Minimal Audio has launched Lucid, a granular audio processing plugin designed to transform incoming material in real time. The plugin is intended for use as an insert effect on sources including synthesizers, vocals, drums, and recorded audio, processing sound through a grain-based engine with pitch and timeline synchronisation features.
Lucid captures and reconstructs input audio as individual grains, allowing users to alter pitch, timing, texture, stereo placement, and harmonic content. Its Grain Scale-Lock function detects the pitch of each grain and retunes it in real time, with the stated aim of keeping transposed and modulated processing aligned with a selected musical key.
The plugin also includes Granular Timeline Sync for timing-based operation. Users can sync time-stretching to a project grid, snap playback behaviour to transients, or manually scrub through a captured loop while maintaining alignment with the host timeline. A waveform display shows the captured input and the positions at which grains are played.
Lucid provides several tools for shaping the grain output:
- Harmonic Grain Delay, a multi-tap delay with scale-locked pitch shifting.
- Multi-Mode Grain Filter, which applies filtering, modulation, and drive independently to individual grains.
- Dynamic Grain Imager, offering panning patterns that distribute grains across the stereo field.
- Grain Chord and Arp modes, for stacking grains into chords or stepping grains through a selected scale.
- Grain Blur, designed to smooth time-stretching and freeze-related processing artifacts.
An Animator pad provides an animated XY control surface for adjusting multiple parameters simultaneously. Lucid also includes a modulation system that supports macros, LFOs, curve sequencers, and envelope followers. Modulation assignments can be created using drag and drop controls or through a modulation matrix.
The plugin includes an effects rack with eight freely loadable effects for processing the granular signal. Minimal Audio has also included more than 350 presets, organised across 13 packs and searchable by tag. Each preset includes two macro controls for adjusting assigned parameters.
Lucid is available for $129 from the Minimal Audio website, with an introductory price of $79 through September 30.
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