.
Field recordings, loops, vocals, synths. Load files into A and B, or drop them onto the field. Turn on LOCK A + B and browse the bank: your sources stay, the recipes change.
WAV · AIF · AIFF · FLAC · MP3 · OGG · M4A · AAC
Mono or stereo, up to 30 minutes and 2 GiB per file. DETRITUS works on files; it does not capture live input.
Specifications.
One macOS installer places all three formats and the full Factory bank. Open your DAW and DETRITUS is there, under Another Machines.
- Formats
- Audio Unit, VST3 and Standalone application
- System
- macOS 11.0 or later · Universal: Apple Silicon and Intel
- Installer
- macOS package (.pkg) with AU, VST3, Standalone and the Factory bank
- Hosts
- Any Audio Unit or VST3 host — for example Logic Pro, Ableton Live, Cubase, Bitwig Studio or Reaper — or no host at all with the Standalone app
- Factory bank
- 100 presets in 7 categories · 150 sources in 9 categories, 48 kHz / 24-bit stereo WAV
- Your audio
- WAV, AIF, AIFF, FLAC, MP3, OGG, M4A, AAC · mono or stereo · up to 30 min / 2 GiB per file
- Voices
- Up to 16 · POLY, MONO, LEGATO · classic MIDI and MPE
- Interface
- 1332 × 900 at 100%, scalable 90–150% · GRAPHITE and CARBON themes · reduced-motion option
- Documentation
- User Manual and Quick Start Guide, PDF, in English and Spanish
- Version
- 1.0.0
Questions
Is DETRITUS an effect or an instrument?
An instrument. Insert it on an instrument (MIDI) track and play it with notes. It does not appear in your DAW's list of audio effects.
Can I use my own sounds?
Yes. Load any WAV, AIF, AIFF, FLAC, MP3, OGG, M4A or AAC file into source A or B, or drop it onto the field. With LOCK A + B you can browse the whole Factory bank over your own material.
Does it process live audio from a track or a microphone?
No. DETRITUS works on audio files. To use material from your DAW, consolidate or export the clip and load that file.
Does it run on Intel Macs?
Yes. DETRITUS is Universal: it runs natively on Apple Silicon and Intel, on macOS 11.0 or later.
Does it need an internet connection or cloud services?
No. Everything runs locally. AUTO, SMART and EVOLVE are processes of the engine itself, not AI services.
Does it support MPE?
Yes. Set the MPE zone to AUTO, LOWER or UPPER, then choose where pressure and slide (CC74) go: FOCUS, POSITION, SIZE or SCATTER.
Every sound
leaves something
behind.
DETRITUS 1.0.0 for macOS. AU, VST3 and Standalone, with 100 presets, 150 sources and the full documentation.